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ITT: Why do game developer's ignore proper facial character animations?

T

thuway

Member
Anti Aliasing, SSAO, anisotropic filtering, and just about every other feature under the sun- I am nerdy enough to spot. As the environments, the textures, and the character models improve, their is still one thing that bugs the living fuck out of me -

PISS POOR FACIAL ANIMATIONS.


To this day, I have still yet to understand why game developers invest so much in making the environment so realstic and almost not-give-a-fuck about facial animations. Its the number one thing my non-gamer friends notice when playing a game. They don't care about the jaggies, the poor textures, or the lack of self shadowing, but if the character they are interacting with resembles a human and not a robotic clone.

Now not all developers are guilty of this, Heavy Rain taking the crown, Shenmue 2 holding a place in my heart back during the golden years, and Half Life 2 cementing a benchmark in its hayday. However, Killzone 2 and Halo 3, for however awesome as they may look, completely ruin the supsension of disbelief when characters open their mouths and talk to you.

Am I the only one who gives a fuck?
 
E

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Because creating convincing and realistic facial animations not only requires the building of an engine to support such a thing, but also time spent precisely animating all the facial nodes, and most developers want to focus development resources on the more important areas of the kind of game they want to deliver.

Not that I dont agree with you, but there is the reason.
 
D

DodgyGeezerFella

Member
Nope, i care too, and its sorta been pissing me off. I mean, HL2's still look shit hot, and that was done years ago, yet damn near every game ive played over recent years, the facial animations blow ass. I know its not a priority, but damn, HL2 DID IT YEARS AGO. Even in Crysis i thought they looked quite shoddy, with mouths just moving as they spoke rather than .. ya kna, looking like they were speaking.
 
R

Raging Spaniard

If they are Dutch, upright and breathing they are more racist than your favorite player
You should become an animator, since its obviously so easy :lol
 
C

chicko1983

Member
I dont really care about facial expressions in games. Most of the times these days I skip cinematics and get straight to gameplay, which is one of the things I dont like about God of War 3, I cant skip the movies....
 
A

a Master Ninja

Member
The sheer volume of dialog in Bioware games allows me to be pretty lenient on their animation systems.
2eyc8lg.gif
 
T

thuway

Member
I'm not arguing that Kojima, Naughty Dog, and Capcom have done a poor job, I just wanted to express my disappointment in titles that seem to completely ignore it.

Killzone 2 looks sexy, but Natko's face + watching Jan talk during the second half of the game kills the believability.


I want this to become an Industry Standard. I believe facial animation should be as important as any other graphical feature.
 
X

XiaNaphryz

LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
Because it's a LOT harder to pull off correctly? You need an animation engine that will do it properly, plus the production pipeline to build and iterate the proper face shapes and blends. Building all that stuff, and then making it relatively easy enough for non-technical artists to use it efficiently, takes a lot of time and money.

CG/visual effects houses in the movie industry spend a ton of money on developing this stuff for their work, getting it to fit in the framework of a real-time game engine running on a console can be even harder in several aspects.

Unless a game plans on spending a ton of time in cinematics AND wants to focus on high fidelity animation for close-ups, it's not worth the time and money investment unless you plan on amortizing the costs over several projects.

thuway said:
I want this to become an Industry Standard. I believe facial animation should be as important as any other graphical feature.
Click to expand...
As I said, it's hard enough at places like Weta and ILM for them to pull off, even if utilizing mocap (which can make things harder at times) - I don't see it becoming "standard" anytime soon in the game industry unless a popular middleware engine provides a good (and affordable and easy to integrate) solution.
 
S

Scythesurge

Member
Heavenly Sword is the game that actually made me pissed off when games have horrible facial animations. They're done so well in that game that seeing even something like Mass Effect just feel cheap.
 
D

dralla

Member
because it's a lot of work/time/money, and ultimately, not many people care about it. it's much easier to wow people with a really nice environment compared to subtle facial animations.
 
K

KevinCow

Banned
Because it's hard to do, mainly.

And you know, I can sympathize with that. I don't expect huge production values from all my games. Just, if you don't have the budget or aren't going to put the effort into proper facial expressions, don't make a story-heavy game with lots of cutscenes. Not every game needs cutscenes and an emphasis on story.
 
D

dimb

Bjergsen is the greatest midlane in the world
Scythesurge said:
Heavenly Sword is the game that actually made me pissed off when games have horrible facial animations. They're done so well in that game that seeing even something like Mass Effect just feel cheap.
Click to expand...
Guess which game I'd still rather play.
 
J

jett

D-Member
Mass Effect 2 was pretty disappointing in this aspect. It made literally NO improvements from ME1.

To answer your question, not every animator can be as talented as the best, obviously. :p When it comes to keyframe animation it's really just a matter of animating talent. I think Naughty Dog has easily demonstrated that they are the best.
 
H

HK-47

Oh, bitch bitch bitch.
Bloodlines is the gold standard for RPG facial animation imo. Just look up any convo on youtube.

Kinda sad it was done 6 years ago.

Source engine really good for facial animation I think

a Master Ninja said:
The sheer volume of dialog in Bioware games allows me to be pretty lenient on their animation systems.
2eyc8lg.gif
Click to expand...

Given Bloodlines was done by a studio with less budget than Bioware can muster and it kicks the crap out of their current games, no I think its valid. Its like no one on their staff knows how to animate eyes.
 
R

rainking187

Member
Scythesurge said:
Heavenly Sword is the game that actually made me pissed off when games have horrible facial animations. They're done so well in that game that seeing even something like Mass Effect just feel cheap.
Click to expand...


