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[Plywood]

You should become an animator, since its obviously so easy :lol

Is this a "Because you've never done it, you can't criticize it" comment?

 

[C4Lukins]

Well lets look at Beowulf which came out a couple of years ago. It was a film with a 100 million plus budget that its main draw was making animated faces look real, and it failed at that. Just this year Avatar was probably the first film to get it right, and that is still debatable. So yeah it is just a stupid fucking argument. It is funny that you mention Heavy Rain which probably did it better then any other game, and the most distracting thing about that game is its facial animation.

It is not that they are not trying, it is that it is just incredibly difficult.

 

[XiaNaphryz]

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

Mocap doesn't necessarily make it any easier. Arguably, it can make a pipeline even harder depending on the amount of data that needs to be cleaned up afterwards, making things harder to iterate upon or complicating a pipeline making less efficient. Also, see my post above that already mentioned visual effects houses and how it's already challenging enough for them, and they have a lot more resources to use than for games in terms of rendering capacity.

 

[BananaBomb]

heavenly sword! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQnKWknRpgk

most AAA japanese games do it pretty well too.

GTA4 and Oblivion have been the most horrific so far this gen.

That girl reminds me of gollum.

 

[∀ Narayan]

The sheer volume of dialog in Bioware games allows me to be pretty lenient on their animation systems.

Holy Hell. Is that an actual glitch? :lol

 

[Rad-]

Because in most cases people won't even notice the difference. I know I thought ME had great facial animation until Gaf told me otherwise. :lol

So yeah. Your average gamer won't even notice things like these so why waste resources? Unless of course, they're totally robotic or something.

 

[Snuggles]

Holy Hell. Is that an actual glitch?

Supposedly it is. It looks like some crazy sanity effect from Eternal Darkness.

By the way, Sackboy from LBP probably has the best facial animation ever. Seriously, the crying face, the mad face, the "I'm a fuckin pimp" face, it's all so believable.

 

[Man]

Best facial animation in a game where they used a tool for the emotional spectrum: Heavy Rain

Best facial animation done 'by hand': Heavenly Sword followed by Uncharted 2

 

[hxa155]

Rockstar and Naughty Dog have done wonders with facial animations this gen in their games.

not in multiplayer :lol

 

[MisterHero]

Is this a "Because you've never done it, you can't criticize it" comment?

It's probably not even up to animators, and a more practical reason why facial animation isn't "complete" is just because it's low-priority and effort might be used more effectively elsewhere. Sure one or two games might revolve around LOOKING AT FACES FOR WHOLE MINUTES AT A TIME but it's just not needed.

I'd even argue that many games that focus on storytelling and cutscenes have more problems to think about than just how well the cutscenes are presented.

 

[Papercuts]

Holy Hell. Is that an actual glitch? :lol

Yup.

 

[ZephyrFate]

FFXIII has insanely detailed facial animation.

 

[XiaNaphryz]

Best facial animation in a game where they used a tool for the emotional spectrum: Heavy Rain

In the end, I'm sure the facial animation in that game was still created in the same way as most other games. Sure, it may be triggered differently, but in terms of providing the assets for it the art team still worked on the look of the facial animation in all its various outcomes. So this isn't a necessarily accurate split off comparison.

Is this a "Because you've never done it, you can't criticize it" comment?

You could have the best animators in the world on your staff, but if your tech doesn't support it you're not going to see it.

 

[Flying_Phoenix]

It's part of the reason why the Half-Life 2 series holds up graphically even today IMO.

 

[Salsa]

 

[aaaaaaaaaaaa7654]

HL2's facial animations are still the best around

I believe a similar tech is being used in LA Noire

 

[Poyunch]

 

[Unknown One]

Wow :lol :lol :lol

 

[Shaka]

Is this a "Because you've never done it, you can't criticize it" comment?

I don't think so. Facial Animation is pretty time consuming, not to mention tough. They choose not to concentrate on it as it is not integral to the gameplay.

Spoiler

I fucking hate animating

 

[GCX]

That girl reminds me of gollum.

Andy Serkis helped with the motion capture stuff in Heavenly Sword so maybe that's why.

 

[Plywood]

It's probably not even up to animators, and a more practical reason why facial animation isn't "complete" is just because it's low-priority and effort might be used more effectively elsewhere. Sure one or two games might revolve around LOOKING AT FACES FOR WHOLE MINUTES AT A TIME but it's just not needed.

I'd even argue that many games that focus on storytelling and cutscenes have more problems to think about than just how well the cutscenes are presented.

