White Light/White Heat

Taking the additive RGB model a little further, it's apparent that a white surface will appear white when the three primary colours are reflected equally and at full intensity.

In the case of Maya's lighting we can use the RBG model with a range of 0-255 for each of the red, green and blue colour channels.

You can see from this example that I've selected the RGB, 0 to 255 model. All of the RGB values are set to the maximum (255) and the additive result is a white. This is the same process as we see in the mixing of primary colours in the image above.

What of those secondary colours? The cyan, magenta and yellow?

If yellow light represents an additive mix of green and red (R:255, G:255, B: 0) then adding blue light (R:0, G:0, B:255) should produce our white light.

The expected result. A primary colour added to it's complimentary, secondary colour creates a white light. We should expect the same results from the mixing of:

But why should it stop there? If we can mathematically calculate the additive values to create a white light (or any other colour), we can choose the colours of our lighting and accurately predict the colour of the resulting mix. Or, conversely, choose the result, the required tint and calculate the colour of lighting required.

Worth an experiment?