The problem with the facial animations seem to be the eyes.

the whole face has bad animations, eyebrows, mouth, lips, eyes,everything
the animations are robotic and separated from the rest of the face, not natural

I have to admit, the way they kept praising the new engine for ME titles, I expected a lot more realism than this. Not LA Noire level of realism but better than ME3. It's only by a tiny margin better than ME3.

I've posted this in the Animations thread already but I might as well again.  There also seems to be an issue with the turian eyelids;


i.imgur.com/ZckRCqG.png

There's parts of them missing

i.imgur.com/0OCUviQ.png

and they droop far too low when they blink. Like they're melting.

This is a bug that I'm hoping gets sorted out with the patch but I have a bad feeling the devs aren't even aware of it.

I tend to hate these effing topics because they're everywhere...however I might chime in properly this time.

It seems there are two types of facial animation being used in the game. In important scenes (emotional, impactful, etc) the facial animation was done by hand (or possibly some sort of motion capture) in order to make it much better than we've previously seen from Bioware. You can spot these scenes from a mile away because the whole face has so much more life in it.

The second type relies upon some sort of algorithm to predict how the mouth should move along with some minimal eye movement. Its pretty much the exact same stuff they used for the entire trilogy, albeit slightly better (not great still). You'll see that the majority of the time due to how much dialogue there is.

Its likely they didn't do it by hand for all of the conversations because of the sheer amount of dialogue...so an algorithm was the best alternative outside of the more important scenes. Unfortunately the algorithm doesn't appear to be that great. Still, if you got used to it in ME 1,2,3 and all the Dragon Age games, you'll get used to it in Andromeda.

Well thats easy. Like I said its mostly centred around the eyes. The lip sync actually isn't terrible but the eyes have no life in them. I can give you a great example but I wont be able to post the videos since they're both spoilers. Go watch PBs introduction scene as opposed to the conversation with Addison (?) the woman on the Nexus video IGN posted. You'll notice a stark difference between the facial animation because one of them was hand crafted and the other was based on an algorithm. The algorithm mostly takes into account the lip sync and the time between each blink whereas the hand crafted scene takes on a much more life like approach.

See, I'm not entirely sure that the eyes are specifically the problem. I'm not an expert, not do I have evidence or gifs or anything, just my humble opinion.

It seems to me that the problem is movement around the eyes. The brows don't move really when talking, the area above the mouth seems oddly static when there should be some movement. And the eye shape never really changes with expression. No squinting, no side-eye, etc. I could be wrong, that is just my impression.

I agree it is that general area of the face that is causing the most issues. Also pretty bad lip-syncing.

I don't really mind, just thought I'd try to voice my opinion.

I'll go even further. The problem with the facial expressions also comes from the way the eye sockets and eyeballs have been modelled.

I think it could be improved with a proper eye texture. What's rolling out is bland and cartoony.

I've been saying this for weeks now; Bioware's lighting isn't helping, either.

Whilst everyone was harping on about the facial animations... I too have been saying this for a long time as well. Its good to know others are finally seeing it too.

But as you said above, as ive said previously... Its not so much the facial animation itself, its the eyes. Its how dead and flat the eyes look. Cuz its the eyes which really draw you in and sell the character as being alive, sell the emotion trying to be conveyed etc. Make you feel like they have soul for lack of a better word. If the eyes look real and lively i think subpar facial animation can be excused somewhat. You certainly dont notice it as much, but when the eyes look as terribad as they do(that combined with a realistic graphics/art style)... well it just makes all the facial shortcomings all the more apparent. And for me personally it makes me feel like the characters arent real. As if there's nothing going on between their ears, its just a collection of polygons and 1 & 0s im interacting with not a real virtual person. In an allegedly story focused game with a lot of close ups that's a big deal. The face matters 10x more. I dont think one can just merely say that face animation doesnt matter, it really does in a game like this. Though having said at the sametime its not my main priority in so much that when it comes to Mass Effect things like side quests and world building, writing and atmosphere is where my main focus is. Though granted its the little details like a really well done realistically animated face, the little details can add so much to game. You might not notice, but your brain does.

Yeah so far every character has a sorta "Dead Eye'd Nam' Vet" thing goin on.

Not the eyes but exploding mouths is my concern and only humans as far as I can tell have this issue. Other species looking pretty good with their facial animations (trilogy-like). I hope there will a big patch to get all these fixed including the silly bugs like PeeBee holding her gun in reverse.