Colors

Eighteen ready-made colour gradients, for the contour components.

🔧 Grasshopper component

ColorsAlpaca4d ▸ 09_Visualisation

Inputs

IndexGradientIndexInteger0Which gradient. See the table.

Index	Gradient		Index	Gradient
0	Turbo (default)		9	Seismic
1	Viridis		10	Batlow
2	Plasma		11	Tokyo
3	Inferno		12	Buda
4	Magma		13	Imola
5	Cool		14	Vik
6	Hot		15	Roma
7	Coolwarm		16	Bam
8	Spectral		17	Berlin

Outputs

ColorsColourlistThe gradient, for the Colors input of any contour component or of Legend.

📈 When to use it

Use it when you are feeding a gradient to Model View or Legend, and the default Turbo is not the right map for the data.

Do not use it when the default is fine — leave Colors empty on those components and they use Turbo on their own.

💡 Choosing one

The quantity	Use	Why
Has a meaningful zero — a moment, a stress that can be tension or compression	Coolwarm (7), Vik (14), Berlin (17), Seismic (9)	Diverging: two hues meeting at a neutral midpoint, so the sign is visible.
Runs from nothing to a maximum — displacement magnitude, Von Mises	Viridis (1), Batlow (10), Plasma (2), Inferno (3)	Sequential and perceptually uniform: equal steps in value look like equal steps in colour.
Needs maximum contrast for a presentation	Turbo (0)	Bright, but not perceptually uniform — it invents banding that is not in the data.

Batlow, Tokyo, Buda, Imola, Vik, Roma, Bam and Berlin are from the Scientific Colour Maps family: perceptually uniform and readable by colour-blind viewers. They are the safer choice for anything that will be printed or published.

Note

Whichever gradient you pick, give the same list to Legend, and fix Range on the contour if you are comparing more than one view.