Custom Eye Glint Shader

Overview

This is a custom shader that gives your eyes a red-eye effect or tapetum lucidum: it's the retroreflective effect you see in animals when they look at you with a bright light in your line of sight. Your eyes will appear normal and emissive (if configured), but whenever there's a real-time light in a scene your irises will appear to luminesce with a brilliant color of your choosing!

The effect is non-uniform, directed at the viewer, changes as your eyes move relative to each viewer, and reflects with a pleasing and complex gradient that's unlike any normal texture.

It works with any real-time light in VRChat, including flashes from those Polaroid cameras, special effects, campfires, flashlights on other people's avatars, etc. As long as the light is real-time (dynamic, point, spot).

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Note

You should use an avatar that has a material dedicated to the eyes. (Most do, including the Rexouium.) If you have an avatar that shares the eye material with the body, you can still use the shader and a mask, but you'll lose the ability to use Poiyomi or another custom shader on your body--so you'll lose out on fancy shader effects. To avoid that you'd need to open your model in Blender, select the eyes, and assign them to a new material.

Note that due to the way the mirror clone works, you usually won't see the light effect in normal mirrors. To see your own eyes glinting, you'll need to use the camera, stream camera, or face mirror in the radial Tools menu. Others will see your eyes glint normally when you look directly at them.

Installation

Installation is easy and works on any avatar that has a material dedicated to the eyes. Simply drag in the unitypackage, assign material to your eyes, and use a mask to mask out the areas you want to reflect light.

Masks are already included for the Rexouium, Nardoragon, Kobodal, ChibiKobodal, and Foxipso Base. (The Foxipso base comes with this shader already included and configured.) The included installation video shows you how to quickly make a mask for any other avatar.

Detailed installation instructions and a video are included. Contact information for support is in the README.txt.

Version History

Version 1.1 - February 9, 2024

Bugfix where the base map was showing up in black and white, and only adding color when emission was applied

Version 1.0 - February 9th, 2024

Initial release