Visual Novel Tech Improvement - Motion Portraits

[Lunethex]

http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2010/05/0 ... ual-novel/

[IceD]

This looks both promising and interesting. I was curious whenever they actually go for fully animated character sprites and it looks they finally hit the milestone, but I can hardly call that an improvement - we already had many VN's (well, not that many, but at least a bunch), when we have characters blinking their eyes and moving lips (and even more - doing the second synchronicaly with the speech), so it's just a minor move forwards. Other than that, It's amusing to see Sony pressing japanese VN developers to add more technical "depth" to their games

[Lunethex]

It's on the PS3. Of course Sony would demand some quality.

[LVUER]

I wish they could make full-blown animated VN (like Viper series) but at more length like normal VN (Viper series story is very short)

[DaFool]

Tinkerbell pioneered AfterEffects boob physics in 2006, but they only sold on dlsite. Good Job/ Teck took Afx manipulation to new heights with it's MILF catalog. Here they refined it to be more subtle and natural.

[IceD]

That reminds of of Pia carrot on PC-FX. It's old, yet it had characters with their eyes and lips animated, and it was done on such hardware... Here, they just added more frames, full body animation and made it in1080p resolution

BTW - are my eyes just kidding me or are those animations made from pre-rendered models? I've just watched it thoroughly and seen some of those characters look to suspicious to be aknowledged as animated traditionally. Or are those real time renders? Either way, PS3 will not even sweet a bit producing such graphics.

Other than that, I'd love how characters were deisgned and backgrounds look simply stunning. I wonder if anyone will try to translate it to english. I've watched the anime, don't care what others say - it was good. I'd be nice to play this too someday

[mugenjohncel]

- CONTENT NO LONGER RELEVANT -

[IceD]

Thanks for some research on this, Mugen!

Now, thats interesting... So this software allows developers to create realistically animated portraits from stills? I still wonder how it works AFAIR, there were already such innovations on the net - I've seen such animated portraits made in flash earlier, so this may be they just further researched and adopted this technology for a more subtle usage.

[LVUER]

Will VN in PC also follow this footstep?

[electric]

Will VN in PC also follow this footstep?

It could, I think it can be done with Ren'py, with some work in setting up the sprite off course, and coding the displayable.

Jinzou Tamashi did something along that line, although the body doesn't move, it was already pretty nice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpXLE-EIGP4

[F.I.A]

I don't know how this is a break-through when this has been done in doujin both doujin and commercial. Oh wait, it's Sankaku Complex...

[electric]

I don't know how this is a break-through when this has been done in doujin both doujin and commercial. Oh wait, it's Sankaku Complex...

Maybe because in this case it's real time enabled ?

[IceD]

To sum things up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF3HBGeV ... embedded#!, and it was in '98

From others, all off Success' VN's have their characters eye-blinking and lip-flapping (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rytwTKAr ... re=related), as well as Minori's Haru no Ashioto (which is also an excellent example of this, because it utilises this function in almost every single cg, not only generic character chat ones), and it looks beautiful. I'm even more suprised to see it being so unknown by most of people, even if Insani released a translation for the demo. So, if you're interested take a look at it: http://www.insani.org/haruoto.html

[DaFool]

Honestly speaking, this is by far the most 'natural-looking' solution. Blinking eyes and lipflaps can only go so far, and make the rest of the body seem even more static. After Effects picture warping only works for... well, boobs... but can't really work for most of anything else. This technology makes the expression more subtle. The problem is it really is 3D, by creating a 3D model of the picture it makes things more complicated than it seems.

http://motionportrait.com/e/
I believe this is the software used...

http://motionportrait.com/e/demo/
Scroll down a bit further till you reach Characters Gallery section and play... ah Haruhi at the bottom...

I'm tempted to write an email, but I don't think I'll be able to afford it.

The research used to be under the domain of Sony, what a surprise.

At least one thing's for sure, Trinity Universe (to be released by NIS America this June) does have this technology, so you don't have to import White Album to see this in action for your PS3. Agarest Zero also featured it, but that wasn't released in the U.S.

I wish there was an easier way to keyframe this though, the movements seem very similar.

[electric]

I agree this is really a step up. Also, I'd love to be able to use something like that, with one sprite you can animate a lot of expressions.