Half-Life 2: Enhancement Mod (V5) - Games

I still have not seen many games that surpass the Source Engine's facial animations. 80% of the games out there now don't have very good facial animation, or even good lipsynch. Mass Effect 1-3, Batman Arkham, and Crysis 1-2 are the more popular games that don't have good lipsynch or facial animation (granted Crysis does have pretty good facial animation, it's just the lipsynch is way off).

Speaking of lip synch/animation, Tomb Raider has the WORST facial animation I've seen in a modern game. Seriously, it's fucking horrible.

[QUOTE=SpotEnemyBoat;40949187]Speaking of lip synch/animation, Tomb Raider has the WORST facial animation I've seen in a modern game. Seriously, it's fucking horrible.[/QUOTE] Oooh, forgot about that one. I wonder what game has the best facial animation? I kinda feel that it's L.A. Noire, even though the body animations don't match up too well with the faces, and the texture quality is bad.

LA Noire's lipsyncing is very poorly built for how good it looks. The trick Team Bondi did is that only one face can be animated at a time, and this gets really evident after awhile.

[QUOTE=Fat-Corgi-Guy;40949155]I still have not seen many games that surpass the Source Engine's facial animations.[/QUOTE] I just re-watched the Source 1 reveal from 2003, and was again impressed by the Gman's facial capabilities... Valve did the right thing by creating a system of facial animation based on the science of facial psychology developed by Drs. Eckman and co. You can even take a mo-cap of an actor into the facial animation system, and tweak the mo-cap animation to accentuate specific facial movements, getting the best of both worlds. The reason most games don't have good facial animiation is because the studios seem to re-invent the wheel every game, instead of taking the time to build a foundational system based on the applicable science... and this is not a problem specific to just facial animation... it seems to be a problem across many aspects of modern game development.

[QUOTE=Blooper Reel;40949717]LA Noire's lipsyncing is very poorly built for how good it looks. The trick Team Bondi did is that only one face can be animated at a time, and this gets really evident after awhile.[/QUOTE] they cant even be called facial animation in a way. They are just recordings of peoples faces projected onto models.

[QUOTE=Hogie bear;40949976]they cant even be called facial animation in a way. They are just recordings of peoples faces projected onto models.[/QUOTE] Yeah, it's basically mocap animations pasted onto models... not really impressive imho.

[QUOTE=Lev;40950121]Yeah, it's basically mocap animations pasted onto models... not really impressive imho.[/QUOTE] Who cares if it's not impressive? It looks goddamn good and is easier than animating.

[QUOTE=I am Error;40950234]Who cares if it's not impressive? It looks goddamn good and is easier than animating.[/QUOTE] What doesn't look good can't impress. And it doesn't look good to me.

I feel like something else HL2 did really well were textures on characters. Maybe they weren't the highest quality textures, but the way the texture artists made character textures, they did a really good job of making them look like how those materials would look in real life, while a lot of games (even now) seem to have textures that just makes you realize even more you are looking at a 3D model.

[img]http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/3959/mrmetrocop.jpg[/img] Praise the modeling gods, for today Mr Metrocop is UVed.

[QUOTE=Lev;40949964]I just re-watched the Source 1 reveal from 2003, and was again impressed by the Gman's facial capabilities... Valve did the right thing by creating a system of facial animation based on the science of facial psychology developed by Drs. Eckman and co. You can even take a mo-cap of an actor into the facial animation system, and tweak the mo-cap animation to accentuate specific facial movements, getting the best of both worlds. The reason most games don't have good facial animiation is because the studios seem to re-invent the wheel every game, instead of taking the time to build a foundational system based on the applicable science... and this is not a problem specific to just facial animation... it seems to be a problem across many aspects of modern game development.[/QUOTE] It isn't an engine problem, it's a laziness problem. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx_pWZkeO20[/media] Ratchet and clank was released a good 2 years before HL2, and the facial animations were done without any special technology. You would think that animation teams the full size of the team that worked on R&C1 would put a little more effort into their work.

[QUOTE=Snood_1990;40950420][Metrocop here] Praise the modeling gods, for today Mr Metrocop is UVed.[/QUOTE] ..Neat! Also, what about bodygroups with Barney and the mask itself? (Some say that a few of the Combine were former Black Mesa security guards. I'm not saying it's true, just a rumor!) I've also been thinking about E3, where Barney asks Gordon a question before they start opening fire. [I]-Remember when we thought Black Mesa was as bad as it could get?[/I]

[QUOTE=BenjaminTennison;40950659]..Neat! Also, what about bodygroups with Barney and the mask itself? (Some say that a few of the Combine were former Black Mesa security guards. I'm not saying it's true, just a rumor!) I've also been thinking about E3, where Barney asks Gordon a question before they start opening fire. [I]-Remember when we thought Black Mesa was as bad as it could get?[/I][/QUOTE] Will be a separate Barney model.

