Like The Witcher III before it, CD Projekt Red's Cybepunk 2077 is expected to push the boundaries of visual fidelity, AAA storytelling, and game development technology. Alongside ray tracing and greater model details, Cyberpunk 2077 will also take a huge leap in lip syncing for voice acted characters. It has extended this feature to every character in the game in 10 different languages, without needing to motion capture everything.
Developed by external company, JALI, the bespoke animation model creates a much more accurate method of human facial animation to make a super accurate lip syncing system for real voice acting. It not only makes the lips map to the kind of words and expressions being said and made, but allows for greater variation among characters, making them more unique, and more realistic in the same breath.
JALI discussed this in a recent Siggraph video, where it broke down how the speed works, its speech style, and other facial animations like eyebrows, blinks, and neck motion leads to a more realistic facial lip syncing system.
The Jali system analyzes the text transcript and voice recording of the actor to develop a custom profile for what jaw, tongue, and lip positioning is required for each character at each moment within the speech on a per frame basis. Speech style and lip synch animation are two different systems applied to each character in turn, with over 20 different metrics considered for different consonants and vowels, with various mechanisms making it possible to deeply customize every syllable. This leads to a seamless lip syncing model that could make Cyberpunk 2077 character the most realistic we've ever seen in gaming.
Cyberpunk 2077 is, after several delays, slated to debut on November 19.
