@JBeckman I doubt there is any proper game development at Valve beyond patching the existing roster and making DLC content.
While I think there are good things about the engine, it had many challenges that were "solved" by hardware, such as stuttering, and it never did look very impressive. Yes, it had Havok in there, but overall, HL2 looked dated even when released, when compared to, say, Doom 3 or Unreal Tournament 2003 / 2004. Over the years, Valve has improved it somewhat, but a lot of the issues just sorted themselves out by better hardware, which is not a proper solution. (Like Crysis 1 running somewhat OK on modern-day hardware despite running on an awfully unoptimized engine.)
I think what they have done is 1) capture the head of the actor, so this is the base mesh 2) capture the facial animations and project them over the mesh.
If the animation is projected onto the face in the wrong way it will look terrible, so that's what happens in some situatons, most likely. I think the projection is actually 3D too, that's why it can even capture e.g a tongue, but this 3D is somewhat simplifed and limited.
(i guess DCB saw some photage of the head capturing, this is when actors wears stuff on their face, like a grid)
Yeah, it looks like somewhere in that region. I don't think the projection is complete 3D, or at least the system does not use this fact. When acting projection takes over idle, cinematography becomes very static all of a sudden. I think that's on purpose to hide the fact that the projection is static.
I have to say, LA Noire technology has not aged well at all. Comparing to modern motion capture facial animations, I don't really see any advantage to that ultra-expensive and odd-looking technology they developed.
i guess DCB saw some photage of the head capturing, this is when actors wears stuff on their face, like a grid
It was more a reference to the actors saying how they were required to emote and talk whilst keeping their head absolutely rigid/stationary than any actual physical strapping in.
I have to say, LA Noire technology has not aged well at all. Comparing to modern motion capture facial animations, I don't really see any advantage to that ultra-expensive and odd-looking technology they developed.
I think it surpases the hand animated ones by far, this since it captures even the tiniest and most subtle things, someone gulps at the exact right moment etc. (speech is captured along with the animation, this is what makes it very realistic, like actual acting).
Hand made facial animation will never look like actors in an actual movie for several reasons. Hell, even real actors can look fake if they can't act.. we humans are experts of noticing this.
Not saying that L.A Noire is perfect all the time, but you've got to be blind if you can't see it surpases hand made animations, they're not even close to realistic, it's not close to something we could call acting.
And how is LA Noire better in that regard? Setting aside the engine bugs, most of the acting is over-reacting over-acting. "Oh, my character is ambiguous so I need to do this prolonged smirk to show my actual intention so that the idiots playing see it after 10 seconds of staring at my face and dialogue selection." Fuck subtlety! I guess this is more to do with direction than the engine itself, but since all we got is one game with a buggy engine and over-acting actors, it's really not that good at all. Their accomplishment can be seen as impressive, but that's from pure nerdy way, and I do. But it's highly impractical.
Compare to a much simpler motion capture that culminates in a much better result:
Above looks terrible, the eye and mouth movements are all wrong, you see it immediately how it's not an actual person doing these expressions. The faces are totally dead, missing the subtle things completely, what in the end makes it look human and not robotic.
I can agree that not all actors in L.A Noire are great (or the direction, rather), and that the acting is overdone ("because dumb gamers!")
When we have games that gets an Oscar for best acting i'm satisfied and i can probably begin to accept dialogue heavy games or games who uses a lot of close ups of characters talking. Real acting just cant be done with hand drawn animations, it can be made to look like animated movies though, i'm fine with that, but that needs a change in the direction of the graphics as a whole.
And does anyone remember this shit? I think it was from Warfighter or something
Yeah, Medal of Honor: Warfighter.
How about this Heavy Rain prototype?
Thank God, it wasn't this bad in the final game.
what?
That Heavy rain prototype is and WAS amazing
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No one wondered why no (almost) computer animated movies ever uses realistic looking characters..? It's because it's terrible taste, and these people get that.
When the brain sees a super realistic character model but with fake facial animations you will begin to analyze it, "does this look real?". If its a cartoony character you're in a "this is not meant to look realistic and i accept that"-state from the start, you don't try to analyze it all the time. Overall i think computer game devs should take more cues from animated movies, these people know what they are doing, they know how to work with these limits.
you see it immediately how it's not an actual person doing these expressions
What gave it away? Was it the 3D rendered graphics?
The net result is more impressive to me than LA Noire. Had it had many iterations of both technology and direction, it might have proven more precise. As it is on its single outing, it is not a good technology.
Did someone go back and upload a shittier version of this onto youtube? In my memory it was absolutely perfect But it looks very very rough and the proportions look really strange... especially in the beginning! But towards the end it's quite good, but only because the lighting gets better!
