Aurora Veil
Curtains of light that fold, throwing bright vertical rays as they turn.
The canvas in this preview is the file shown here. The surrounding demo shell only provides context and is not part of the copied code.
import { useEffect, useRef } from "react";
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* Vibary · Aurora Veil
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* Vertical curtains of light, folding and shifting.
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* The technique: the bright rays are not drawn. Each curtain is a sheetAbout this effect
Slow atmosphere for a dark surface — a weather screen, a night mode, the backdrop to a hero. The bright rays are never drawn. Each curtain is a sheet sampled at evenly spaced points along its own length, and the sheet meanders in front of the viewer, so where it turns edge-on many samples land on the same few pixels and their light adds up. The rays fall out of the sampling density on their own, which is exactly what a ray is in the sky: a fold seen end-on. That is why an aurora painted as a blurred gradient never convinces — the rays are the subject and they can only be a consequence of the fold. Nothing in the code measures compression or decides where a ray belongs.