A peek into the complicated creation of realistic eyeballs in video games

If the eyes are a window into one’s soul, video game characters are a bit…soulless.

A recent article on Fastco Design delves into the challenge of rendering a perfectly realistic eyeball in video games. It’s a little-talked about subject, but a notable one – a lot of video games have eyeballs in them, and particularly with VR, players will be able to get even closer to those emotive CG peepers.

The processing power needed to render the perfect eye in real time is “hundreds of times, if not an order of magnitude or two more [away]," said Epic Games senior graphics programmer Brian Karis.

Creating a realistic eyeball involves correct lighting, structure, and movement. It’s also an AI challenge to make eyeballs behave in a believable manner, to avoid the dead-eyed Polar Express look. “There’s a very deep and challenging AI problem to solve there,” said Karis.

There’s more on making realistic eyeballs over on Fastco Design.