Hippolnareff
Member
Really great explanation. I mean, it doesn't make the animations less sucky but I guess it provides an understanding.
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Naughty Dog animator explains ME's animation
- Thread starter bananafactory
- Start date
This was really informative, not only to offer insight into what may have happened in Andromeda's instance, but a look into game animation as a whole because I haven't been gelling with it for the longest time. Lots of slippage, weightlessness, and weird or lacking lip sync seems to reign even in higher quality titles whereas these things would be ironed out to the max in animated film pipelines. Now, knowing that they use systems to remix premade animations together, every dissonant feeling I've had with game animation makes sense.
It mostly boils down to time. It seems like Bioware needed much longer time, since we can't even customize companions even though text in the game refers to the option, there's only 2 casual appearances in the game, the CC is borked, the amount of bugs etc.
They needed more time. 6 months at least I'd say.
They needed more time. 6 months at least I'd say.
They had 5 years. It's not like this was done in a 2-3 year timeframe.
badcrumble
Member
It's more like "they planned to reach new heights of animation quality, then had to abandon that goal, and we got the placeholder animations in the final product."
AtomicShroom
Member
Yeah but I guess those five years weren't enough or other projects took time away from them.
Spartancarver
Member
Orthogonal
Member
How far we have come and current expectations are a part of it, but how far back do we have to go where we would think these animations are acceptable?
Things like the crazy lips stand out because we haven't seen this before, ever to my recollection. Lots of games have jank, but they only really stand out when it is extreme, hence all the noise around ME:A
BouncyFrag
Member
From his first posts he is condemning the hate/vitriol aimed at a single person and twitter is a good way to get this message out.
Budgets are going to have to take animation time into consideration. I don't think most developers or publishers want their games to be mocked because of bad or even just slightly less than acceptable animations. The problem is that this means that that will mean that concessions will have to be made in other areas.
somecrazymember
Banned
What is the 'my face is tired' thing? Link?
Basileus777
Member
What Cooper seems to be describing is poor management from Bioware more than anything. They designed their animation system in a way that completely clashes with the scope of their project with disastrous consequences.
The expectations games like Uncharted have set in the animation department literally require a herculean and unrealistic budget to animate any sort of game the scale of Mass Effect.
The most important thing he's highlighted is how we live in an age where the lowest quality portion of a game will be recorded and uploaded to misrepresent the game's baseline visuals. I remember Horizon: Zero Dawn being torn pre-release with naked skepticism about Guerilla's ability to animate and tell a solid narrative based on video clips of low tier side quest NPC interactions and voice acting.
The most important thing he's highlighted is how we live in an age where the lowest quality portion of a game will be recorded and uploaded to misrepresent the game's baseline visuals. I remember Horizon: Zero Dawn being torn pre-release with naked skepticism about Guerilla's ability to animate and tell a solid narrative based on video clips of low tier side quest NPC interactions and voice acting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b6qH48bslA
I would argue that the animation is the least of that scene's problems tho.
Basileus777
Member
That's not the root of the issue here. No other AAA game has been savaged like this since AC Unity and the widespread issues Andromeda has are not just the result of more exposure.
Future PhaZe
Member
This man deserves an award for those tweets
I've made fun of the animations just like others have but feel somewhat humbled now
These guys really do work very hard on the product
I've made fun of the animations just like others have but feel somewhat humbled now
These guys really do work very hard on the product
Pops Maellard
Member
Yeah can we talk about how awful the voice acting and makeup is?
The animation essentially matches what I'd imagine someone speaking in that tone would look like.
Makes sense, very good explanation. In this case, Bioware should have went with quality over quantity and mocapped every scene. That type of quality is expected now with the current gen of hardware. You cant really get away with robotic, janky, facial animations when the rest of the game looks photorealistic.
somecrazymember
Banned
What? Thats it?
Honestly, what makes the garbage animation worse is the whole dialogue between them that makes no sense. Who writes that !?
Jibbajabbawockky
Member
I'll preface this by saying I haven't played ME:A or Horizon, but my impression with Horizon is that there is likely a far lesser amount of conversation cutscenes than something like Mass Effect. Add in how you have a fair amount more conversations possible in ME:A and you have some amount of character customization for the main character and I imagine that adds some level of complexity greater than what you have in Horizon or obviously something like Uncharted.
Or, an RPG developer like BioWare just cuts out large swaths of conversation/dialogue so they can have less volume of cutscenes where they can't insure they're all high quality. Which I don't necessarily love the prospect of either.
Looking at ME:A, I just mostly compare it to The Witcher or even older BioWare games as a fair comparison and something is clearly still off about it. Like the animator mentions, it seems like whatever baseline algorithm they had in ME was just not up to par.
The Witcher's animations are often great and subtle. Whatever they did there whether it was mocap or an algorithm with some extra attention on top of that, it works more often than not. That's basically what I expect from big content heavy RPGs with lots of dialogue in the future, not necessarily Uncharted levels of mocap quality.
That's the extent of the "my face is tired" line, not the extent of the game's issues, if that is what you are asking.
Ascenion
Member
Basically. The VA is straight up bad, matched by equally bad writing, who the hell says my face is tired in conversation? It's like the writer is being self aware of the bad animation. In fact the animation is the only excusable thing as it is.
If you look at the my face is tired meme you can notice her hand clipping with her arm, great modelling. And if you think this is just a side character you just have to take a look at Drack a main character whose throat clips with his armor 100% of the time. Grunt looked better 6 years ago.
UpUpDownDown
Member
What a world, where i have to read 50 tweets strung together instead of an article.
Just fuckin burn twitter already.
Just fuckin burn twitter already.
Those are the days I want to forget.
KiefbladeMaster
Member
I hate Twitter threads, the site obviously wasn't designed for that shit lol.
But it seems like they just bit off way more than they can chew and pushed it out regardless. I don't see how that's a viable excuse. They could have just used the algorithm method he explained.
But it seems like they just bit off way more than they can chew and pushed it out regardless. I don't see how that's a viable excuse. They could have just used the algorithm method he explained.
Witcher 3 used algorithm/scripts. When you watch the cut scenes in the other languages, it matches what they're saying. But yeah that kind of level should be expected. Maybe they didn't create enough facial animation bits to make it look smoother and natural for them to use in the scripts. Or they didn't have enough time or whatever to script the animation facial bits to make it look better.
PatientGamer
Member
I agree with everything he said, and it makes total sense too.
Still doesn't excuse for the fact that the game seems to be tripe, judging by the reviews anyways. There's loads of games of mass effect's magnitude that did it just fine.
Bioware just need to mark it as a bad job and move on.
Still doesn't excuse for the fact that the game seems to be tripe, judging by the reviews anyways. There's loads of games of mass effect's magnitude that did it just fine.
Bioware just need to mark it as a bad job and move on.
I H8 Memes
Member
Facial animations I can understand. It's the body animations that are the real crime. I cant even think of any other modern game that is nearly as badly animated.
Really? Todd Howard is probably one of the people in the video game industry who gets the most shit thrown at him from people on the internet. There's plenty of vitriol to go around.
Chris_Rivera
Member
Horizon has tons of uncanny Aloy expressions, almost all of her smirks, etc, look unnatural to me. It is surprising that mocap isn't easier to do these days, but I don't get my panties all bunched over it. It's just funny.
SomedayTheFire
Member
Easy, quick and reaches a large audience in no time.
Try read what was said, then.
He wasn't writing an article, just throwing out his thoughts on the game.
Jibbajabbawockky
Member
I still question whether Frostbite in general is a good engine to use for dialogue heavy RPGs like BioWare makes. I recall post Inquisition coming out how some of the Dragon Age developers spoke of how they had to adapt all their tools into Frostbite and I imagine having a relatively new team like BioWare Montreal get tossed into the deep end having to make a new Mass Effect game on a new engine that wasn't built from the ground up to accommodate the kind of game you're trying to make isn't an easy thing.
Then again, even going back a ways, BioWare games have never really been technical marvels. Just feel like EA mandating every EA studio use Frostbite as a cost saving measure maybe isn't the best choice in some cases.
Back to ME:A though, I think the animations themselves are only part of the problem with the characters. I imagine the actual character models being of a certain quality has a pretty substantial effect too. And some of the character models in ME:A don't look too hot.
Jaguar Victory
Member
I appreciate this insight. Many moving parts to make a great game.
To this day, I'm quite impressed with TW3's implementation. It's always seemed natural, and for the most part, animations match tonally to what characters are saying, even the most inconsequential NPCs (although merchant greetings are hilariously stiff, but I find that to be charming in a world that is very negative towards Geralt).
Horizon is better than Andromeda, but it still looks really weird to me. It must be how some people can spot CG in movies a mile away while others just don't see it, even if you specifically point on where it is and why it looks unnatural.
Horizon is better than Andromeda, but it still looks really weird to me. It must be how some people can spot CG in movies a mile away while others just don't see it, even if you specifically point on where it is and why it looks unnatural.
CamHostage
Member
Good analysis, though I am a little put out that his ideal solution is more mocap than systematic technology. I mean, overall, it sounds great; more "real animation"! In practice, though, that adds a lot to the production (costly tech, application time, recording space increase needs, etc) and also changes the performance (actors wearing camera helmets do not act like actors projecting their whole being into a single microphone before them.) The simple fact that a voice actor can hold a script and look off it all day long while a mocap actor must memorize lines and deliver them straight on to camera (unless they have some kind of telestrator mount for mocap? but even that adds eye/muscle movements) is a night and day difference, and that's just over a piece of paper. VO is a honed skill, and performance-capture acting has made great strides but it will always be different and will always depend on the situation if it's the best solution.
So I keep hoping that technology and procedural adjustments (the randomized gestures in Witcher 3 sounds genius) and blending of animation techniques in a scene will help animators get the job done easier and better. Sounds like the pro here doesn't trust it to get there, which is unfortunate. On the other hand, if he believes mocap technology will continue to get better and easier to use, that's a win in that direction. You'll never get better than longingly handled, hand-adjusted, fully managed animation, but we're going to need tech on one side or the other in order to cope with the demands and costs of modern games.
So I keep hoping that technology and procedural adjustments (the randomized gestures in Witcher 3 sounds genius) and blending of animation techniques in a scene will help animators get the job done easier and better. Sounds like the pro here doesn't trust it to get there, which is unfortunate. On the other hand, if he believes mocap technology will continue to get better and easier to use, that's a win in that direction. You'll never get better than longingly handled, hand-adjusted, fully managed animation, but we're going to need tech on one side or the other in order to cope with the demands and costs of modern games.
SirPinkyNose
Member
This guy needs to discover twitlonger.