# Scorpion Magic Eye, can you do it?



## Feelers (Mar 13, 2008)

Well I was messing around with this, I'm not particularly happy with the repeating background (there is supposed to be a scorpion in the pattern), but I'll fix that _and_ colour it up a bit more another time. 

I saw the thread on scorpion art so it got me thinking. :}






Out of interest how many people can and can't do these things? :wall:


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## rochi69 (Mar 13, 2008)

i can see the scorpion but not too detailed


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## Feelers (Mar 13, 2008)

Do you mean the 3d one or the pattern?


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## Feelers (Mar 13, 2008)




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## Aztek (Mar 13, 2008)

If you can do the crosss eye thing, these things are easy.

I used to have a book and I just crossed my eyes and the picture popped out.

I discovered it on the toilet looking at some tiles, then I crossed my eyes and the pattern poped out.


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## Cyris69 (Mar 13, 2008)

Yeah, these sort of things are way too easy as Aztek stated. However, cool none the less


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## Galapoheros (Mar 13, 2008)

You can cross your eyes and see the image but I think it is expected that you do the opposite to see the hidden image.  I just noticed that if you cross your eyes the larger scorp image is seen as a deep imprint.  If you widen the angle of the line of sight of each eye by trying to stare at something distant (maybe a few inches past your monitor with this mosaic), it's much more relaxing to your eyes and the large scorp image is raised instead of sunken in.  For someone not seeing it yet, here's what's going on.  You're taking smaller images in the whole mosaic looking thing and converging them together.  The reason we see stereo is because we triangulate when we see, just like surveyors do when they are figuring out distances with numbers and their equipment.  You need at least 3 points to triangulate.  The 3 points we use to see stereo are one eye, the other eye and the thing we are looking at, that's how we can mentally judge the distance of objects we look at.  In a way, we use trig everyday.  If the scorp sits high, you are not crossing your eyes, it feels like you are crossing them but you are actually letting your pupils drift apart instead of crossing them.  If the scorp is sunken in, you are crossing your eyes.  Kind of hard to explain but easy to do once you've done it.  I just discovered that if you want to do it the cross-eyed way, which is a little harder for me, you can bring your eyes "about" 12" from the monitor and then look at a finger "about" 6" in front of the monitor.  Keep looking at your finger but try to focus on looking at the mosaic too, once you see it, you can lock in on it.  It gets easy fast once you've done it, it's just that we are not programmed to look through or in front of an object so it can be hard to do at first.


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## arachyd (Mar 13, 2008)

I can see them fairly well. I love those things!


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## Crazy0monkey (Mar 14, 2008)

I can always see the pattern pop out, i Just never know what the patern is


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## Mr. Mordax (Mar 14, 2008)

I can see them both, but I can't tell what the second one is.  For me, they always appear like a sunken-in image.  Probably because I cross instead of diverge*.  

These used to be almost impossible for me because I have astigmatism in one eye -- till I realized I'm supposed to leave my glasses ON for it to work.  :wall:

*Edit: That reminds me, I saw a special pair of goggles somewhere that switched the view that each eye sees, so convex objects appear concave and vice-versa.  Seemed weird and fun.


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## Galapoheros (Mar 14, 2008)

Those electronic stereo goggles?  I had to wear those things everyday at work for years.  It was fun and weird ...for about a week, then it sucked after that:wall:, haha.  If anybody wants to mess with it more, you can take a pic of something, move the camera two or three inches to the right or left and take a pic of the same thing.  Make the pics thumbnail size and put them right next to each other on you monitor.  You can converge them with your eyes and see the pic in stereo.  Takes some practice.


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## Feelers (Mar 14, 2008)

Oh the second one is the Brotherhood of Nod logo, with the scorpion tail coming out of the picture.

Iheartmantids, here it is again, but so you can see it "correctly" when crosseyed.







I cant get them crosseyed, I seem to loose detail.


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## Mr. Mordax (Mar 15, 2008)

Ah ha!  That explains why I thought I saw part of a scorpion, but not the whole tihng.  

And now it's coming out at me instead of sinking in.


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## LordofScorpions (Mar 15, 2008)

I can't see it its just a bunch of colours to me, thats it.


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## arachyd (Mar 15, 2008)

Ahhhh, Tiberian Sun. One of my favorite oldies......


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## Xaranx (Mar 15, 2008)

I never see these either, maybe because my right eye is a bit lazy.  Doesn't wander or anything but my vision in that eye and depth perception overall is a bit skewed.


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## Feelers (Mar 15, 2008)

From what I have read, nearly everyone should be able to do these. If you have depth perception, and the ability to focus you have all that you need. I couldn't understand these for ages either, I didn't understand what people were talking about, but one day it just clicked. These things are really impressive when you get them, it's strange seeing a 3d object floating in front of the page.

Most are not designed to be done crosseyed, but that is probably the best way to get started.
In the picture below, go crosseyed (close to the screen) so that the white dots at the top of the picture overlap to form one dot in the middle. Then slowing move back from the picture trying to keep it all in focus. The picture of the mountains will be in 3d, but it will be hard to focus at first.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ye_Landslide,_Kamchatka_Peninsula,_Russia.jpg

Wikipedia has info on viewing techniques towards the bottom... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autostereogram


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## Feelers (Mar 15, 2008)

Oh if anyone has a 3d design program and has designed or can designed some sort of 3d scorpion it's quite easy to make one of these magic eyes out of it. :3:


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## Galapoheros (Mar 15, 2008)

Wow that was a lot of reading, a lot of info.  I was going to make a 3D image and post it but it's looking like I've lost my camera  It's not looking good so far, it may be gone.