It's been over two years since Heavenly Sword was released, and I still haven't played anything since with facial expressions that good.
 
R

Raging Spaniard

If they are Dutch, upright and breathing they are more racist than your favorite player
theRizzle said:
Well apparently L.A. Noire is going to address all of your facial expression needs.
Click to expand...

By not having any animators in staff >:|
 
X

XiaNaphryz

LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
jett said:
To answer your question, not every animator can be as talented as the best, obviously. :p When it comes to keyframe animation it's really just a matter of animating talent. I think Naughty Dog has easily demonstrated that they are the best.
Click to expand...
I thought with standard blend shapes it's not really about talent assuming you have some good key shapes to start off on? It's more about the animation engine and its ability to interpolate, with the animator really just cleaning things up so it looks okay. The animator ultimately has to work within the capabilities of the game's animation engine after all.

To reiterate - implementing good facial animation is hard in a myriad of ways.
 
E

eshwaaz

Member
Believable facial expressions are very difficult to pull off. Proper lip sync is not. In the hands of a competent animator, accurate lip sync is one of the few aspects of animation where you can get good results without a ton of time invested.

The lip sync in most games is appalling, even when the characters and narrative are a huge focus. Mafia 2 looks great in so many ways and they seem to really be pushing the character development and dialog in that game, but the lip sync in the released videos is disappointing. When an otherwise convincing-looking character opens his mouth to speak and it looks like he's just chewing out a bunch of random mouth shapes, it hurts the believability and impact of that scene substantially. Apparently only Valve, Rockstar and Naughty Dog understand that.

Unless you're making a game with a ridiculous amount of dialog (Mass Effect 2, Oblivion, etc.) there's really no excuse for bad lip sync.
 
T

tafer

Member
Scythesurge said:
Heavenly Sword is the game that actually made me pissed off when games have horrible facial animations. They're done so well in that game that seeing even something like Mass Effect just feel cheap.
Click to expand...

Heavenly Sword do have the best facial animations that I can remember. And I think that a nice facial animation actually adds something to the game (more human/believable characters), but I guess it's just too difficult or expensive for most developers. (But it should be mandatory for RPGs)
 
R

rollingstart

Banned
NZNova said:
Heavenly Sword did a nice job of it.
Click to expand...

It did in the sense that it was very theatrical and over the top, but it wasn't exactly natural. Though it did fit the tone of the game and was better than most.

I'm hoping LA Noire lives up to what they claim
 
X

XiaNaphryz

LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
thuway said:
Such a beautiful game, such.... poor faces :(.
Click to expand...
Get used to it, for the reasons I mentioned above. Until more studios develop their own tech and pipeline for it, the difference between the have and have-nots will be even more pronounced as the studios that already have the tech in place improve on it and get even better at it.
 
G

gutter_trash

Banned
EatChildren said:
Because creating convincing and realistic facial animations not only requires the building of an engine to support such a thing, but also time spent precisely animating all the facial nodes, and most developers want to focus development resources on the more important areas of the kind of game they want to deliver.

Not that I dont agree with you, but there is the reason.
Click to expand...
nah
all you need is a good character modeler, a good rigger and a good animator and you are set

facial animation is easy peasy for a good animator... as long as the rig is solid
 
C

Ceebs

Member
How about animation in general? Even the best looking games move in the way that an elegant moving robot might.
 
X

XiaNaphryz

LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
gutter_trash said:
nah
all you need is a good character modeler, a good rigger and a good animator and you are set

facial animation is easy peasy for a good animator... as long as the rig is solid
Click to expand...
It can completely depend on how you render it out - if you plan on doing it with the game engine (either real-time or rendered out for a non-interactive cutscene) your engine still needs to support it, properly rigged or not - otherwise, all that work won't matter if it won't appear in-game. If you're rendering through a different solution (i.e. render a movie that the game just plays back for cutscenes), then yeah it's a lot easier (assuming said solution's already built/available).

I guess what I'm trying to reiterate in all my posts are, it's not just all on the animation side - there's plenty of stuff on the tech side that needs to be setup/built as well by game/pipeline engineers and TDs/riggers.
 
H

hateradio

The Most Dangerous Yes Man
I've been playing The Witcher and wonder why all the characters just "spaz out" ... I wish someone made an animation mod or something, it's really jarring.
 
beat

beat

Member
Part of the reason it's hard is because humans are hardwired to recognize faces. So as much work as you put into them, you'll still likely fall in the uncanny valley.
 
S

Snuggles

erotic butter maelstrom
It ain't easy, I guess. The more realistic your characters look the more glaring the flaws like this are.
I suppose I'm more forgiving than most people, I can deal with poor facial animation as long as the voice acting and writing is decent. Hopefully LA Noir's new tech will live up to it's promise.

By the way, I love the flying head Dragon Age GIF. I wish that would have happened to me.
 
A

ArachosiA 78

Member
Obviously it must be very hard to create convincing facial animations, otherwise every game would feature them.

Hopefully, the facial capture systems that was used to film Avatar will make it's way into videogames before long.
 
A

Android18a

Member
Wind Waker did facial animation best, I think. You always knew how a character was feeling. Those big bold eyes really made it.
 
K

Krackatoa

Member
It takes a lot of work to set up the pipeline to do proper facial animations. At the end of the day engine development, optimization and what-have-you costs a lot of moneys. Tech will get better and this will get easier. I don't really see it as a big deal.

I think we're going to see good stuff from Valve. They were excellent at bringing the TF2 characters to life.
 
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