Iridescent dyes / fabrics

This is something I've wanted to see since the topic of special or magical dyes has come up. Iridescence is the quality by which a color will change based on the angle of viewing or illumination. Its common in nature.

You can see it in the feathers of many types of ducks (including mallards).


In other types of birds.



In butterflies.


In beetles.


In shells.


Here is an example in motion, in an animated GIF, where a hummingbird is turned towards and away from the viewer, where you have some feathers turning from pink to black, and others from green to black,



It also exists in different types of fabrics.


There is of course a plain type of iridescence in certain fabrics like satin and velvet and taffeta. But there are more interesting combinations that would make for great wizard's robes, capes, gowns, and other types of player gear.

A handful of examples,

Blue-->Green


Blue-->Rose


Gold-->Black


Blue-->Black


Pink-->Green


Of course, many more examples can be found.

There are people who have created an iridescence shaders (don't knw how well they work),
https://sdm.scad.edu/faculty/mkesson/vsfx419/wip/best/winter11/megan_stifter/iridescence.html
http://silvestrejulien.blogspot.com/2014/11/iridescence-shader-arnoldc.html
https://www.google.com/search?q=iridescence+shader

 

A special kind of iridescent dye in the game could be a kind of magical ultraviolet iridescence, which because of its properties, shows up and glimmers in the darkness, but isn't very visible in daylight.

Many instances of iridescence in nature include an ultraviolet range, and certain birds were said in folklore to glow in the dark because their feathers had UV iridescence and you could see them glimmer in the dark. For example, the "hercinia" or "ercinee", a bird in Germanic folklore that existed in the Hercynian Forest, which is believed to be based on a real bird with iridescent feathers.




In myth, for the ercinee, the iridesence became a sort of luminescence.

Here is a starling, as seen by the human eye, and then adjusted to show the UV iridescence,


So this would be for players like Moon Mages that like their characters to live in the dark, and would give them an extra night-time effect to their clothing.