Want to Beat the Uncanny Valley? Make Better Eyes

[Covarr]

I honestly think that a bigger problem right now than characters that don't look realistic is characters that don't move or behave realistically. Stiff, robotic movements seem to be the norm. For a good example, look at the movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. If the movement had been better, it could have worked, visually, but the stiltedness of the animation ruined the whole thing.

P.S. Thanks

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

The problem with eyes is that the reason that most characters have large or glassy eyes is because they are far easier to animate.

 

[Draconicfeline]

I hate it in some games where the eyes are NOT LOOKING AT ME.
Especially when they don't have eye issues as a character or anything.

I also hate it when the animation is jerky and the faces are still, like they've been botoxed to hell.
Example? Well, I was just watching the new Unskippable and that James Bond game looks like its FULL of what I'm talking about.

 

[Flac00]

This, I feel, is the problem with L.A. Noire. The facial movements are absolutely perfect, but there is something about the eyes that just puts me off. They seem alien and something from an insect.

Yeah, the expressions just feel......off. Almost creepy in a way. I don't know whether its the eyes or the fact that it looks like a face was copy and pasted onto a 3D model

 

[A Pious Cultist]

This, I feel, is the problem with L.A. Noire. The facial movements are absolutely perfect, but there is something about the eyes that just puts me off. They seem alien and something from an insect.

It's the lack of any reflective shaders on it. It's just the same material as the skin. I think they really need to do something about that but I doubt their technology allows them too (by the looks of it its basically a video of their faces overlaid on a mesh that's animating based on motion capture).

 

[Mcface]

Heavy rains animations were awful, seriously they were among the worse I've ever seen.
Most games have very little, so you don't notice it. But heavy rain tried, and failed. It was so noticeable at times I found myself laughing at some of the "super serious" situations.

 

[Treblaine]

Or, in the case of Heavy Rain, Pennsylvanians having vaguely French accents?

Yeah, at points it felt like the game was turning into an episode of Allo Allo.

Spoiler: Example

Got the same vibe with Wolfenstein though.

 

[romxxii]

This, I feel, is the problem with L.A. Noire. The facial movements are absolutely perfect, but there is something about the eyes that just puts me off. They seem alien and something from an insect.

It's the lack of any reflective shaders on it. It's just the same material as the skin. I think they really need to do something about that but I doubt their technology allows them too (by the looks of it its basically a video of their faces overlaid on a mesh that's animating based on motion capture).

It's not just their reflectivity: another problem is that nobody can seem to animate the eyes properly. You know how we can tell if a human eye's focused, the way said focus naturally flits about? Yeah, they need to get that fixed too.

 

[romxxii]

even that isn't true anymore. Check out Cracked.com's article about people that claim to have gotten beyond the Uncanny Valley. In fact, one of them totally pulled it off. It was Emily, the CGI girl who talks about the CGI project. The flaw was in her mouth, and even then she just looked like a real odd looking girl, but a real person nonetheless.

Actually, Emily's mouth was following the actress' own lip movements. The only problem is that she wasn't rendered in high resolution. The distance between her eyes, nose and mouth were shifting ever so slightly, giving away that Image Metrics' motion capture system isn't perfect.

 

[SimuLord]

The eyes? I've got two words for you:

Bethesda. Softworks.

Think of three of the most uncanny-valley-tastic games of the last five years. Oblivion, Fallout 3, and New Vegas (developed on that same Bethesda engine by Obsidian). The environments are beautiful (well, "beautiful" is a bit of a relative term in Fallout, but...) The monster/enemy design is spectacular. The NPCs who talk to you? The only thing Bethesda's worse at is ladders.

 

[WorldCritic]

Ugh, whenever I think Uncanny Valley I think Fallout 3, and then I think about Clash of the Titans.

 

[Headwuend]

The eyes are one of the things where CCP outdid themselves with their new character creator (or rather altogether new characters).

Not only do they look like being made of the right material and have great lighting, but they twitch around ever so slightly - just like the real thing.

It's only on the test servers for now, but there are plenty of HD vids out there. Scheduled to go live January-ish.

 

[godfist88]

ugh.. i think they may be right, the middle part of that video creeps me out.

 

[Niccolo]

The whole eye issue... it really took a whole study to determine this? Honestly?

I think nearly any gamer coulda told them it was the eyes that were the freakiest.

 

[JediMB]

Let's just have all the in-game characters be wearing sunglasses. Even indoors.

At night.

 

[Aurgelmir]

I remeber some guy at Naughty Dog talking about this in a behind the scenes thing for Uncharted.

He said they had worked a lot on animations and stiff, and thought they did a good realistic job, but they got shot down when showing it to others... because: The eyes doesn't look right.


But its not just the eyes, imo, but the surrounding muscles also. We humans can make so many subtle expressions around the eyes, which is often hard to animate IRL or on screen. The lack of these movements is probably why things look Uncanny Vally.

 

[Rad Party God]

Well, I think the only game to have realistic eyes in a charactet was, and still is, in Half-Life 2 and it's episodes, I always like the scripted parts were Alyx or anybody else is talking to you, but everything plummets when the script ends and the Oblivion/Fallout3/NV syndrome of staring at the beyond ruins what immersion that moment created.