In the Character Creator, when on the second page were you make your portrait, the reflection of light in the eyes persists independently of a direct light source. So that even if the eye is in a shadow, there is still light reflection generated on the eye. I’ve included a screenshot.
Seems there is a very faint fourth light source in the character creation room.
My guess is this is intentional to make the eyes seem more lively and realistic, not a bug. Just pretend there is a small reflective object in the back of the room behind the camera.
If you want it gone, have you tried playing more with the eyes and eye lids? Perhaps you can select a setting that doesn’t reflect from that angle. Or make use of the effect for your portrait:
It’s too bright to be intentional. It’s clearly a bug as it’s full light reflection where there should be none. SWTOR had a similar issue a few years back that the devs eventually corrected. All the characters in cut-scenes looked like Goa’uld from Stargate SG-1. This bug makes it impossible to obscure the eyes, as is the purpose of shadows across the face: To obscure.
It’s not a reflection from some hidden light source. It’s the eyes not acknowledging the lack of light and rendering the reflections how they would if there was light. Furthermore, no one should have to make a portrait to accommodate a bug. Everyone should be able to make the pose and choose the lighting they desire. Hence it should be fixed. If you like this you should petition the CSM for a backlite eyes option if you’d like the glowing eyes look. That would look legit and not like an obvious out of place effect that looks like a piece of paper stuck on your eyeball.
To put it bluntly, it looks stupid and unnatural. I’m bringing this up so they can fix the bug. Pretending it’s something else doesn’t fix anything nor make it look less odd.
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I opened a bug report and this was the response.
Created: 10/5/2021 10:56:44 AM
CCP Dev
Greetings!Thank you for reaching out. This is currently by design. We have a pre-made cubemap for eye reflections (due to the very basic lighting and no environment to render available in the character portrait service). So it is currently expected that you will still have some reflections even if the light source is not directly shining onto your character’s eyes. I hope that helps! As always, your report is greatly appreciated.
Fly safe, o7
CCP Deevil
This is an absurd claim.
THIS…
…is not “by design” as it has not always been this way and it’s clearly a bug. Next they’ll tell me that clothing having bleached spots, the jet black or white patch vitiligo bug and the floating feet being shown in the portrait is by design too. If the graphics development team is too lazy to fix it at the moment (i.e. “currently by design”) then that’s what CCP Deevil should have said. But to piss in my ear and tell me it’s raining is insulting to my intelligence.
@Mike_Azariah @Brisc_Rubal The least they could do is remove the additional reflections entirely as they are unnecessary even when properly lit. A simple quick fix. The inherent lighting of the iris/pupil, in and of itself, is enough. Can you gentlemen bring this up.
This would look just fine without the unnecessary extra layer of reflection. It doesn’t add much in full light and is a detriment in low light.
As I said, intentional.
It’s an easy way to make the eyes look more realistic by pretending the eyes reflect a light source, without actually calculating accurate reflections.
Yes, it may unintentionally light up your eyes in a completely dark setting as a side effect, but there are ways to avoid that:
for example you can use more light in your picture (so people are able to see your portrait), intentionally make use of the reflection or close your eyes.
Or you could wait until CCP upgrades the current character creator.
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In my experience, anything we think is a “simple, quick fix” isn’t.
I will bring it up, but I hesitate only because this seems a bit trivial.
Don’t insult my intelligence. It’s not intentional and they don’t look more realistic in shadows. The effect in and of itself is of course put there on purpose, but to say it’s supposed to have a full reflection in total darkness is intellectually dishonest. To say otherwise would mean that in the first few moments when you start to you move the character around and it properly fades away in darkness, that THAT is the bug. That being able to obscure part of your face, including your eyes, in shadow is the bug. Is that what you’re honest purporting? It looks like you have a piece of white paper stuck to your eyeball. That’s not more realistic. It doesn’t even look like a reflection in a shadow. More like a white spot of missing pixels. There is no possible way they wanted that intentionally.
Again, what’s the point of a portrait and all the lighting options if I can’t use them to make the portrait I want due to a blatant chunk of “missing pixels”? I want half of the face, including an eye, obscured in shadow. To say use more light is like saying, if there was a bug not allowing you to make female characters, to make a male with the lips as red as possible, pick a long hairstyle and get creative with the cheek color. Everything except fixing the actually bug.
If the portraits were always created in low resolution and you could see the pixels, is ‘being able to count the pixels’ a bug?
No, it would be a consequence of an intentional choice to render the portrait at that resolution.
Likewise, if the portrait generator is too basic to properly render reflections in the eye based on the rest of the light settings but uses a static reflection instead, is that reflection a bug? Or a consequence of a choice the developer intentionally made when creating this less-than-perfect-yet-pretty-good portrait generator?
By the way, glasses also have a static reflection that isn’t calculated based on your light settings.
Pretend you’re taking the picture in a room with a few light sources of which you can tweak the intensity, position and colour, and one small annoying bright light source above the door that you sadly cannot change, yet shows up in anything reflective in the picture.
I agree, it’s not perfect.
And you’re right, someone could probably put time in it to improve this. However, just because it can be improved does not mean there is a bug.
Maybe try the suggestion forum?
An unintentional consequence of an intentional choice is still a bug. I’m not sure why this is so hard for you to grasp.
The reflections actual work as intended when you first load the portrait edit screen. It’s only after moving the character around a bit that the reflections stop fading when direct light is removed. So you can’t tell me they knowingly and intentionally designed it from the start to look like dog crap when shadows are applied. Any programmer would nix the feature if that’s how it looked on their end prior to launch.
By your logic the bleached clothing and black “vitiligo” bug aren’t actual bugs either, but just a “consequence of an intentional choice”. And when the data sites were undetectable in the last event, that was not a bug because CCP intentionally implemented the event. Do you not realize ALL bugs are consequences of intentional choices? By your logic there is no such thing as a bug and everything is working as intended by virtue of merely existing.
Just because the game cannot do what you want it to do does not make something a bug.
Portrait reflections (in eyes and eyewear) have a static image that does not vary with your light settings. Why it is like that, I cannot tell you for sure, but I do guess it’s much easier to create a static reflection image rather one that accurately reflects the light sources that are used to light the rest of the character.
Edit: And now that I look more closely, this static image is in addition to a varying reflection that does follow your light settings. Which makes sense, as when you look into someone’s eye you usually see multiple reflected light sources, spots and windows, squares of a bright screen, etc. All these reflections together turn the portrait eyes into realistic eyes.
Which works really well, unless you want to take a portrait in absolute darkness.
Anyway, a static reflection is how it is, which doesn’t mean it cannot be improved, but does not mean it’s a bug either.
Try the suggestion forum. Ask if they add a new slider for the reflection intensity.
It’s not about what I want it to do. It’s objectively a graphical glitch. It’s a bug because it’s a bug.
That’s like saying, “Just because people could not scan down the AIR drone data sites doesn’t mean it’s a bug. Just because the event did not allow people to what they wanted to do didn’t make it a bug.” Just a consequence of the patch, right? 
At this point you’re just being a contrarian for the sake of being a contrarian. This conversation has run its course. I’ll end it here. Have a nice day. Topic muted.
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