New Heavy Rain tech demo.

Nose.

the head is bobbling a little too much imo. creepy.

Cute...very cute.

Skin appears pale, airbrushed and waxy. Eyes are unnaturally vivid. No evidence of blood flow. She's dead, Jim.

Glossy skin means she's not wearing make-up, yet there are no bags under her eyes. Creases between her eyebrows. How old is she?

Perhaps from a long distance, she'd look real. No extreme close ups!

Hey funny how the hair on the side doesn't move at all.

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Skin appears pale, airbrushed and waxy. Eyes are unnaturally vivid. No evidence of blood flow. She's dead, Jim.

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QFT [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Also the claim of them crossing the uncanny valley... reminds me a little bit of a certain someone claiming to make you his bitch [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Yea, just saw the video on kotaku. It's pretty damn vague, but what is shown is impressive. Won't know about it matching their crazy ass claim about being out of the uncanny valley until I've seen more, but it is better than any other real time facial animation I've seen.

you guys are rediculous

a company shows new technology and the ability to make games (and characters specifically) more expressive and realistic than any in history, and all you can do is hate and nitpick. Wah wah the skin isnt perfect. There isn't a single piece of art on our planet that doesn't have something in it you could nitpick, technically or otherwise. Someone a little insecure about their own realistic characters, maybe? Are you guys really that in love with unreal3?

This new tech is awesome, can't wait. Hopefully the tools enable us to create characters with this amount of expressiveness without spending 2 months on them.

Read the posts. Did anybody say it was bad?

If they say they've "crossed the uncanny valley" then they're setting themselves up for nitpicking, especially since that what the valley comes down to. Regardless of how impressive it is.

James, I've gotta agree with Ferg on this. There is a tonne of nitpicking and people are ignoring that there is some impressive tech being shown. Seems utterly rediculous to ignore something new and impressive because of a silly claim someone made.

Esspecially when this video is not hitting the uncanny valley so far as I can tell.

Dont want to turn this into an argument about who said what... just sayin, most of the posts before me were pointing out problems with the character, and that was it. The technology is really cool looking, and obviously capable of good stuff that we aren't currently doing. Someone had to step up and point out that, despite the fact that it's not the most absolutely perfect engine that will ever be made in the universe, it's still way cool and will give us artists a lot more power when it comes to creating expressive characters.

But yah, sounds like they've crossed through the valley of Romero on their way to the uncanny one [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

If you want to write an essay about how awesome the tech is, go right ahead. It's not my job. The title of the thread is in response to the "crossing the valley" comment, not about the engine.

Despite the extremely limited scope of the video, we already know the tech can allegedly do some cool stuff. If you want rants about how awesome the tech is, go to NeoGaf or post it yourself.

When people do nitpick, that means it most certainly is in the uncanny valley. That's the whole point.

(Edit: Yes, I am angry. Blame it on Mental Ray.)

Anybody see the Crytek GDC character presentation? The facial anim wasn't groundbreaking, but the eye-angle-driven eyelid-morph setup is using a nice control setup. I like where they're going with it. Dynamic eyes are much more interesting than pure mocap, since they can follow your viewing angle (or where ever you want). Really creates a connection.

Yeah... this is still nestled comfortably within the uncanny valley.

Tulkamir - when you saw this, did you think it was a real human? If you could tell it wasn't, then it is still in the valley.

Our brains are pretty damn good at determining what is a human and what isn't - claiming they've gotten around that was a pretty ballsy and, apparently, empty boast

This isn't nitpicking. The company made a claim this is easily refuted. For all I know, it's a cheap marketing strategy to advertise their game (interactive movie?). Looks great, but nothing amazing. The untrained eye says "omg they're right", and then it's all over the web for debate. Publicity. These days when I hear tech demo, it means "does not represent quality of final product at all". The view is very limited to a specific object using all available resources. Rendering two eyeballs in realtime is not the same as rendering an entire environment, and gameplay mechanics. Don't forget the previous realdoll image they released. I want groundbreaking news about GAMES!

when someone pops up and goes "ITS IMPOSSIBLE TO TELL OUR MODELS FROM REAL HUMANS" they are asking to be nitpicked. i think it looks prety good.. but far from their claim

looks like a mocaped model with a pretty nice skinshader to me [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]
honestly the term "real time environment" is kinda meh
we can shuffle around a gazillion of triangles and all kinds of really advanced shaders in frostbite but will they make it into the game with all that comes with it? nope..

nice job though, now go make a fun game [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

what exactly is the tech here? seems more like some clever rigging to me.. assigning verts to bones is pretty old..and this is just eyes.. i see no tech here to warrant the term "tech demo", they would have to be showing off tech.. there is a skin shader, i guess thats tech but i have seen better.. i don't understand.. its some eyes.. personally i think the eyes in ids rage demo looked more convincing.. someone explain to me wtf is going on..

Mocapping eyes isn't very easy. They do have some eyesocket deformation going on, probably bones driven by mocap, or it could be blendshapes driven by bone angle. Kind of cool, but not groundbreaking IMO.

How do you mocap eyes anyway? Use some special contact lenses?

Stunt eyes!

IIRC, algorithms analyze the reflections off the cornea to reverse-track the eye lookat vector. Cool idea.

Corpse Puppet FTW.

Agree with Arsh, what's the tech here, it's a close up of a head that may or may not be practical to be in an actual game. Like Sony rendering Doc Ocs head on a PS3... yeah good for you, you got a good looking head, maybe it can be a floating head and it has to eat floating popcorn coming towards them from all angles... yeah I dunno.

Either way I'm just hating because it doesn't look good regardless of what they are trying to do and thought their last game was brain dead stupid, hehe.

I actually think what they did in crysis looked better, even if their motion capture process is less sophisticated. Man, the original trailer for this looks horrific... really scary

What the fuck IS heavy rain?
While new technology for more "Cinematic" games is exciting, it doesn't compare to games with actual enjoyable gameplay.
...
Trespasser, anyone?

meh meh meh

agree with all the above posts saying meh