40 réponses à ce sujet

[Terodil]

Is it just me or are the facial animations really off?

 

The thing is, I cannot put my finger on what exactly is off, it's just that whenever I see people trying to convey emotion with facial expressions, they (almost) always make me want to take a step back. These moments regularly break immersion for me. For example, when your character first sees the light of day and suddenly experiences the pain from the mark, her face looks more like a stretched halloween mask rather than an 'omgithurts' face (the corners of the mouth are pulled waaaaaay too far down, it's anatomically impossible).

 

I remember a few odd moments in Mass Effect where the the entire head mesh/texture caused trouble in animations, but never to such an immersion-breaking degree, so I think I'll point my finger at Frostbite.

[noxpanda]

Eh i thought most of the companions/advisors had great facial animations, i found myself quite often staring at all the small muscle animations so much i had to read the subtitles quick cos i hadn't listened to what had been said.

 

But i did think the inquisitors facial animations needed work, quite a few of the scenes i thought she looked too deadpan.

[Etragorn]

I'm sure things will get better as the programmers are more familiar dealing with this annoying engine they are being forced to use.

[xrayspex73]

I'm sure things will get better as the programmers are more familiar dealing with this annoying engine they are being forced to use.

 

I hope so. So far I am completely unimpressed with Frostbite 3. It is really a terrible engine if it cannot do ingame cutscenes at variable framerates without desyncing. Pretty much ALL other games/engines have no problems with this. For a game like Dragon Age, this is a showstopper in my opinion. EA can shovel this engine on their FPS games, but for an RPG? No.

[Terodil]

Eh i thought most of the companions/advisors had great facial animations, i found myself quite often staring at all the small muscle animations so much i had to read the subtitles quick cos i hadn't listened to what had been said.

 

But i did think the inquisitors facial animations needed work, quite a few of the scenes i thought she looked too deadpan.

 

I don't mind deadpan. Shepard was quite deadpan a lot of times and it was awesome, to me it was part of her character.

 

But I think you are right. The problem is mostly with the Inquisitor, NPCs have significantly less issues now that I think about it. I could imagine that the trouble is in finding a common model for facial expressions for all possible inquisitors. Which is probably not easy, given how different the heads can be (Qunari vs. elven...)

[Meepichi]

Some of the facial animations are really good, some are pretty awful, like when you're first being helped up by Cassandra after your hand pulses.  That and some others could use some re-working.

[ThreeF]

It could have been much better but I'm not sure it's the engine's problem. Inquisitor's facial animations are dynamic (as in prerecodred and then run with a script), but I kind of think that the expression ones are done by an animator and were not prerecorded because they are cartoony.

 

Companions and other main characters have their animation adjusted to suit each character, especially for cut scenes, they basically got more attention than the PC, partially because the have fixed look, same could not be done with PC.

[tmp7704]

If I remember right, the animators were quite swamped with the amount of stuff they had to produce for DAI. As such, they're forced to rely more on the automated animations for lip sync and such, more than they'd use it with the previous games (DA/DA2)

So the engine isn't to blame here, really. It's simply the scope of the game, which includes the races/gender combinations.

[Xhaiden]

The intial scenes before Haven are pretty much the worst in the game for the Inquisitor. I'm guessing they were made early in development before they had really learned their way around the engine.

[Thane4Ever]

One thing I noticed recently is that sometimes the NPC's will scrunch up their face or look angry for a second when the line isn't really called for it.  Alistair and Cullen particularly.  And yes the early scenes during and right after your interrogation are kind of wonky.

 

I think we can all agree that the worst animation might be when your Inquisitor "smiles" at Cullen during their first convo in Haven. Good lord, I'm surprised he didn't run away like he did during DA:O if your mage flirts with him.

[sandalisthemaker]

Some of the facial animations are really good, some are pretty awful, like when you're first being helped up by Cassandra after your hand pulses.  That and some others could use some re-working.

 

Yes, that god-awful expression in that scene. *Shivers*

 

A lot of the time, characters tend to scrunch up their noses when they are talking in a serious manner. It's a bit much at times.  Hawke for example has this permanent "I smell something really awful" expression whenever he was talking.

[b10d1v]

I don't think it is a frostbite issue, but more of an animation team error.  Sera often has the distorted facial expressions of her comic book depiction, instead of a toned down NPC "life-like" depiction.

[Dai Grepher]

The animations on some characters are a bit off. My male human is fine, and Cass is fine, but I have seen videos of the human female. The one with her and Cullen playing whatever game that is, her "win" face is just... emotionless and stiff. My male human gave a subtle smirk that was noticeable and appropriate. I wonder why it was different for the female.

 

EDIT: Actually, I do remember right after Haven when you wake up in the camp, the male human's eyes roll back in his head while talking to Mother Giselle. It's like he it trying to bow his head and look up at her, but he looks sort of like The Undertaker with just the whites of his eyes showing.

