The Witcher 4

[Cyan]

 

[Cyan]

read about it somewhere and I gotta agree that Ciri, The Witcher 3 version, looked stronger and better than the new Ciri.
When I watched the new trailer of The Witcher 4 something that immediately struck to me was how Ciri seemed worried, almost sad or weak, for some reason, looking at her face's expression. I didn't mention it 'cos I saw it as a kinda faithful representation of Ciri.

But if you compare The Witcher 3 Ciri and The Witcher 4 Ciri, they look quite different, and she looked much more confident in TW3.

This is Ciri from The Witcher 3. I find her strong, like say Ellen Ripley in Alien.

This is Ciri from The Witcher 4.

Another great female character that looks strong is the georgian queen in Age of Empires 2 DE.

 

[trinibwoy]

When I watched the new trailer of The Witcher 4 something that immediately struck to me was how Ciri seemed worried, almost sad or weak

Maybe she left the iron on or it’s that time of the month. Wait, that’s not a thing with witchers right?

 

[vspectra]

She looks the same to me but with a more realistic artstyle. I find the complaints on twitter and other places calling her ugly and then they proceed to compare completely different facial expressions as if W3 Ciri didn't also look different depending on expression.

 

[Cyan]

it's not that different but I find the nose different, the cheeks and the jawbone.

 

[iroboto]

it's not that different but I find the nose different, the cheeks and the jawbone.

Entirely different actress. That’s why she looks different. They have a new actress and mo-capped her whole body in. They did not remap it to old Cori

 

[eloic]

They have a new actress

I never thought the characters in The Witcher III were based on any real life people. I even thought they used the same base-face for Yennefer and Ciri, for that matter.

 

[iroboto]

I never thought the characters in The Witcher III were based on any real life people. I even thought they used the same base-face for Yennefer and Ciri, for that matter.

I believe that if you have access to a studios for it, it is Cheaper to just mocap folks than to pay animators, especially for something like unreal engine that has deeper rigging possibilities and if you’re working a lot of cutscenes. Something they didn’t do in the previous entires.

The voice actor in w3 was replaced with Ciara Berkeley, who is also doing the mocap with this next entry. You are correct they did not have actors in the last Witcher.

Sorry I see how that was confusing for you and myself.
Rather, they are _now_ using real actors for the next entry.

 

[Dominik D]

I never thought the characters in The Witcher III were based on any real life people. I even thought they used the same base-face for Yennefer and Ciri, for that matter.

They weren't but this one likely is, hence the difference. It's fine, people. Should I remind everyone how Triss looked like in the first game?

 

[Daozang]

to just mocap folks than to pay animators, especially for something like unreal engine that has deeper rigging possibilities and if you’re working a lot of cutscenes.

I think it's a lot faster, but I don't think it eliminates the need for animators, because the animations need a lot of clean-up, as well as a lot of tune-up to blend with the art.
Even if the mo-cap data were perfect, the model, the lighting and the overall art direction won't simply match the mo-cap.
I think that even in movies, where the target is photo realism, there is a lot of animator work involved.
Although things move fast in this department, so I might be behind, and it might be it needs less and less animation work...

 

[GhostofWar]

Triss

Triss who, Shani was the keeper in the first game. Seeing her back in blood and stone was a cool callback aswell.

Back on topic, I'm not seeing what the blowback over how Ciri looks is about. Anyone who read the books and played witcher 3 to the good ending must have kind of seen this coming right? I did anyway and i'm not the brightest light in the megalights demo.

 

[Dominik D]

I think it's a lot faster, but I don't think it eliminates the need for animators, because the animations need a lot of clean-up, as well as a lot of tune-up to blend with the art.
Even if the mo-cap data were perfect, the model, the lighting and the overall art direction won't simply match the mo-cap.

I'd posit that you need even more animators than, say, 15 years ago. Animation is far less abstract in games (especially AAA ones) so reuse between actions on screen is rare. The volume of animation produced today vs back in the day means you need more animators. You no longer mocap body, you also mocap face. Cleanup and matching to the needs of the scene has to come from somewhere. Integrating things in engine requires technical animators. If your animation doesn't fit the needs a month or a year after it was captured, you have to redo the mocap (and clean things up) or you need animator to manually patch it up.

And this only considers humans or mostly humanoid characters. Diablo 1 had 20 enemies with others achieved through palettes swaps. The fidelity of enemies in a game like Witcher 3 means that not only do you need 5-10 bespoke rigs, a lot of monsters need individual animations for some actions in order to prevent some interpenetration. This means more manual work for animators and countless hours spent inspecting animations on models. Models that change over time as art progresses.

You need to make a conscious scoping decision in the planning phase to not need an army of animators and you need mature pipelines to churn the animations fast. The only thing mocap does is it streamlines some part of the process. But you need more animators today than you needed two console generations ago.