The Witcher 3 : Wild Hunt ! [XO, PS4, NX, PS5, XBSX|S, PC]

[Silent_Buddha]

I feel the Xbox on PC thing is actually them trying to steer you to / remind you of the console. They've been pushing the strategy for years now. Especially obvious on Windows 8 store where for example you have some lame Halo tie in games with Xbox logos attached.

Get back to me when Xbox on PC means exclusive games for PC and Xbox simultaneously.

Like Ori and the Blind Forest?

Regards,
SB

 

[DieH@rd]

Great overview of the game [only early locations were shown]

 

[Arwin]

Game looks sweet. Sounds like the hair physics may not be worth the framerate drop yet though. Hopefully that will run ok later on. But overall if the 980 can ultra this at 1080p then I reckon the 970 can too.

Now I am curious only whether I will prefer losing some of those settings against three screen viewing, as for open world games that seems to actually work really well.

 

[Cjail]

The animations are terrible IMO.
No fluidity, no naturalness, no credibility.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I was wondering why all the recent coverage but I just remember that this is the week that the 'blogger embargo' from the hosted event was lifted so we'll likely see a fair amount of footage. I really liking what I'm seeing, it's an impressive open world game and I really like the lack of loading screens - like the doors in Elder Scrolls' games.

The animations are terrible IMO.
No fluidity, no naturalness, no credibility.

The lack of motion capture could be the reason.

 

[orangpelupa]

Especially on converconversation. Not only it have stiff animation, the camera work also stuff

 

[Cjail]

The lack of motion capture could be the reason.

It looks like they are talking about "motion capture" regarding facial animation (which should be called "performance capture" to avoid confusion) but that doesn't explain why Geralt and human characters in general are animated so poorly.
I can't believe they didn't use mo-cap for combat.

 

[Cyan]

Haven't seen it here yet!
AngryJoe plays W3

and interview by GameSpot with senior environment artist Jonas Mattsson

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-witcher-3-is-an-open-world-with-no-loading-tim/1100-6426896/

I can't stand AngryJoe, such a whiner, if it wasn't his I'd watch the video.

Not knowing who Angry Joe is, this may as well have been 45 minutes of rednecks play Witcher 3. One of them even sounds quite like Merle Dixon from the Walking Dead! Redneck voiceovers and ADHD-fueled camera control aside, this game is looking really good. 3 Weeks! Yay!

I am proud of you becaue you don't know him. Thank you God, you don't. If you value your sanity.., he is so full-mouthed so vulgar and obnoxious, and ugly..., he cried when Youtube seemed to be closing the goose that laid the golden eggs.

Redneck is the word.

 

[Cyan]

New pictures:

 

[Lightman]

It looks like they are talking about "motion capture" regarding facial animation (which should be called "performance capture" to avoid confusion) but that doesn't explain why Geralt and human characters in general are animated so poorly.
I can't believe they didn't use mo-cap for combat.

I think it is personal taste and to me it looks fine. You can't expect medieval warrior to move like Jackie Chan as they were wearing much heavier armours and weapons. Besides Geralt is old in his 3rd game, he is almost a grandpa Gerald

They have MoCap studio and there was funny video made in it:

Here is some story with few pictures - http://www.polygon.com/features/2014/7/16/5884227/cd-projekt-the-witcher-3

 

[Laa-Yosh]

The lack of motion capture could be the reason.

That's an incorrect conclusion. They're not using mocap for the facial animations; but human motion is evidently mocap based. In fact they have a regular stunt guy to do Geralt's moves.

However managing a lot of complex moves is more about an advanced animation blending engine. That's a pretty hard problem to deal with, only a few action games have managed to solve it well.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

It looks like they are talking about "motion capture" regarding facial animation (which should be called "performance capture" to avoid confusion)

Performance capture is actually something else: recording body movement, facial movement and voice at the same time. Basically, all the elements of the actor's performance; well at least those that can actually be captured and make sense to record I mean you could probably capture heart rate as well, but it's unimportant; and blushing (if you want to have it) can be just eyeballed, especially if you have witness cameras on stage to record close-up footage of the actors.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Oh, also, there's been a piece of news about CDPR recording about 16 hours of mocap just for sex scenes

 

[Cjail]

@Lightman

It is not personal taste.
Look at the stuntman in the video, his movements are fluid, seamless but Geralt's movements are disjointed, they lack fluidity.

Just look at how Geralt side steps, he actuality slides over the gourd, that's not natural.
Geralt footwork in general looks unnatural but we must thank the lock-on camera logic for that. (Bloodborne is the same).
Uncharted, the Last of Us and Batman Arkahm series combat looks way more natural and believable (they used mo-cap) while here fist fights really look unnatural.
Tekken, or Soul Calibur animations are immensely more fluid (aside for stepping) and they didn't use mo-cap for all the characters.

 

[Arwin]

Much of the quality of Uncharted's animation comes from a smart animation blending algorithm. E.g. you can combine a running animation with a shooting animation and a flinching animation (because of a bullet near miss or nearby explosion) and a look-sideways animation. I don't know how common that has become with other games, but not that I know of, and I think it's safe to say we're still waiting to see that happen in RPGs.

 

[Cjail]

I personally see more fluidity in the movements of the characters in Dragon's Dogma or Shadow of Mordor than here.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Combining animation clips for the different parts of the skeleton like running and shooting isn't the tough part. It's the transitions between the actions and their synchronization with the character's movement where the real problem lies; especially if you want to keep the gameplay responsive.

I actually find it a bit overly critical that an RPG has to live up to the standards of 3rd person action games even in this aspect. I'd say it's far more important to get the combat itself right - how the player character actually looks like while moving should be secondary.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Tekken, or Soul Calibur animations are immensely more fluid (aside for stepping) and they didn't use mo-cap for all the characters.

That should actually be easier to accomplish because you can give the animator the timings for how many frames each move should take and what the start and end poses should be. It's a lot harder to get an actor to hit those timings, and once you start to manually tweak the mocap to change the speed or positions, it starts to lose it's natural feel.

And once again, action games should be treated differently. They have a much smaller number of systems to develop and to run in real time, compared to an RPG. The Witcher doesn't only have the combat part, it has to account for the open game world and all its characters and such, and all that should require equal attention from the programmers and from the hardware.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Combining animation clips for the different parts of the skeleton like running and shooting isn't the tough part. It's the transitions between the actions and their synchronization with the character's movement where the real problem lies; especially if you want to keep the gameplay responsive.

I actually find it a bit overly critical that an RPG has to live up to the standards of 3rd person action games even in this aspect. I'd say it's far more important to get the combat itself right - how the player character actually looks like while moving should be secondary.

Agreed. Coming from an RPG perspective I'm amazed with the fluidity of movement. There are far more games that look much more stilted in animation than the Witcher 3 does, yet noone complains about the animation in those games. It seems strange to me. But, whatever.

Just 3 more weeks and I can see if this will be the first Witcher to keep me interested enough to finish it. First looks are that it will. I was excited for the first and second games but not as interested as I've been with the 3rd one.

Regards,
SB

 

[Deleted member 11852]

It looks like they are talking about "motion capture" regarding facial animation (which should be called "performance capture" to avoid confusion) but that doesn't explain why Geralt and human characters in general are animated so poorly. I can't believe they didn't use mo-cap for combat.

Ah ok, I'm still catching up on my Witcher 3 reading so haven't read that article yet and there have been so many lately, along with lots of video. Happily I don't have a great eye for animation. Bad animation definitely stands out but Witcher 3 looks serviceable to me. I'm going to stop reading here, I'm happy to be ignorant of some flaws rather than have them pointed out then be a distraction forever So I can't hear you... Lalalalalalalalaaaa!

Oh, also, there's been a piece of news about CDPR recording about 16 hours of mocap just for sex scenes

Good work if you can get it! Of course, that assumes both people mo-capped are different sexes!