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Why do AAA titles often aim for ''realistic'' visuals (with uncanny animation)?

polycounter lvl 9
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Blond polycounter lvl 9
Well not necessarily ''realistic'' but I think you know what I mean here.

Just go back and watch the last E3 for instance and look at the western titles. Most stylized games are indie or have lower budget (yet they still manage to appeal tot eh audience) and most big budget productions always try to push the visuals as much as they can to reach photorealistic or CGI visuals.

I never myself understood why. Even as an adult, the fact that a game looks photorealistic doesn't necessarily make it more appealing to me and I don't think most buyers care all that much.

Plenty of stylized games sell wells, both in the indie and the AAA market (think of the Jak or the Racthet series for instance or the Nintendo games)...

I am asking this because even thouh, genreation after generation we keep having more ressources to support these types of visuals, alot of aspects still don't look quite right, yet.

My best exemple for this, would be facial animation.

When showcased on a portfolio or whenever they're static, models are super beautiful to look at however, when they start moving in-game, it's never that great and most of the time, they fall in the uncanny valley (although this is much less criticised in games than in movies).

There's a few studios out there who managed to pull it off (props Naughty Dog) but look at the cinematics in Crysis for instance or the last GTA, although, you can see the effort behind the facial animation, it really doesn't hold up enough in terms of expressiveness...

I'm saying this because it's weird when I see stylized playstation 2 games characters being alot more convincing in their emotions than some recent games...

Don't get me wrong, Skyrim and The Witcher 3 have some of the best visuals out there for their time but look the face of the characters, it looks like they feel nothing and I personally can't feel nothing for them (was that too harsh? :( ) .


The fact that we're limited in terms of technology pushsees the devs to always optimize their workflow and find turnarounds to achieve desired visuals (which is great) but it looks like this concept is always limited to the modelling, I've rarely seen moments where we try to push expressiveness forward...

About those ps2 games I'm talking about, here are good exemples:

PS2:

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VytsAQbzis[/ame]

Don't bother at the shots where their faces are still pictures though


Another PS2 exemple:

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZXz0XRS_0g[/ame]

The expressions of the characters are really great if we take into account the polygon and joint limitation available at that time...

Now, as a more recent exemple:

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQhQ-7Iaw8Y[/ame]

Look at 2:00

I've thoroughly enjoyed the game but this was sadly a missed opportunity to show what our generation of console are able to do at this time...

The more realistc these characters look, the harder it is to achieve convincing animations and I felt alot of devs shoot themselves in the foot whenever they pick realistic graphics.

What do you think of it? If you find anything stupid in what I said, please correct me and forgive my ignorance on the subject ( Muzz be patient with me please...). Don't hesitate to correct me, this is how we learn after all...

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  • ZacD
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    ZacD ngon master
    It's what publishers believe will sell the best.
  • DavidCruz
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    DavidCruz interpolator
    I am with you man, real is somewhat boring though the challenge in an artistic sense is a great accomplishment for one's self.
    Especially if you get a lot of positive feedback on it can really encourage someone's enthusiasm to proceed with such artistic ventures indefinitely, until they "burnout" or just get tired of looking at the same type of style.

    Since a studio job is what most artists strive for they want to be well prepared for anything that can be thrown their way, at least I'd like to think so.

    But again ever since this "next-gen" now border-lining previous gen (with the new voxels and such, 3d printing scanning, ect.)

    I've been missing the amazing old hand painted textured artwork that used to be posted, some amazing stuff was made in the past.
    Also the traffic on site has slowed down a bit i think because of these changes.

    But pretty much what ^ they ^ said.
  • Oceanwaveii
    hm well I wouldn't say writing follows art style it more like writing follows culture for better are worse Western Culture can't accept stylized anything the public can't at least you have to go to art circles for that . So you can easily write a different story from a Saturday morning cartoon you see it all the time in Japanese anime from Attack of the titan to ghost in the shell , it just the audience wouldn't accept it or a Mainstream American audience wouldn/t . If it stylzed it's disney if it not it photoreal live action that the average person , kinda person who ask why aren't disney character realistic ? we really culturally only understand realism and everything else is alien or disney , There not much inbetween this . Looking at Early American Anglo-Protestant Art was very naturalistic and er boring ,bowls of fruit and what not . This is a modern western cultural issue not a human issue/age /maturity , look at most of the world history it was stylzed art and that pretty much all that existed you had the occasional realistic head .here and there like the Yoruba statue but it served no special cultural significance far as I know it was the equivalent of a photograph of a king . Contary to popular beliefs yeah they could make a realistic image , if these culture could build mathematical precise pyramids and grand cathedrals , they can make a realistic statues . They just didn't have the same cultural value for realism the Modern Christian West did. . Don't really get a realist obbession till 18th century europe .


