Minecraft can be used to do nearly anything, which is something you’ll know if you read our bits on it daily. We’ve got working multiplayer Tetris, transforming towns, and even a supermassive black hole. Well, this fan has made an in-game Minecraft GIF of a cow – which, as it turns out, is a lot more complicated than you might think.
Check out the Reddit video below for just how impressive this Minecraft cow GIF is. Dongxipunata, the creator of this effect, explains the whole thing in the post. It uses the same principle as Moiré slit animations, which is a way of animating something using an optical illusion that you can create by overlapping different lines. In essence, the lines cover different parts of an image, and this combines with specially designed images to create movement. In reality, the image never moves, but your brain thinks it does so because of what is hidden and what is shown.
They also explain that “Changing resolution, viewing angle or FOV, even with something like speed potions breaks the effect, and you would have to look for a new spot for a harmonic sample.” In essence, this is an intensely specific optical illusion, that relies not only on the way they’ve created things, but also on the settings, angle, and distance too.
You can see just how surgical the precision has to be when Dongxipunata starts to move forwards, and the entire thing unravels into what looks like a visual glitch. It all ends up looking like an eldritch monstrosity – or, worse, a 3D magic eye painting – as they get closer to the cow, but that doesn’t detract from how impressive the effect is.
I used "this weird RGB" thing to put a gif of a cow into the game. from Minecraft
In other less visually perplexing Minecraft news, another fan decided to recreate a Destiny 2 raid in the game, and another player has made a mod to let you fly off into the night on a phantom.
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