Facial animations and hair concerns

I don't know the Uncharted series.
What would be worth pointing out for all its rights and wrongs is that Frostbite is at its heart an engine built for soldiers with crew cuts running around a battlefield.

If the price for larger more vertical worlds is that the faces and hair aren't quite up there at the top of the 'pretty' stakes, then so be it.

And Sara/Scott's faces have to be created out of the default CC engine, even if that is the default 'face one'.

This ^


I think the animations are not polished yet, it'll probably look better when the game it's released.

I also had a problem with the facial animation and lip syncing. It stood out because the game looks great besides that one thing.

I thought the hair looks ok for Bioware, that they even attempted to make it move is an improvement.

To be fair, there are constraints associated with having a customizable character. Imagine the mesh of the default character. A customized one will have the same exact vertexs as the default one, but placed differently. All the animation, including lip-sync is done with the default character (although the lip-sync is probably an automatic script), and transposed on the non-default one. Imagine non-default character has an even bigger mouth than default. When these vertexs are moved in the same percentage for a smile for default character and non-default character, you risk mesh inclusions in non-default character if the move is too pronounced. Basically it forces animators to make a poorer/more neutral face animation than what they could with a set character, because you could have some truly horrific results with a non-default character.

I think they can do a bit better than what we've seen here, just adding some blinks in that disarming scene, less lip stretch and just a bit of frowning would already reduce the feeling of uncanny valley tremendously, but I won't expect Pixar-level animation.

Besides, video games usually have poorer animation than movies altogether, unless they put a rather sizeable amount of ressources in it, and moccap isn't cheaper at all. What I've seen of it so far isn't worst than what you can see in other AAA games, hell, Geralt is a set protagonist and he's little more expressive than a door. They just justify this with Witcher yadayada.

I'd say 'will probably' since there's time for improvement. Not that I'd mind, as long as it's better then DAI.

Also, on the point of facial animation, I'd still take it with a grain of salt, but shinobi mention that works of Sara in terms of animation (don't know if Also hairs) is behind Scott. They chose to use Sara because they want to promote both genders and Scott was heavily featured on N7D.

Ultimately I'll be happy if the game comes out with DAIs level of facial animation and lipsynching, if it was bad it wasn't bad enough for me to notice. Sara's hair is bad but I wasn't expecting it to be good and, most importantly, I won't be playing the default so it's a moot point anyway. Bonus points if they fix the paralyzed emoting thing from DAI.

This reminds me of the "From the Ashes" trailer from DA:I. It's close to the same point in development (around 4 months to go) and it had some weird issues. The facial animation was really off, the details weren't very well refined and the overall look was clunky. The first gameplay trailer wasn't a whole lot better.

Folks tore that trailer a new one, picking apart every little detail. I mean every little inch of anything that might have looked flawed.  There is something almost childlike about Ryder's features but I'm not that worried.  They have time to refine it.  If that means the game is delayed for 6 weeks like DA:I was, I'm okay with it.  DA:I was due out in late September but got pushed back to November 8th because of some bad bugs that popped up as the game was almost done.  Same here. If I have to wait until April/early May for the game, I'm fine with it.

Devs do hang out here but they aren't "BioWare" nor "EA."  They work for them but that doesn't make the game teams apart of some sort of hive mind.  They are looking at feedback for sure and some still enjoying chatting with us on various subjects.  The ME team isn't going to magically decide to push back the game's release because some angry fans on youtube disliked an early trailer.  If they push it back it's because something broke.  I mean to the point where it would make the game unplayable in some way.

I thought the faces in DA:I were a little goofy at times, but otherwise very well done. The expression actually reached their eyes. I didn't feel like I was staring into an active face with dull blank eyes. That's creepy and I'm glad that animation has gotten better. Your Mileage May Vary, of course.

I'm very happy to see a normal walk animation for the ladies. That's one of those little things I despised that has been changed. It reminds me more of ME1 than ME3 or DA2. Seriously, ever tried to mimic Hawke's strut while running? It's rather uncomfortable. Thank you ME team for the change.

PS: Could you please pass that onto the DA team as well? I'd like to see a walk like that in future Dragon Age games.

It's because they want to show fans what they are working on. BioWare has taken a very tight-lipped approach regarding information about the game. Since the game is coming out in a few months it's time to show the work-in-progress.  For a long time all the fans had was a leak from reddit, the N7 trailer that had Command Shepard speaking and the "Ghost Riders in the Sky" trailer.  They've been starting to ramp up for the big announcement over the last couple of months.  Besides, this isn't an official advertisement for the game. It's a sneak peek to give fans something concrete to talk about.  Like characters, setting, ect.

Also I remember male shepard having some creepy facial expressions. I always did a custom version of him and fem shep

They might be trying to gauge how much corner cutting their fans will accept, so now is definitely the time to make your voice heard.

Trigger Warning: The Witcher 3

It wasn't perfect, but there was also nothing quite as bad as Ryder during that disarm scene. For a AAA game the animations for ME:A look substandard. To be fair however, the game isn't finished.

The facial animations do look weird. No need to get mad at op for pointing it out. The faces just look too stiff, and it makes their talking look unnatural.