An Uncanny Valley Example

Oh dear god! That is one screwed up mouth/jawline.
Please stick to standard proportions and rules THEN tweak in the little imperfections.

not a bad tech demo... pity it's only 3/4 there on the animation side.

The lady's neutral expression is fine - model and texture absolutely fine (not fantasticly great, but by no means bad). But BAD BAD BAD lip synch and blend shapes... I really hope that's because they where forced to do it with bones instead of morphs, just so they have an excuse and not because the artist thought it looked good as is.

Another game this reminds me of is magna carta -- cinematics are very pretty, good models/texturing/lighting/etc... horrendous animation. Destroys the impression of all that good work by just shattering your suspense of disbelief.

As a general rule of thumb, I've always had it drilled into me that if you're going to have a project with 100% quality in all departments but one, then it's better to take a whole project 75% of the way consistently instead.

I liked it... lip synching aside. I thought THAT was bad. First thing I noticed... but yeah, I liked it. I thought she looked fine. Her mouth was a bit big, but everything worked expression wise.
So yeh, I like that.
-Parka

there are parts when the mouth blendshapes, or bones, or however they did it, look fantastic. mostly in the close up angry shots. apart from that, its teh eye acting and really good body language that sold me. But yeah, they really should have nailed that mouth animation first though.

I dont think this is an example of Uncanny Valley though....maybe you need to be outside the industry to be creeped out?

There's an article on The Wiire on the Uncanny Valley (which makes reference to the animation linked in the first post), stating that perhaps the Nintendo Wii is better off being underpowered, so that developers won't have to aim for photo-realism. http://www.thewiire.com/features/149/1/The_Uncanny_Valley_and_Wii ...Interesting read.

the Wii is better off being underpowered so they can focus on innovating with what theyve got, and stand out from the competition more than they already have.

Souri that article is spot on. Photorealism really isnt that important. When you think about what is more universal, really simplicity is king.

Emoticons for example, a simple :) can apply to any person in the world, regardless of gender, race, sexuality etc. Whereas if emoticons became more detailed, they would loose their universal appeal.

Oh and this is a bit off topic, but I was taught theory like this in an art degree at a university, not a vocational tafe. Just an example of the difference between uni and tafe. A lot of people think uni is useless, but it really does broaden your theoretical understanding of the art/world and how the two are interpreted and interact. Which ultimately develops your critical thinking and decision making when creating art.

I believe their was a post over at cgtalk.com about that animation. A person who worked on the clip said it was mostly motion capture and the person who acturally did the motion capture had a big/weird mouth like in the tech demo, Also the audio was abit off, which gave the bad lip synching. Animation aside, the models and such are really pretty good.

Ultimately photorealism costs a lot, lot more money- money that could be spent on making the game fun. Gimme something like serious sam anyday- lots of fun, a bit dodgy in the art stakes

They showed the new trailer for Heavy Rain at GCDC 2008, and boy, what a difference a couple of years makes, eh :D I've put a pic of the uncanny valley'd female protagonist from 2006 above what she looks like now.