    I don't think the production cost are the differiating factor (Pixar films regular cost 100 millions to make ) way beyond most games even realistic ones . Yeah making convincing animation is much more difficult with uncanney valley humans . Since we don't accept them as cartoons , we treat them as poor imitations of the real thing and break the empathy with average person .and crossing the uncanney valley is incredibly complicated and require some of the best VFX artist money can buy .

    Currently models aren't realistic or perfect enough to fool us in a preformance . At Siggraph they talked about how the actual deformation of the skin play into how we see human faces as realistic lol.. pretty sure console don't have the power to simulate 16 k map deformations per character just for the skin., Perfect lighting also effects how precieve the realism of animation (So real sub-scattering =/) . so processing power to achieve total realism is another issue which both console and PC are no where near doing in real time .
  • Oceanwaveii
    Don't think your being harsh . For most people it easier to relate to a digital character with human characteristic than a character that try to look identical to us and fails at doing it . It why stuff like TED works or cg cartoons , while thing like spirited within bombed horribly , and would bomb again if they tried it with more advance technique . I've seen an audience shit on the best we can do like the Michael Jackson Hologram , any tiny imperfection is caught making empathy a lot harder.
  • MagicSugar
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    MagicSugar polycounter lvl 10
    Re: uncanny. I think it's due to the limitation of current game AI beside poly limitations. To make emotions look natural in all game "realtime" environments it would cost more in terms of tools and specialists (the face animator?).

    Compare facial mocap for movies or pre-rendered cinematics, the actor(s) just have to perform for a specific moment or scene. In gameplay, you would certainly require models to face you, turn their eyelines towards you, turn their bodies and combine body language with face emotions. But you the player, keeps moving around making it pointless.

    Think of facial expressions in transition from neutral to extreme say fear, or being in pain, etc.. That's a lot of data. You can distribute mocap from one actor to multiple body types via a universal rig, what's the pipeline like if you require realistic face animations for various face/head profiles during gameplay.

    I don't doubt that milestone would be reached soon though, where it's no longer a tech limitation issue. There's that new Adobe tech that projects a proxy model of your head and uses your camera captured facial features and motions to drive it's own.
  • Blond
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    Blond polycounter lvl 9
    MagicSugar wrote: »
    Re: uncanny. I think it's due to the limitation of current game AI beside poly limitations. To make emotions look natural in all game "realtime" environments it would cost more in terms of tools and specialists (the face animator?).

    Compare facial mocap for movies or pre-rendered cinematics, the actor(s) just have to perform for a specific moment or scene. In gameplay, you would certainly require models to face you, turn their eyelines towards you, turn their bodies and combine body language with face emotions. But you the player, keeps moving around making it pointless.

    Think of facial expressions in transition from neutral to extreme say fear, or being in pain, etc.. That's a lot of data. You can distribute mocap from one actor to multiple body types via a universal rig, what's the pipeline like if you require realistic face animations for various face/head profiles during gameplay.

    I don't doubt that milestone would be reached soon though, where it's no longer a tech limitation issue. There's that new Adobe tech that projects a proxy model of your head and uses your camera captured facial features and motions to drive it's own.


    Fair enough however, here I was referring to cinematics and cutscenes (not the pre-rendered one).

    In-game, another animation problem lies and it's the blending but that anoter topic..for another thread..
  • Greg DAlessandro
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    Greg DAlessandro polycounter lvl 6
    Stylized character's expressions might read easier than realistic character's expressions since they tend to be more exaggerated and the eyes are typically larger.
  • RyanB
    Why do AAA titles often aim for ''realistic'' visuals (with uncanny animation)?

    Marketing has found that teenage boys and young adult men, the prime audience for AAA FPS/Driving/RPG want realism in their games. They want their Honda Civic and AK-47 to look like the real thing.
  • blankslatejoe
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    blankslatejoe polycounter lvl 18
    Here's another way to look at the problem: have you seen really realistic cg faces in a film animating very well? Maaayybe in the last few years I've seen some, but not many.