In the end, I'm sure the facial animation in that game was still created in the same way as most other games. Sure, it may be triggered differently, but in terms of providing the assets for it the art team still worked on the look of the facial animation in all its various outcomes. So this isn't a necessarily accurate split off comparison.


You could have the best animators in the world on your staff, but if your tech doesn't support it you're not going to see it.

I don't think so. Facial Animation is pretty time consuming, not to mention tough. They choose not to concentrate on it as it is not integral to the gameplay.

Spoiler

I fucking hate animating

Ah okay, makes sense. If you don't mind me asking, what have you worked on?

 

[ULTROS!]

 

[Shaka]

Ah okay, makes sense. If you don't mind me asking, what have you worked on?

Avatar O_O

Spoiler

I'm actually a student. Currently doing a course at the AIE; The Advanced Diploma in 3D Animation and Design.

 

[Azure Phoenix]

Couldn't find one without the text, but eh, you get the point.

 

[Plywood]

Avatar O_O

Spoiler

I'm actually a student. Currently doing a course at the AIE; The Advanced Diploma in 3D Animation and Design.

First I thought, Avatar: The Last Airbender videogame, then I thought cartoon(no idea why), then I thought James Cameron's Avatar. Then I read your spoiler. Anyway, good luck with your course.

 

[eso76]

it's not that they ignore it, it's just very hard to do.
Proper facial animation requires a lot more 'bones' (or moving parts) than the entire rest of the body to be convincing.
Most older CG movies (or videogames CG cutscenes) didn't get it right either, think FF or RE movies for example.

Not only that, in addition to being technically demanding, it would also require real actors doing expensive mo-cap sessions for every cutscene

Still, i'd say if you look at things in perspective we've come a long long way, if you consider MGS 1 characters had NO facial expression, no eyes and no mouth.
Speaking of realtime CG the absolute best i've seen is RE5. Lip sync was first introduced by HL2 iirc, but in RE5 you can actully read characters lips.

 

[GrotesqueBeauty]

 

[Majora]

Not trying to downplay how good the faces look on the LBP and Wind Waker stuff posted above, but the more abstract you get and less 'realistic' you go with the art style, the less likely you are to get a weird uncanny valley effect. Link in WW looks great, but in no way, shape or form are Nintendo trying to properly simulate the way a real persons face looks like. Animating a realistic looking persons face is hard work. Even Pixar tend to go for a more stylised look to their humans than go for all out realism. While stuff like Heavy Rain makes a decent fist of things there are still many times when characters expressions just don't ring true and it's jarring. Half-Life 2 was good but, again, they've gone for a stylised look to their characters.

 

[Amalthea]

Even the enemies in-game facial emotions in RE 4 and 5 beat most main protagonist's facial animations during cut-scenes in westerm high profile games! :lol

 

[zoukka]

Humans are the most difficult thing to animate. And more specifically the facial animation. So OP ask yourself:

Why is the hardest thing ever to animate... well hard to animate?

 

[R0nn]

Why is Uncharted 2 hardly mentioned in this thread? It has better facial animation than Heavy Rain and HL2 imo. HL2 is still very good, but I don't think it has to do with really complex animation or anything. It's just that for some reason, the characters look really natural.

 

[Unknown One]

Kratos is the most convincing angry videogame character to me. Just look at him.

 

[Shiggy]

I think facial animations are one of the things that Rare gets completely right.

Starfox Adventures (Fox-only though):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N9ygI9rilQ&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S36ftX9f-sw&feature=related

And the great shopkeeper
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMHOWLiFtt4 (sorry for quality)

 

[deleted]

I was really disappointed with Brick in Borderlands. First Scene where all characters are introduced it is obvious that his face doesn´t move. His eyes just have a blank stare...

In Team Fortress 2 its perfectly done on the other hand...

 

[Amalthea]

 

[DieNgamers]

Conker's Bad Fur Day was my first game that impressed me with facial animations.

Conker looked much better in the N64 game than the Xbox version, not counting the fur and added polygons, of course.

 

[HK-47]

Well lets look at Beowulf which came out a couple of years ago. It was a film with a 100 million plus budget that its main draw was making animated faces look real, and it failed at that. Just this year Avatar was probably the first film to get it right, and that is still debatable. So yeah it is just a stupid fucking argument. It is funny that you mention Heavy Rain which probably did it better then any other game, and the most distracting thing about that game is its facial animation.

It is not that they are not trying, it is that it is just incredibly difficult.

No, no it didnt.

 

[wenis]

because sometimes "good enough" really is "good enough".

 

[NinjaBoiX]

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.

THIS. Easily the most convincing depiction of emotions I have ever seen in a game. One scene in particular, where Bohan has just stabbed "(I forgot how to spoiler text!)" on the floor, (if you've played the game, you know who I mean). Just before he turns to walk away he gives a dismissive sniff and tweak of his nose, with the most contemptuous expression on his face. Just brilliant cut-scenes, highlight of the game for me. Kai is the bomb!

P.S. Can someone remind me how to spoiler text please?

 

[orioto]

They want to do everything with polys those days and it's like animated a muppet with 3 fingers...

I honestly thought FFXII had better "acting" than FFXIII, cause wel, faces are just perfectly painted. In FFXIII, they all play like Steven Seagal.

By the way, what about the mocap technology used in Benny Button and Avatar ? Was it used in videogames yet ? I guess not... We will see progress when it becomes affordable.

 

[CozMick]

Uncharted 2 and mainly Kratos from GoW3 have amazing facial animations, in fact i'd say they've set the bar for future games.

Half Life 2 did well but it holds nothing to these games.

 

[HK-47]

.

 

[Q8D3vil]

heavenly sword and heavy rain developers spent most of their time doing motion capture and neglected the actual gameplay :lol

although there is some exceptions like HL and MGS

 

[strem]

I hope the folks at Bethesda reads this thread. I can't even play their games because that shit is so bad

 

[abstract alien]

Yep, Conker was the first to wow me and is still really great to this day.

 

[daxter01]

not every company has naughty dog and valve quality animators thats why some guy at b3d wrote this ,its very informative

Originally Posted by Laa-Yosh View Post
Blaming the actors is b******, sorry.

Facial animation is an extremely complex issue, especially in games where massive amounts are required, compared to even a full CGI movie. There are basically two possible approaches to solve this problem:

Use straight motion capture for all the facial animation. This requires processing a massive amount of mocap data - cleaning, tweaking, reworking etc. As far as I know both GTA4 and Heavy Rain took this approach, and probably Assassin's Creed 2 as well; what's more interesting is that the outsourcing company involved has been Image Metrics in all these cases.
So the biggest factor is probably the general budget of the cleanup work, which had an obvious effect on the quality. We all know GTA4's budget was huge compared to the other two games. Although it's also worth noting that the general quality of the facial rig that IM receives from their clients is also a factor here.

The other approach is a procedural one, where you build a set of gestures and drive them by adding timed keys to the animation or voice in the game. For example Mass Effect does this; they do automatic lip sync to the voice file and the designers add gestures (that aren't only facial animations, but full body poses, short movements etc). There's a specialized off the shelf software for this that I've seen recently called FaceFX.
This approach can also use mocap data for the facial gestures and expressions, but these are very basic elements that are combined during runtime for the full animation.

So, all in all, I'd say that the issues with Heavy Rain are probably a result of combining less then perfect character rigging with mass produced facial animation data.


Also note that GOW3 has a lot less facial animation, being mostly an action game, so they had less work to do as well, and in turn more time to polish what they had. Although Uncharted 2, another game with high quality facial animation, has a lot of cinematics too, but I guess ND was able to fit the necessary work into their schedule.

 

[Chris Murphy]

Supposedly it is. It looks like some crazy sanity effect from Eternal Darkness.

By the way, Sackboy from LBP probably has the best facial animation ever. Seriously, the crying face, the mad face, the "I'm a fuckin pimp" face, it's all so believable.

I've never had a PS3 but the sackboy animations have always amazed me.

 

[Articate]

Feel free to look up "uncanny valley", guys!

Pretty much: "Things that look very human but not really suddenly makes you not feel empathy for it. Things that don't look human at all, you'll feel empathy like it was another human".

This is why Sackboy, Toy Story, Monster Inc etc etc are very relatable, whereas very realistic stuff that's just that last bit away will make you feel it's completely unrelatable.

 

[wormstrangler]

With the source engine, lip synching just...happens. You can feed it (the 'model') any dialogue and it just lip sychs perfectly. Do other games do this?

It definitelie should be a requirment in all character driven games.

Someone brought up Mafia II. Mafia 1...the eyes. They're all dead.

DEAD!

 

[i hate bees]

It's hard work, time consuming and the high res meshes with enough detail to allow realistic deformation are pretty expensive given the lack of memory on consoles.

Spending the time go get from reasonable to good/great facial animation will give huge diminishing returns and it's not really a feature that'll drive sales.