[hong]

The first problem is that people only smile (and laugh) with their mouths, not their eyes, so it looks fake. The second problem is that the sadness expression is too exaggerated. It looks like they're about to burst into tears, which doesn't work for an expression that's usually onscreen for just a couple of seconds. The transition is just too abrupt.

[Mes]

I think we can all agree that the worst animation might be when your Inquisitor "smiles" at Cullen during their first convo in Haven. Good lord, I'm surprised he didn't run away like he did during DA:O if your mage flirts with him.

 

Ohhhh yes. That one really... stands out. 

 

Shepard would be proud!

[Winged Silver]

For the most part, I thought they did an alright job. Not amazing, mind you, but decent. However, there is this one cutscene where you're talking to Dorian in Skyhold that always strikes me as particularly meh. Like, he gets angry, and laughs, but his eyes barely crinkle up or anything...tis very odd

[robertmarilyn]

A lot of scenes bother me where a character's eyes roll too far up and you will be seeing a lot of white under the iris. It happens to Cullen and Lelianna (I always forget how to spell her name) often. DRIVES ME NUTS!

[squidney2k1]

Yeah, the facial animations, mouth & lip movement, & lip syncing are pretty bland in this game.

 

Feels like a significant step backwards from Mass Effect 3, and I'm not sure if it's a problem with the new engine, or lack of talent....but it's just not that good.

 

Everyone looks like a Ninja Turtle from the 90's movies when they speak.

[C0uncil0rTev0s]

Remember dat face Varric has when you meet him the first time?
It was so much deep pain with disgust so I couldn't even recognize the dude I loved so much in DA2.

 

Overall facial animation quality is low, but, tbh, there aren't much games on the market that have better. I mean, wrong animations are better than none like in Skyrim, right?

[Thane4Ever]

Oh yeah, I know that Dorian scene you're talking about.  That was weird.  Also Blackwall has a very stoic face during romance scenes, even when he pleads with you and if you break up with him during judgement, but I guess that could be chalked up to his personality.  It really does seem like the faces are hit or miss. Overall I think Cullen has the best mo cap or whatever it's called.

[Mes]

Yeah overall I think they did a great job with Cullen. Nice subtleties here and there.

[Terodil]

Remember dat face Varric has when you meet him the first time?
It was so much deep pain with disgust so I couldn't even recognize the dude I loved so much in DA2.

 

Overall facial animation quality is low, but, tbh, there aren't much games on the market that have better. I mean, wrong animations are better than none like in Skyrim, right?

 

Oh god yes, since I just played through that scene again yesterday. But then I think that a lot of endearing characteristics got "lost in translation" from DA2 to DA:I (Varric and Cassandra, mostly).

 

Thing is, previous BW games (looking at you, ME3, but even previous installments) were good, except for the odd glitch here and there.

[C0uncil0rTev0s]

Oh god yes, since I just played through that scene again yesterday. But then I think that a lot of endearing characteristics got "lost in translation" from DA2 to DA:I (Varric and Cassandra, mostly).

 

Thing is, previous BW games (looking at you, ME3, but even previous installments) were good, except for the odd glitch here and there.

 

Totally agree.

 

In fact I'm fine with buying the very same game each time in different textures since KotOR. All I ask is not to make games with LOWER quality than they were before, you see?

 

Speaking of face animation i didn't really like that in Mass Effect games. Thing is that DA:I makes me doubt in choice between 'next to no facial animation' and 'weird face animation' evils. And that's an accomplishment.

[ThreeF]

I think we can all agree that the worst animation might be when your Inquisitor "smiles" at Cullen during their first convo in Haven. Good lord, I'm surprised he didn't run away like he did during DA:O if your mage flirts with him.

 

That smile would scare anyone. That whole stuttering he gives after IQ smiles? That's totally because of that smile

 

The first problem is that people only smile (and laugh) with their mouths, not their eyes, so it looks fake. The second problem is that the sadness expression is too exaggerated. It looks like they're about to burst into tears, which doesn't work for an expression that's usually onscreen for just a couple of seconds. The transition is just too abrupt.

 

Not really, I currently work on a project that revolves around expression and speech and there are many micro-expression going on during smiling, problem is either BW is using old software or they didn't recoded the emotions at all and an animator did them, or the in-between program is really bad at translating them on the 3d model.

[atlantico]

Is it just me or are the facial animations really off?

Oh they're off, way off sometimes. But it's not really a Frostbite issue, facial animations in Battlefield 4 are great. It's a Bioware issue.

 

(if I had to speculate, because they switched engines mid-development to Frostbite, they used their old assets in the new engine, even the facial expressions - which is why they are very similar to the facial animations of DA:O, i.e. pretty weird)