    We're just now getting this to look convincing in film--where we have offline rendering abilities, no rigging limitations, and two decades of research into muscle systems/simulations.

    It seems to me that the cost-benefit analysis of more complex rigs and more attention to facial animation always will fail against the cost of greatly increased memory usage, runtime performance implications, and increased authoring time.

    Add into this the need to reuse things as much as possible when it comes to rigs and animations and you have a recipe for cookie-cutter animations that can ...sort of ...work across a great number of use cases.

    That said, we'll start seeing more attention to this sort of stuff over the next decade in games, I think..
  • blankslatejoe
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    blankslatejoe polycounter lvl 18
    whoops, I misinterpreted your original post. I thought you meant "why couldn't we HAVE realistic animations on faces", not "why do we keep having that be the goal in games". Serves me right for skimming-and-then-replying.

    Anyway, I'm right with you on that front. I MUCH prefer stylized animation for exactly the reasons you mention. :-)
  • Blond
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    Blond polycounter lvl 9
    "why do we keep having that be the goal in games"

    See, this shouldve been my thread title.

    Well, I know why concretely, it's probably to push the limit further but like you said, if even in CGI, they can't do it properly or have hard time achieving it without any constraint, why do we still try to achieve the same with even more limitation?
  • claydough
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    claydough polycounter lvl 10
    whoops, I misinterpreted your original post. I thought you meant "why couldn't we HAVE realistic animations on faces", not "why do we keep having that be the goal in games". Serves me right for skimming-and-then-replying.

    Anyway, I'm right with you on that front. I MUCH prefer stylized animation for exactly the reasons you mention. :-)

    I misunderstood as well in the same way then.
    But to raise another issue regarding the poor state of animation in real-time visual arts today,
    I do not think uncanny animation exists the same way as the sculptor's and Shader's valley. There is just bad realistic motion you notice, whereas Planet of the Apes level of commitment and realistic artistry is just simply enjoyed.
    albeit taken for granted considering the weight of such an achievement!

    ^ respect ^

    [ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adraQzHStuk[/ame]
    film example yes.
    but someday.

    andy-serkis-caesar-planet-of-the-apes.gif

    Edit: ( actually posted the wrong Koba "stepNFetchIt" confrontation. The performance which has his kiss ass demeanor dissolve into seething disgust hidden by his turn-around to walk away... That one gets me giddy every time I watch it. Amazing work! )
  • JacqueChoi
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    JacqueChoi polycounter
    Facial action coding system yo.
    [ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reByZLSncco[/ame]



    BTW


    Realistic generally sells the mood of a 'mature themed' game more.
  • iadagraca
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    iadagraca polycounter lvl 5
    Wow ryse has amazing facial animation, the body animation great too, often i see a disconnect. Those are real time not FMV?

    Final Fantasy XV seems to be making huge strides in animation, not very realistic looking though, more stylized characters. But you can see details like subtle eye movements and nose flairs so the animation is there.

    I don't even think i'ts facial capture.

    It's not just faces either cloth is another problem you commonly see with realism where the clothing is too stiff or moves awkwardly. Here it looks like true CG quality cloth.

    I'm pretty much expecting squares next movie to be made with a their realtime engine which is what agnis philosphy looks to be.

    [ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXMJTGna_xA[/ame]
  • Ruz
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    Ruz polycount lvl 666
    loved the jak and daxter animation. made me love the game even more.
    i remember though at some point back in the mid 2000's that some companies didn't even bother to blend animation smoothly, which infuriated me. ie one sequence would finish say a run, then the walk would just kick in with no smoothing.
    animation is so important because it can even make a bad model look good to a certain extent.
    I used to see some great animation cycles posted on PC back in the day.
  • Skinpop
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    Skinpop polycounter lvl 9
    JacqueChoi wrote: »
    BTW


    Realistic generally sells the mood of a 'mature themed' game more.

