Josh Sommers’ CG Impossible Objects (Part II)

Josh Sommers is the guy we mentioned few times on Mighty Optical Illusions in the past. His Escheresques and Impossible CG Objects, that I found out little later were done by Josh as well, are truly wonderful piece of art. Today I prepared part II of his impossible object collection. The “impossible objects” he created digitally, are nothing new frankly (similar cubes, triangles and pyramids we have seen dozens of times in the past). But their visual appearance is breath taking! When I first received these images, I believed they represent true photos of some amazing real life structures, that are shot from specific angle, so that they appear impossible in their nature. Best example can be found here.





45 Replies to “Josh Sommers’ CG Impossible Objects (Part II)”

  1. Great, mysterious. I’d love to decorate my bedroom with them, but where I live it’s really hard to find any posters of this kind.

  2. I think they’re normal objects but they’ve painted on them some shades
    to make them look impossible.

  3. beautiful, just beautiful.

    I especially like in the last one that even if you make it with “holes” in the right spots, you’d still have to deal with faking the shadows.

  4. In the triangle you can see the shadow that shows how it’s made!!I’ve seen the explanation on a optical illusions book

  5. I have a friend that draws that kind of illusions (on paper tho). :)
    They are really eye-catching!

  6. Notice how diffuse the shadows are. I guess they would have to be because there is no projection for these impossible shapes at those angles. Would cloudy conditions produce this lighting condition? I noticed that the outdoor reflections show a cloudy sky. Nice thinking on the part of the artist!

  7. people say the first one is possible but if you take a close look at the corners all of them are impossible.
    the last one seemed extremely unecessary to me haha

  8. ANGLE ANGLE ANGLE! THAT IS ALL IT IS , AND YES THERE ARE SOME PRETTY STUMPING ONES BUT I HAVE SEEN THEM ALL IN BOOKS AND PICS , SO JUST KNOW THAT IT IS ANGLE ANGLE ANGLE!

  9. the second last one look in the reflection. the object is normal. all of these are created by angle. ive seen something like this on youtube where the balls in an object that looks like is popping out, and the balls fall into the center.
    i dont know you’d have to watch it to get what i mean

  10. Hi everyone,

    Thanks for all the comments and questions. I’d like to try to answer some of your questions:

    1) All of these images are 3d renderings, and not actual objects. I did all of modeling and rendering in Maya. All of the compositing was done in Photoshop.

    2) There are two main tricks employed here, perspective, and compositing. The first trick, perspective is essentially just building a model that when viewed from a certain angle can be made to look “impossible”, and also using a camera with a very long focal length to reduce distortion and the effect of perspective, so that for example a board that is behind another board by several feet can still appear to be the same width as the one in the foreground. The second trick involves compositing multiple renderings into a single image. All of these images use both techniques. I have seen other approaches that involves highly warped objects, or cutouts so that the illusion only works from one specific angle, I did not employ either of those techniques in the making of these images.

    3) They are all in fact “impossible” in the real world, assuming no trick modeling or photography or perspective is used.

    Thanks again!
    ~Josh

  11. I love these! I’ve always loved these impossible objects, and even more after I figured out how they worked.
    I’m still a little fuzzy on that first one… anyone got on explanation?

  12. the first 1 is actualy a cube u can see the reflection , it is just a angle still goood though.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *