High-quality capture of eyes

Even though the human eye is one of the central features of individual appearance, its shape has so far been mostly approximated in our community with gross simplifications. In this paper we demonstrate that there is a lot of individuality to every eye, a fact that common practices for 3D eye generation do not consider. To faithfully reproduce all the intricacies of the human eye we propose a novel capture system that is capable of accurately reconstructing all the visible parts of the eye: the white sclera, the transparent cornea and the non-rigidly deforming colored iris. These components exhibit very different appearance properties and thus we propose a hybrid reconstruction method that addresses them individually, resulting in a complete model of both spatio-temporal shape and texture at an unprecedented level of detail, enabling the creation of more believable digital humans. Finally, we believe that the findings of this paper will alter our community's current assumptions regarding human eyes, and our work has the potential to significantly impact the way that eyes will be modelled in the future.