Facial expressions in Witcher 3

[Daywalker30]

Facial expressions in Witcher 3

Something that I noticed over the last few screenshots and gameplay footage is the improved facial expressions, which look amazing.
I dunno about body behaviour in dialogues, but these two elements always bugged me in Games which felt quite obvious video-gamey and not real (immersive).
Some games did it good and some not, but not one Game (as far as I know) could do subtle facial expressions except for the Witcher 3.

I mean look at the screenshot below (see attachment).

Spoiler

Amazing work CDPR :cheers:

 

[JackieEstacado]

Facial expressions in TW3 are not at the state of art, but they are more than convincing and good enough for their purposes.

 

[damascus57]

I swear Geralt looks deeply hurt that he got rejected by the cool kid's table at Vizima High school.

 

[wichat]

Usually, a good an immersive facial expression is not quickly noticed by the player because, if it well done, your brains can reconigze it as a "normal" expression. We use notice bad facial expressions when they look plastifyed, robotic or cartoonish because they seems unnatural.

 

[sidspyker]

It's some of the best I've seen really, it feels like a real conversation and not dramatized like say L.A. Noire which was obviously intended to be exaggerated and most of the gameplay relied on that.

 

[Daywalker30]

Facial expressions in TW3 are not at the state of art, but they are more than convincing and good enough for their purposes.

State of the art? No, but it is definitely one of the best.

https://youtu.be/xx8kQ4s5hCY?t=3m26s

for example, the scene with Dijkstra you can see some great facial animation, especially where Geralt blinks.

 

[Vigilance.492]

It's never going to match fully mocapped games like GTAV or TLOU. However when you consider all the branching paths, dialogue options and sheer scale of the game, you can understand why mocap wasn't possible, and it really is the most advanced automated system I've ever seen.

There's no RPG that even comes close to what we've seen of TW3, and even against those fully mocapped games it still holds up extremely well.

CDPR might make a few bad designs decisions here and there, but when you look at the sheer improvements and length they're willing to go to from Game > Game with an aspect of the game like this, you can't help but just appreciate their passion and desire to create something truly incredible.
I don't know what they can do in 2077 to blow us away as equally, but I get a feeling they'll find something.

 

[JackieEstacado]

State of the art? No, but it is definitely one of the best.

https://youtu.be/xx8kQ4s5hCY?t=3m26s

for example, the scene with Dijkstra you can see some great facial animation, especially where Geralt blinks.

I agree that they are good, especially compared to the current standard of the industry, but they are a bit stiff, maybe because the faces are overall hard (I have to say that they have smoothened and softened them a lot since last summer, though).

---------- Updated at 01:22 PM ----------

It's never going to match fully mocapped games like GTAV or TLOU. However when you consider all the branching paths, dialogue options and sheer scale of the game, you can understand why mocap wasn't possible, and it really is the most advanced automated system I've ever seen.

There's no RPG that even comes close to what we've seen of TW3, and even against those fully mocapped games it still holds up extremely well.

CDPR might make a few bad designs decisions here and there, but when you look at the sheer improvements and length they're willing to go to from Game > Game with an aspect of the game like this, you can't help but just appreciate their passion and desire to create something truly incredible.
I don't know what they can do in 2077 to blow us away as equally, but I get a feeling they'll find something.

In fact I was speaking only about this detail. If I had to judge the overall product, it will probably kill any challenger when released.

 

[Rpac.605]

Facial expressions in TW3 are not at the state of art

It's funny cause I think thats exactly how I would describe them, in the state of the art.

I've watched a lot of gameplay and the micro expressions of either Geralt and the others are amazingly performed. There are several body languages and expressions and microexpressions throughout the gameplays released that can pass by unoticed at the first time, and also(I'm not sure about this), aparently there are a few different microexpressions for one determined moment.

For example: In the ladies of the woods gameplay when the old witch is summoning the crones you can see that Geralt is uncomfortable through a sublte expression, though in a different language gameplay I noticed he shows that same discomfort through a different expression at the same moment of the cutscene.

I don't know if they've just changed it or if there are just a variety that can be show randomly.

Take a better look at what I'm talking about: [The time stamps are for the exact scene of the expressions]

Gameplay 1

Scene 17:08

Gameplay 2

Scene 14:45

[video=youtube;S0SDCr7U-wg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0SDCr7U-wg[/video]

Gameplay 3

Scene 15:55

You can see those are 3 different expressions that show exactly how geralt is feeling at the moment.

Bonus:
Also if you watch the 15 minute gameplay of january you can see, when Djenge Frett tells Geralt that the Grossbart brothers even took to grave robbing lately, that Geralt's expression is like : "Yeah, look like some real bastards in deed" haha
I didn't post it here just not to fill the post with too many videos, but if you guys wanna check it out it happens at 3:10 more or less.