    which is such a joke. in my experience the best stories and character development are usually found in "stylized" games while realistic tend to just ape after whatever some kind of generic hollywood blockbuster storytelling. exceptions exist but the idea that realistic and "dark" is somehow mature is laughable. tbh, the most childish behavior I can think of in an adult is to even worry about what is mature and what isn't.
  • Dylan Brady
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    Dylan Brady polycounter lvl 9
    Skinpop wrote: »
    which is such a joke. in my experience the best stories and character development are usually found in "stylized" games
    that hasn't been my experience but that's okay. To expand: Im taking your use of quotes around the word "stylized" to mean that you are referring to heavily stylized games ala Psychonauts, Jak and Daxter, KH2, etc VS realistic, yet still stylized games like The Last of Us, etc. Assuming that is true, then I would say that typically realistic games contain more developed characters and stories than stylized ones.
    Skinpop wrote: »
    realistic tend to just ape after whatever some kind of generic hollywood blockbuster storytelling.
    That might be true, might not, has no pertinence to the "maturity" of said title. In fact one might say taking inspiration from an older medium that has had time to (dare I say "mature"?.. no I don't) learn how to convey certain themes might help you in your attempt.

    Skinpop wrote: »
    the idea that realistic and "dark" is somehow mature is laughable.
    Im not sure what is laughable about that? I mean it seems quite self evident: Children are not typically considered ready to deal with themes that deal in moral grey areas or show violence and sex/nudity.
    Those are mature in the sense that children should probably not be exposed to them.

    I just felt the inflammatory nature of your response required a double-take.
    Sorry if I've missed the spirit of your post.
  • .nL
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    .nL polycounter lvl 3
    Skinpop wrote: »
    tbh, the most childish behavior I can think of in an adult is to even worry about what is mature and what isn't.

    Yes, such infantile concerns are beyond us real adults. The very notion that someone would be as childish as to categorize what is and isn't mature is worthy of a sensible chuckle.

    I'll be honest, I think very few people really conflate thematic maturity with 'real' (by which I just mean good storytelling and thoughtful handling of the issues at hand) maturity. They're separate things, and the second is far less concrete than the first. Realistic aesthetics to be the harbinger of a game with darker themes, which society has deemed largely unfit for children.

    Which makes sense, because if I want to disembowel ~~XxX_Broseph_Joseph23_XxX~~ with a wrist-mounted chainsaw cannon, I'd like the game to look like I'm actually disemboweling a man named ~~XxX_Broseph_Joseph23_XxX~~[1337] with a wrist-mounted chainsaw cannon (call me a sadist, but it's fun).

    And I probably don't want my five-year-old watching in horror while I do it.

    Third paragraph also explains why I favor realism for some of my games. If you can tiptoe around the uncanny valley, a kill is so much more visceral when your brain doesn't have to work hard to imagine it in the real world.

    Realism is also a short-cut to greater empathy. Little/no characterization or narrative required.

    Stylized characters tell you volumes about who they are from appearance alone. But a generic guy/gal who might as well be your next door neighbor is much harder to connect with or interpret as such when they're caricatured without any specific character in mind.

    Realistic graphics are also a better meter for progression across titles than anything else, when you're advertising games. People will notice your improved progression and ai systems after the fact. But anyone can see that you're now rendering twice as many freckles with twice the accuracy on protagonists Jean Eric, and Hugh Mann(tm)'s faces.

    And if you're not sure that something's changed, compare two screenshots to a selfie, and see that objectively, the error differential between the facsimile of the target, and the target itself, has reduced significantly. Suddenly, just the sight of that game you were enjoying so much yesterday is disconcerting, now that you know what you could have.

    Besides, if you're a low-level programmer, writing a program generates a picture of virtual reality indescribable from real reality, which also runs at an interactive rate, is kind of a fantastic challenge to beat yourself against.


    I agree, animation's fallen somewhat by the wayside, due to a lack of workflow innovation, as well as love from the businesses commissioning it.
    Which is a shame, because nothing pulls me out of an experience quite like a bad/rushed piece of animation, be it stylized or realistic. Poor animation is more easily forgivable in a stylized environment, though.
  • Fogbrain
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    Fogbrain polycounter lvl 5
    Artist's won't get to decide. The generally perceived notion of what makes a game look and feel good is decided by the consumer, and as a business, publishers will go with what the people want. People aren't gonna think much more about what makes a game look good other than 'realism'. Thinking outside the box with artistic styles & exaggerated animations isn't what the average consumer will even think about.

    Unless you're someone like Pixar who's so big for their britches that they call the artistic shots down the middle as much as they can. A developer won't have that, not yet at least.

    Go with the flow. Indie games have more control over an art style anyway, and that's where the real work is going on.

    AAA will be AAA always.
  • kanga
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    kanga quad damage
    Overwatch and Boarderlands are good examples of great stylized games. All the footage I have seen on this thread shows animation that is more than enough quality for an immersive gaming experience. The first vid with the Witcher piece is worst case scenario. Slow scenes with subtle movements on an attractive human face is something we still cant get 100%. Nice to see really good joint deforms though! I think for games its something to strive for but isnt a dealbreaker by a long shot. There is so much other stuff going on.

    Yet we will still aim for perfection and I think we are going to get close, but I dont think that will be soon.
  • Axcel
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    Axcel polycounter lvl 14
    When I talk with people which are not game-devs or artist they're are like "nah, candy looking" for most stylized games. I think most people don't appreciate stylisation put into some game and just prefer realistic looking. Thing brings us to triple AAA, which requires big audience and they "care" about typical man's taste.
    But to contrary to this we have blizzard's games, lol and dota.

    Ps: I don't agree those PS2 games has better expression that present games. What is noticed is that this expression was exaggerated there (rightly).
    I agree however that some aspects are evolving faster then others. Graphics obviously evolved most, but AI "way of thinking", silly actions NPC/player has to do just because, are far behind anything. Some things don't evolve and we still see an enemy who is going smoke and then piss over and over like a robot.
    In my opinion animations evolved noticeably, right now many titles uses motion capture which improved feeling of characters a lot.
  • Ouran
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    Ouran greentooth
    I think it all comes down to visual education versus marketing. The audience is not visually educated and will often associate realistic visuals with mature content and stylized visuals with children content.

    Marketing people understand this really well and will therefore push for realistic visuals even though the story will most likely be poor and shallow. That's what they do, they identify trends and generalities and try to fit their games into these boxes.

    In the end, I think the maturity of a game's story is disconnected from its visuals. Both games like Journey and The Last of Us have deep and rich stories with very different visual styles and storytelling methods.
  • Fuiosg
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    Fuiosg polycounter lvl 5
    Looking forward to MGSV because those games are always a clinic on not only great animation, but animation stylized enough that there is little to no uncanny valley thing going on. Kojima's team is one of the few who have mostly avoided that, imo.
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    I am a bit confused by your question.
    Why do AAA titles often aim for ''realistic'' visuals [...] ?
    You know the answer to that already, and it's been answered many times in the thread anyways :)
    Why do AAA titles often aim for ''realistic'' visuals (with uncanny animation)?
    No animator or art director aims for uncanny animation really. It's just unfortunate when it happens ...

    As for the PS2 examples, I think what saves them to an extent is the voice acting. The animations themselves, while amusing, are quite off in terms in pacing and acting and I personally find them borderline cringe-worthy. Quite a few of the facial poses are nice, but overall it looks like the shots were not properly storyboarded and planned (which is of course understandable considering the tight budget). And it's pretty much the same problem with the Witcher cinematic - the characters just move too damn much ! But again, that game is made by a rather small team.

    As far as good examples are concerned, for heavily stylized visuals the only one that comes to mind is Ratchet and Clank (all the way back to the first one !), which shows very good timing in its cutscenes and very few awkward idling moments. For more realistic stuff, I think MGS3 hit a very good note (similarly to MGSV as Fuiosg pointed out). The character faces barely move, but the timing, delivery and editing are excellent which totally makes up for the very limited facial animations and the 4th wall breaking tone.

    And to play devil's advocate (in the most controversial way possible :) ), I think the guys being Hatred did a very good job with very low resources, while still bringing together a rather cohesive vision (whether it is of good taste or not is a completely different matter of course). Here the character face is not animated *at all*, but it still looks more convincing than the faces in the Witcher cinematic probably thanks to the fact that the lighting, while simple, is still quite accurate. No creepy glowing teeth and eyeballs !

    [ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV3PhvCf_Jg[/ame]


    Now that doesn't make me want to play the game further than out of sheer curiosity, but I thought that was interesting to point out.

