Game studio CD Projekt RED has partnered with a tech company in order to make the facial animations of upcoming video game Cyberpunk 2077 almost realistic.
The studio has partnered with JALI Inc., a tech company based out of the University of Toronto for this new endeavor. This new facial animation technology allows characters to do not just talk in one language, but in multilingual and the lips will make realistic lip-synching.
Lead Character Technical Director Mateusz Poplawski shared a new video that showcased this amazing new tech. He said that the goal for this upcoming game was to create realistic facial animations without spending hundreds of hours actually animating. In this game, the developers did not just want to bring this new facial technology to the main characters only. They want it installed with NPCs in the game’s open-world. This goal was big, but then they added the challenge of animating faces and having lip-sync for 10 difference languages without facial motion capture.
With the help of JALI, it was a great partnership for the game studio. This new tech is a procedural, heavily customizable way to animate faces in a realistic manner. It is so realistic that all other features of the face will be taken into account like the eye movement, brow movement, neck movement, and the changes to the facial muscles.
Cyberpunk 2077 will launch on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on November 19. Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 versions will be coming next year.
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Here’s the video:
