L A Noire

[o'dium]

Hey Odium, I know your engine is a different animal than Doom 3 but does your engine support videomap for normal maps and diffuse?

If so, you could pull-off LA Noire quality facial animation with ROQ level compression.

The question, of course, is how to decode ROQ quickly enough without being too CPU dependent. If a GPU based ROQ decode would be too much of a burden while also rendering the scene, then perhaps some caching mechanism like:

1) Invoke animation script call

2) Pre-decode a certain string of frames from the ROQ and render as a "film-strip" TGA texture in RAM.

3) Use Scroll + Translate ala standard animating textures.

I guess Rockstar used a shitload of capture data so it would still probably need to be scaled down for small developers.

Wrong thread for this, kinda, but it is kinda an LA Noire question lol.

Short answer, we support video map on any surface but I don't *think* it can be used per stage for bump/diffuse/specular, although I haven't tried. We do support frame animation however, and we use our own, much better, 720p .RoQ encoder (Source is available as well as the tools).

I'm not 100% sold on the way Rockstar did this facial stuff. At times it just looked baaaaad, blurred to hell and back, and because they take up so much space they had to be uber low resolution. Plus, the mouths always looked wierd, the eyes dead because they were part of the same surface (With no reflection and worse, studio lights in every one), and the head models looked poor.

I fully believe that the best thing we could do is a nice head mesh with normal map, same as we do already, uber quality, and then various blend maps for emotion, so wrinkle maps pretty much. Used in combination with higher poly geo on the face and some facial rigging, it can look just as good as this, it just takes time, and sadly the best thing we have is the HL2 face poser. But still perfectly possible.

I'm far more worried however about the connection between facial mapping and body mapping, because it seems that while mocap has helped a lot, its made other areas that require more smaller close up detail fall apart, and even worse when you think the body animations don't match the face. I'm looking forward to seeing what BF3 has up its sleave with that however.

[nbohr1more]

Thanks!

I know that Team Fortress 2 introduced "Hardware Accelerated" facial animation for the Radeon HD2xxx series so I went back to get a look at that tech because it seems to be the most effective and practical. It looks like Valve is keeping a secret because there don't appear to be any technical details. I am presuming that it's plain ole DX10 Geometry Shader work but who knows...

[DRuM]

I've only just cottoned on to this game. Unless it comes to PC, I won't be playing it though. But the facial animation is absolutely breathtaking. I thought Heavy Rain was good until I watched this LA Noire tech demo. i know you lot have played the full game already, but the behind the scenes stuff is interesting, particularly the side by side actor and animation comparison scene. They really have captured so much emotion in the facial movements. Very clever stuff. Hard to see how much better facial expression in games could get after this but I guess there's always room for improvement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL9wsEFohTw

[o'dium]

They captured so much because the face stuff is a moving video texture.

Stunning at first, until you start to see the flaws... Watch the mouth and eyes...

[Mat Linnett]

Yeah, the mouth and eyes are freaky, and is it me, or do all the women look disturbingly similar?

[[xeno]Julios]

ok am i missing something here? What's so special about this facial animation in the context of a game. It's not like you can directly control the facial actions - isn't this just glorified CGI?

Yes, I get the technology behind it - fascinating. But how does this make the GAMEPLAY special?

[Mat Linnett]

The idea is that you're supposed to be able to gauge whether someone is lying or not based on facial tics and mannerisms during interrogations.

[MKJ]

also, its awesome for the same reason Q3's revolutionary curved surfaces were awesome; it makes the game world more believable.

[[xeno]Julios]

The idea is that you're supposed to be able to gauge whether someone is lying or not based on facial tics and mannerisms during interrogations.

but that would depend on the actors themselves being actual suspects. and not actors. Microexpressions are largely involuntary.

[[xeno]Julios]

also, its awesome for the same reason Q3's revolutionary curved surfaces were awesome; it makes the game world more believable.

perhaps. I've never played the game, but I don't find the trailers that exciting. Maybe if I gave the game a try I'd think different.

[Mat Linnett]

I think to that end, the actors were told to over-act.

Personally, I find the interrogations really irritating; while the animation is superb, unfortunately Cole suffers from Shepard syndrome when it comes to conversation skills and frequently responds in completely unexpected ways. As the questions are limited to one shot, this can be intensely annoying.

My personal opinion is that the technology goes a long way towards avoiding the uncanny valley, and makes the world more believable, but is hampered by being a console platform release. The extra power and graphical fidelity afforded by a decent PC gaming rig would only help deepen the illusion, and to that end, I feel Rock Star missed an opportunity.

I also share Valve's concerns regarding the cost of implementation. I think there's more long-term benefit in pursuing procedurally generated realistic facial animation techniques.

[losCHUNK]

Yah, I played it on the 360

[losCHUNK]

Ya know, I don't think it has autolock. You usually have assistance and it's cover > fire > cover > fire for combat

[MKJ]

If ypu play it right there's hardly any combat anyway.

[Eraser]

I mean absolutely no skills. Like, aiming a reticule with thumbstick in any kind of quick or accurate fashion whatsoever being a literal impossibility. Still yes?

There's a few sections where you have to run and shoot but those are few and far between. The driving sections might be a bit finniky at first, but hey, it's no racing game and hidious driving skills don't have any impact on the game (in fact, you can press a button to auto-travel to your destination).
I'd say that yes, someone with no controller experience would be able to play this game. If anything, when progressing through the game their controller dexterity will improve along the way anyway.

Which reminds me, I still have to finish this game. Never got really much further than the point where you're reassigned to the arson department.

[Don Carlos]

What you done to your thumbs?!

[Κracus]

I think it's the brain part that's the problem. Loved the story though on this game, very fun to play through once.

[Don Carlos]

Ahhhhh I see