[QUOTE=Smasher 006;40950628]It isn't an engine problem, it's a laziness problem. Ratchet and clank was released a good 2 years before HL2, and the facial animations were done without any special technology. You would think that animation teams the full size of the team that worked on R&C1 would put a little more effort into their work.[/QUOTE] Those characters are very stylized, though. It's relatively easy to get away without complicated facial animations on cartoonish characters because they don't look human enough to run into uncanny valley. With realistic human proportions things have to look pretty much exactly right or they look weird.

[QUOTE=Smasher 006;40950628]It isn't an engine problem, it's a laziness problem.[/QUOTE] Yep, great example of what I was saying... developers not taking the time to build iteratively... instead they build just for one game, and re-build for each new game instead of taking an iterative approach with an eye towards future use. This is also a problem of the studios, where a lot of studios don't seek to create an envirtonment to help retain employees for the long term, so the employees don't feel comfortable "putting down roots" so to speak - it can be difficult to build iteratively when you burn through employees like some studios do. [QUOTE=Tweevle;40951025]Those characters are very stylized, though. It's relatively easy to get away without complicated facial animations on cartoonish characters because they don't look human enough to run into uncanny valley. With realistic human proportions things have to look pretty much exactly right or they look weird.[/QUOTE] Thanks, that's an important aspect of this.

[QUOTE=Lev;40951027]Yep, great example of what I was saying... developers not taking the time to build iteratively... instead they build just for one game, and re-build for each new game instead of taking an iterative approach with an eye towards future use. This is also a problem of the studios, where a lot of studios don't seek to create an envirtonment to help retain employees for the long term, so the employees don't feel comfortable "putting down roots" so to speak - it can be difficult to build iteratively when you burn through employees like some studios do. [/QUOTE] The issue with R&C 1-3, was that it had to be animated by hand: and much of Source does as-well, but it's a much easier system that can auto-detect the speech and extract the phonemes automatically, the rest is just the facial (and common body animations) work.

[QUOTE=Fat-Corgi-Guy;40949225]Oooh, forgot about that one. I wonder what game has the best facial animation? I kinda feel that it's L.A. Noire, even though the body animations don't match up too well with the faces, and the texture quality is bad.[/QUOTE] Anything Naughty Dog has done this generation. Halo 4, though there were some audio issues and shit got unsynced frequently. Still, those still use pretty traditional systems and aren't as flexible as valve's solution.

the last of us has some kickass facial animations

I need [IMG]http://puu.sh/3btT4.png[/IMG] God bless your little soul.

[QUOTE=Juniez;40952647]the last of us has some kickass facial animations[/QUOTE] Agreed, the best thing about those are the faces from deceased ones. I actually get that small bit of freaked out feeling I get when I look at a real dead face. Anyways getting off topic here, I haven't been able to do any model work lately because of my study. The good thing is that i'll try to hop right back into my work as soon as im relieved of some of the stress.

[QUOTE=Snood_1990;40914970]Bugs[/QUOTE] Valve CrackPipe had a wack at it. But hopefully valve will fix all of this after they fix the orangebox update.

How do I actually download this? It looks amazing..

You wait for it to be released.

[QUOTE=xalener;40951381]Anything Naughty Dog has done this generation. Halo 4, though there were some audio issues and shit got unsynced frequently. Still, those still use pretty traditional systems and aren't as flexible as valve's solution.[/QUOTE] I'm gonna go ahead and add Max Payne 3 to that list. Playing through it again right now and... Fuck, I forgot how good it is.

Max Payne 3 was an amazing game, I don't even care that it departed from it's old style, it was great. It did [I]not[/I] get the recognition it deserved.

[QUOTE=Smasher 006;40950628]It isn't an engine problem, it's a laziness problem. [/QUOTE] Reminds me of Cod 4, the lip synch was really good when you were forced to look at something, but random lines in the middle of a level were HL1 puppet mouths

Max payne 3 was one of the greatest games this generation and the lip syncing and models were great which helped immensely

Nuh uh itz nat nouauir soits naht da reel mox pon gaem [highlight](User was banned for this post ("shitpost" - Orkel))[/highlight]

I'm curious, is there any way to stiffen the ragdolls a bit so they don't collapse so easily? I always felt whenever people died in HL2 they look like they suddenly lost their bones if you killed them with say, the pistol and they weren't moving.