Useful mental model for understanding face orientation colors

[Ethan ⚡️]

I’m not sure if this was deliberate, but I find that a good model for understanding the difference between red and blue when viewing face orientation is “red shift” and “blue shift” of light.

When an object is moving away from you, its light creates a “red shift”. And when an object is moving towards you, its light creates a “blue shift”. 

Similarly, face normals that are pointing outwards — towards the viewer — hit as blue, while face normals that are pointing inwards — away from the viewer — hit has red.

[Omar Domenech]

Dangs that’s a cool interpretation. I see we have a fellow science enthusiast here, I too dabble in science documentaries. And if my memory doesn’t fail me, at the end of the spectrum is ultraviolet and then there’s X-Rays and Gama Rays, and when you reach the very end the static left from the Big Bang is picked up by our TV’s as that noise pattern when the cable goes out.

[Martin Bergwerf]

Oh, but be aware of the default Cube:

where Faces that are pointing away from you are also blue…

[Ethan ⚡️]

Ha!… an important consideration, Martin. By “towards”, though, I meant with the assumption that the viewer was in a position to be looking at the face from the outside of the object. (So for the bottom here, imagine being underneath the floor and looking up at the cube)

[Martin Bergwerf]

Well, if the red shift analogy helps you to remember ‘blue is good, red is bad’, then that’s great! 👍🏻

[Author]

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