The Tomb Raider vid looks absolutely stunning But apart from the overacting and the bad rendering engine, the animations in LA Noire look much more life like.
you see it immediately how it's not an actual person doing these expressions
What gave it away? Was it the 3D rendered graphics?
What gave it away is the animation itself, it's not life-like. To animate a human face is probably the most difficult thing there is to animate, due to the many subtle things that goes on. Not just that, but things like pace of the movements needs to be right too. If it's animated too fast it will look like something that belongs to a small animal instead (their responses are super fast - look at small birds when they move their eyes or head, super quick and "robotic"). I often get that feeling with hand animated faces.
Usually I am very sensitive to bad animations, and this is a game that does not tingle my sensitivity. LA Noire does. There is something absolutely worse there than in other motion captured games.
Also, I don't know why you have the impression that Tomb Raider is hand-animated. It's all motion capture.
Did someone go back and upload a shittier version of this onto youtube? In my memory it was absolutely perfect But it looks very very rough and the proportions look really strange... especially in the beginning! But towards the end it's quite good, but only because the lighting gets better!.
The way it was acted out was absolutely great, but if you look at the lip movement, it was completely awkward and this is where it becomes hard to take it seriously. I remember watching it back then and was amazed by the promise of the tech (I mean those tears at the end, WOW!), but you can't ignore the uncanny valley effect which takes away an amount of realism which can be depicted. So I'm not debunking the whole intensity of that video, but character's weird facial movement while talking.
One of my most vivid gaming memories involves being blown away by Source's facial animations, because it was the first exact moment when the big technical jump happened. There were actually already some remarkable examples coming from the PS2 era like Silent Hill 3 (the models and faces were amazing for that time, 2003), but nothing felt natural and genuine like HL2 and especially Vampire Bloodlines did. Encountering Smiling Jack for the first time felt so damn good, we were used to talking to KOTOR/NWN2/Deus Exish robotrons only moving the mouth like fishes, and finally we had life like characters reacting properly to emotions and responses. It's still impressive and not fake at all now, after all these years, also thanks to the solid voice acting which is vital when it comes to the subject.
LA Noire was another eureka moment, and although the execution itself definitely felt like cheating so to speak, I immensely appreciated the results achieved there. All the modern positive examples can be impressive as well, and there are many already mentioned but nothing has managed to really mind-blow me in recent times. Either because of the off-putting acting despite the good technology (Quantum Break, Tomb Raider, Far Cry 3/4) - but this is a very personal matter than isn't very technical, or because of the aforementioned stagnating efforts put into the entire aspect, with TW3 being the exception.
Haha exactly! One can obviously see the technical limitations but it's aged pretty damn well (moreso if compared to recent triple-A examples of deadpan-ism like Human Revolution/ Mankind Divided, DA Inquisition, not to mention the Gamebryo-powered games). The voice acting truly does a huge job as well when it comes to boosting the immersion factor, otherwise the efforts would be vain.
No problem with lightning afaik, i watched a few videos, shadows comes off correctly on the faces. It's 3D meshes and not a 2D video so it should not be a problem.
But it's probably not a good option due to cost, i'm just saying there's nothing that really compares to it which is a bit disappointing.. i'd love to see real acting in games, not just animations like a cartoon, especially for games that relies a lot on conversation and close ups of characters talking.
I think the Vampire one above is done in good taste, characters arent hyper realistic to the degree that it puts you off seeing its face animated in a perhaps not super realistic way. I think Rockstar nails that too, ME is in the exact opposite end (partially very realistic, but so many things that are off).
Uncharted is not fair. it's all prerendered cutscenes
3080 | ps5 pro
Sin317-"im 31 years old and still surprised at how much shit comes out of my ass actually ..."
SteamDRM-"Call of Duty is the symbol of the true perfection in every aspect. Call of Duty games are like Mozart's/Beethoven's symphonies"
deadpoetic-"are you new to the cyberspace?"
Sin317-"im 31 years old and still surprised at how much shit comes out of my ass actually ..."
SteamDRM-"Call of Duty is the symbol of the true perfection in every aspect. Call of Duty games are like Mozart's/Beethoven's symphonies"
deadpoetic-"are you new to the cyberspace?"
I edited some facial animations in one older game. Supporting characters only. The interesting point was the coders prepared utility that generated mouth movement based on each spoken line and I did the rest of facial expressions. It worked pretty good actually. The main characters and cutscenes were done by more gifted guys:))
Regarding the technology - I think performance capture is almost only way to go in the future. Even if you see animated movies they usually use performance capture. Handmade animation can be great for highly stylized pieces.
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But it looks very very rough and the proportions look really strange... especially in the beginning! But towards the end it's quite good, but only because the lighting gets better!
But apart from the overacting and the bad rendering engine, the animations in LA Noire look much more life like.
It's still impressive and not fake at all now, after all these years, also thanks to the solid voice acting which is vital when it comes to the subject.
