I've been playing a bit with the relatively new Maya Ramp Shader. It looks promising, but (if I'm using it correctly) not entirely bug-free. (What is that white transitional color?)
It takes as its solution the idea of using light to modify the surface color of an object. Nothing wrong with that; I did it myself here.
I'd like to suggest that Maya consider adding similar functionality into the light itself, as I did here.
What is even stranger for me is why you get a blending of the magenta and cyan BETWEEN the 2 magenta positions. The one almost on top of the cyan seems not to be affecting the ramp. Do the cyan and magenta have the same postion value? That might cause some math problems.
The white halo almost seems like an incandescence ramp. That was the only way I could get even close to reproducing the effect you see.
I love the ramp shader. It's been slowly taking over as the starting point of all my shader networks.
Love the blog. I've learned much.
I think I have the blend set to "None" on that other cyan and I guess they share a value.
You'd think it would show up somehere, though.
Interesting.