I just think that is awesome!

PS: couldn't figure it out how to post the video and make it start at the right time.

 

[BlackWolf500.298]

Facial expressions in TW3 are not at the state of art, but they are more than convincing and good enough for their purposes.

Tbh, I think they are more than state of the art.

It's an open word game. For such a game, those are DAMN GOOD facial expressions.

 

[Mgec]

Considering they are not entirely mocapped I think CDPROJEKT did an outstanding work on facial expressions. It's one of the things that surprised me the most in the latest gameplays. People feel alive, ESPECIALLY Geralt, leaning his head a bit during the conversation, the blinking. An example with Djenge Frett himself:[video]https://youtu.be/BgJUL3nN4iI?t=2m50s[/video]

 

[moonknightgog]

 

[Salulu]

I was about to bring this up actually.
The one issue I've had with all the newer gameplay videos is that none of the facial work has even come close to the same level as the herbalist here from the E3 gameplay presentation.
I just sort of get the feeling it was polished up more than the facial expressions will be in the game because it was for a presentation on Microsoft's Xbox conference.
There definitely hasn't been as detailed expressions since this from newer gameplay videos.

 

[Kishobran]

I was about to bring this up actually.
The one issue I've had with all the newer gameplay videos is that none of the facial work has even come close to the same level as the herbalist here from the E3 gameplay presentation.
I just sort of get the feeling it was polished up more than the facial expressions will be in the game because it was for a presentation on Microsoft's Xbox conference.
There definitely hasn't been as detailed expressions since this from newer gameplay videos.

Agreed. Mind you I like most facial expressions I've seen so far, but I just love this one. First you can see her disappointed/sulking but then she pulls out a smile when he mentioned he's gonna come back to check on her. So probably gonna be a romance option.

 

[val.mitev]

I was about to bring this up actually.
The one issue I've had with all the newer gameplay videos is that none of the facial work has even come close to the same level as the herbalist here from the E3 gameplay presentation.
I just sort of get the feeling it was polished up more than the facial expressions will be in the game because it was for a presentation on Microsoft's Xbox conference.
There definitely hasn't been as detailed expressions since this from newer gameplay videos.

To me her expressions are actually a bit over exaggerated. They are good, but she's pulling too much of a hot chick trying to be cute vibe and not too distressed by the situation just moments before.

I actually like all that they've shown, it's pretty impressive. I quite liked the one with the Nilfgardian and the peasant, both looked very convincing.

 

[Daywalker30]

To me her expressions are actually a bit over exaggerated. They are good, but she's pulling too much of a hot chick trying to be cute vibe and not too distressed by the situation just moments before.

Well to be honest that's how I see her character from that footage,
meaning she is written that way (acting), but I could be wrong though.

 

[selethen]

I agree. Facial expressions are godlike in Witcher 3, almost on par with AC: Unity which is imho the best in category - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VX92DmHO14I

 

[BlackWolf500.298]

Yeah, he's definitely going to bang her.

 

[Yellowcardus]

Phil Spencer, the current head of Xbox mentioned post E3, during a Giant Bomb panel that CDPR changed the slice of gameplay they wanted to show pretty much last minute. Mostly, because they felt that the previous one wasn't as representative of the game as a whole.

And indeed, this one included a lot of activities in a very short demo. There was detective work, meditating, Witcher senses, shooting a crossbow, traversing difficult land (jumping, climbing), fighting humans with swords and signs + decapitation, conversing with a hot lady and dispatching a naughty griffin. Basically The Witcher in a nutshell. On top of that, the demo was played in real-time on stage.

It is very unlikely that she was specifically "touched up" so that they could pretend the game is more awesome than in reality. Especially since such behaviour carries a very high risk of back-firing.

Instead, what is likely is that the NPC was orginally designed to be expressive but not talkative. She says many more words with her body and eyes than she does with her mouth. Which is something that was immposible in either of the previous Witcher games. And still remains rare in games in general, especially open-world ones.

However this does not mean that every charachter has to be this emotive in order to impress:
View attachment 11697

 

[Asmodean778]

From what I've seen of the game so far. Imo, it looks to have some of the very best facial animations that I've seen in an open world game of this scope. The nuance expressions that come across in their faces is impressive.

I also appreciate, that it's nessessary to reuse a lot of the same animation sets for npcs when there are so many, but saying that - I do hope they've tried to make the shared animsets less noticeably repetitive, than they did for the TW2. Every time I seen the 'lean forward & roll arm', or 'pacing back and forth', or 'crooks head to the side inquisitively' etc. >.< They're memorably, and thus very noticable when reused a lot.

Bearing in mind, that this isn't some short, corridor game, with all mocapped faces, etc. The Witcher 3, at a guess - probably has more npcs in one of the larger towns/ or a city of course. Then a lot games do in the whole game in total.