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## Galapoheros (Mar 15, 2008)

Woooeeee, I found my camera.  Here's one I threw together, didn't take long.  According to the links, this one is intended to be viewed using the wall-eyed method.  If you cross your eyes, the scorp will be seen sunken in the sand.  If I reversed the images, it would have worked using the cross-eyed method.  Seems to be easier to see a couple of feet away from your monitor, just two pics taken at diff angles.  Anybody see the 3D scorp?  You have to converge the white dots like the in the Wiki example.


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## Feelers (Mar 16, 2008)

Thats awesome! :clap:


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## Mr. Mordax (Mar 16, 2008)

I can't do it without my contacts in . . . 

I can never seem to do the "walleyed" method -- only the crossed method.  The hardest part for me sometimes is convincing my eyes to focus somewhere other than the point that their views converge.


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## Feelers (Mar 16, 2008)

A good trick I found from those links, get some sort of desk lamp and place it next to where you are sitting, (ie on the arm of your chair). The increase in light levels makes your eyes focus more easily. Then while looking at the screen focus on the reflection of the lamp. Since it is next to you it will be twice the distance from the screen (there and back) which is the focal length you need to use the "wall eye" method. So you can just swap looking at the lamp for the picture on the screen. Make small movements, if it starts going out of focus start again. 

You can just focus on your reflection also, but with the bright light it will make things easier.


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## Galapoheros (Mar 16, 2008)

Maybe I'll make one to view cross-eyed later, or maybe someone else will beat me to it.  I wasn't sure if anybody was going to see that other one.


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## Feelers (Mar 16, 2008)

Galapoheros I wanted to see if making them crosseyed or not was as simple as swapping the images around. It works.


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## loyaluntodeath (Mar 16, 2008)

this thread is awsome! ive always been able to do these things, i look at the  pictures and it just pops out at me, its kinda cool.  

oh and btw... thanks for the new background pictures!  got any more cool 3D pictures i could steal from ya?


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## Galapoheros (Mar 16, 2008)

Cool.  I may do it with an emp later for something diff and to also keep it a scorp thread.  I didn't pick a good scorp for the first one since it's a really flat scorp, ha.  When you figure out how to view these, you could actually watch small 3D movies like this on your monitor.  They'd have to be small because our eyes just aren't designed to diverge very far, accept for that pop-eyed actor dude, forgot his name.  The idea has popped in and out of my head for a couple of years now.  You'd have to have two vid cams going spaced a few inches apart and shooting the same thing somehow, or maybe a special camera with two lens space apart from each other.  Then you'd need to sync the movies up somehow, have them running at the exact same time side by side just like the two images of the scorp there in the post.  I think that would be pretty awesome looking.


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## SNAFU (Mar 16, 2008)

Wait a minute, there's a scorp in that picture??!!!..I saw two kittens playing with a ball of yarn............................................................


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## Feelers (Mar 17, 2008)

*First go at animated magic eyes(may take a bit to load)*

Well I figured I'd try something new, after seeing that wikipedia page! This was pretty fun to make, I really just wanted to see if it worked.  







I apologise if it's too big, I really have no idea how to optimize these things. I also just found out that by changing where you focus you can even get double ups of the image. If that happens readjust your focus. I decided to do this one as random dots, that way people who can't do them don't get any clues whatsoever because each frame's background it completely different. ;P


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## Cyris69 (Mar 17, 2008)

I like the moving one. Kind of hard to see much detail. I love the cross eyed method. I can do it from about 1.5 feet away from the monitor 2 feet or more its a bit more difficult. I can also blink easily as normal or fast and even look around the photos a lot without loosing any focus didn't know if it was just me


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## Galapoheros (Mar 17, 2008)

That one's pretty cool.  I looked down deeper and saw the doubling up you were talking about.  You can make those huge.  You just can't make the images big that sit side by side like in the scorp pic example and have it work like that.  Maybe you could make the images bigger and use the cross-eyed method but they get too big real fast if you try to use the wall-eyed method.  Our eyes cross well but don't diverge much.  Oh!, ha, I just noticed yours has motion, sorry, I still have dialup service, it sucks.  That looks like it took some work, that's really cool.  It'd be nice to make a vid like this that's not animated but as far as I know, that technique is limited to animation.  To see real vid in stereo using the same viewing method, my thinking is that it has to be two miniature side by side movies shot at slightly diff angles.  Anyway, yeah man that's cool!  Seems like a smaller version of something like that would be cool to see on the AB homesite.


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## Kugellager (Mar 18, 2008)

*TIps on Viewing These Images*

I can do ones is a picture frame with glass over it to focus on a reflection easily.  I find I need a trick to do the ones on a non-reflective computer screen.

Here is the trick I use to get my eyes to allow me to see them on the monitor.

1) Put your face about 1ft(30cm) from the monitor.
2) Get a pencil, pen or straw and hold it about 1/2 between your face and the monitor with the tip near the center of the image.
3) Focus on the tip of the pen, pencil, straw and you should feel your eyes moving to the correct position.
4) Just concentrate on focusing on the tip but pay attention to the image.

You should eventually be able to see them...even the moving image.

John
];')


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## Choobaine (Mar 18, 2008)

that was a pleasant surprise! 
I like those magic eye things, they are a HUGE challange for me, I just did them because I had a laptop in hand, I felt very silly holding a laptop to my face! 

aaahhh... Kane... what a man.  my first crush was a demonic megalomaniac. Good to know. Kind of loses his charm when I think "I could do better...."


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## EightLeggedFrea (Mar 18, 2008)

I can see it quite clearly! I love these things.


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