Inner Eyes

There’s a sensation in your eyes,
They follow wherever I do a step.
Thinking a while, got caught by surprise,
Without moving, you always look back.

Your eyes look full but have no ball,
Scratched out and painted what was left,
Light keeps their secret from us all,
What an illusion, you look perfect.

Did you like poetry interpretation during school? Me neither. But thanks to a nice polycount member you’ll get one because throttlekitty mentioned this topic and it was too fascinating to not talk about it:

This model by Muumin seems to orient its eyes always to the camera, right? To me it looks really convincing and I would have expected the use of bones for the eye-geometry and some constraints to focus them towards camera.

Not sure if you saw it instantly, but I noticed it only at second glance: There are no eye balls. No camera-oriented parts. Instead, the eyes only consist out of holes and the pupils are painted at the back of the eyehole. It gets clearer when you look at it from nearer distance:

And it works great too for camera positions above/below the character:

OK, I have to admit that this illusion only works for the very specific cases:

• The texture must be self-illuminated, so that no shadow reveals the secret.
• The character always looks at the camera which might not be too useful in a lot cases.

But anyway, I really like the basic idea! Below you’ll find a small example with Mr. GPU who wants to clear out this topic further, by comparing the shaded (left), illuminated (center) and a wireframed version (right).

Thanks for reading! Please tell me how you like the trick! Also I would be interested in your opinion about the article itself. It’s more “back to the roots” which means short and simple instead of the really big ones I release lastly. Which one do you like more?

Update 1

Thanks scropyx for this cool video which demonstrates how this trick works in real!

I didn’t embed the video directly to avoid any tracking from Google and complications with the DSGVO.

Update 2

Just found this nice optical illusion by Deborah Engel :)

I didn’t embed the video directly to avoid any tracking from Google and complications with the DSGVO.

Update 3

Zoltan mentioned this tweet with another great example for a “strange” trick when it comes to bringing anime into 3D:

Source: Tweet by @kohta0130

It’s awesome how these people know exactly what they want and bend 3D if necessary to achieve the goal. If you like this I can strongly recommend this awesome talk where more stunning tricks are presented to create the style of Guilty Gear X.