    Some very lowkey facial animation in MGS3, with the convincing body movements and movie quality shot planning/editing making up for it :

    [ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-qKl-dpWbk[/ame]


    Of course the faces all looks very stiff, but by that time in the story the player is totally used to this animation style being an element of the game universe and there is no uncanny feeling happening. (not sure what's going on when Boss says "Sokolov ... comes with me" though. Maybe a bug ?). But anyways - such cutscenes do not feel as "time-wasting" as the KH ones where characters stand around in a circle not being quite sure what to do with their arms :)

    In short : I think it's all about good body acting, and good editing :)
  • Skinpop
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    Skinpop polycounter lvl 9
    I just felt the inflammatory nature of your response required a double-take.
    Sorry if I've missed the spirit of your post.
    I'm not good at expressing myself so please bear with me.
    I'm not considering content aimed at children(say below 15). What I'm talking about is arbitrarily labeling things and activities as immature when what really matters is stimuli. We consider playing with children's toys immature because they don't offer stimuli for someone who doesn't need that aid in fantasizing or has already been exposed to it as a child - not because toys inherently are immature. So my point is that any kind of discussion about what subjects are mature or not is completely pointless unless you want to compare yourself with a child in mid-development which effectively is what people try to do when they dismiss stylized stuff as childish.

    Obviously, as we grow we tend to find stimulation in activities that offer complexity and originality. Violence in itself offers nothing of that sort, but is a powerful tool when building tension.

    As a side note I'm not at all against violence in games, it's simply the case that violence provide strong emotional feedback while still working very well in terms of abstracting it for gameplay mechanics(sex for example doesn't translate well).

    As for inspiration from movies, I think that in the west especially in high budget games it's progressed way past "inspiration" and that we now find ourselves in a place where games seem to start out as film-like premises, emphasizing settings, characters and narrative rather than ideas about gameplay - to the detriment of exploring stimulating game mechanics. I honestly don't think there is much games can learn from film(unless you sort of want the game to be one...), since it's a completely different medium. There is huge potential that almost seem to be ignored just because we tunnel vision on hollywood style storytelling.

    .nL wrote: »
    I'll be honest, I think very few people really conflate thematic maturity with 'real' (by which I just mean good storytelling and thoughtful handling of the issues at hand) maturity.
    I wish this was true and maybe it is but even then the urge to appear "mature" still causes the majority to dismiss things they associate as childish - at least in my experience.
    Realism is also a short-cut to greater empathy. Little/no characterization or narrative required.
    I have a hard time agreeing with this in terms of games since we are still so far away from achieving realism. I think your point makes some sense but not practically in the context of realism in games today.
    Besides, if you're a low-level programmer, writing a program generates a picture of virtual reality indescribable from real reality, which also runs at an interactive rate, is kind of a fantastic challenge to beat yourself against.
    I'm more of a programmer than artist and happen to especially like low level coding :) I'm more interested in stimulating game mechanics/systems than mimicking reality(simulation) though.
  • kanga
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    kanga quad damage
    I think the term realistic is often substituted for high quality. When people see something they know is artificial but find it compelling they say the style is realistic. Nothing could be further from the truth, reality is just a starting point, the main body of work is manipulated, and is just as stylized only in a particular direction that doesnt have much to do with realism at all, it just looks good to people who game occasionally. I dont think hard core gamers have much trouble with cartoon styles or graphically adventurous styles. I dont think it is possible to get hard sales figures on this without paying for them, so its just an observation.
  • blankslatejoe
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    blankslatejoe polycounter lvl 18
    quote: Realism is also a short-cut to greater empathy. Little/no characterization or narrative required.
    I have a hard time agreeing with this in terms of games since we are still so far away from achieving realism. I think your point makes some sense but not practically in the context of realism in games today.


    I'm with Skinpop here. I feel stylization is more of the shortcut..a lot of the signatures of stylization are precisely intended to capitalize on a visual shorthand of poses/expressions, especially in animation of faces.

    When skillfully employed, this shorthand is a sturdy/fast way to immediately communicate of the animators intent (i.e., empathy, if that's the goal). I feel that if the same library were applied directly to a realistic mesh, you'd quickly run into overacting issues. The same library needs to be coupled with a healthy dose of subtlety in realistic animation..at levels I feel are often unattainable with common game rigs and production timelines.
  • .nL
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    .nL polycounter lvl 3
    I do agree that in terms of characterization, stylization can be much better, and I think empathy may have been a poor articulation of what I meant.

    In terms on an online shooter like Call of Duty, I believe it's much easier to project the identities of the people you're playing with onto a bland generic soldier model, designed in a realistic fashion, than it is to say, a character whose personality is meant to be dynamic, and engaging, and is baked into every element of the character's design.

    That said, I'm totally open to the idea that it may just be me, because it very well could be.
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