uring the SIGGRAPH 2020 virtual conference earlier today, Jali Research Inc. brought us behind the scenes look at the tools CD Projekt Red is using for their Facial Animations system.
For those that don't know who Jali research is, Jali is a innovative and relatively new company that focuses on pushing the bleeding edge when it comes to Facial Animations in Games, Animation and Avatars.
JALI seeks to change the face of facial animation by providing animated content creators, game makers and developers of virtual avatars the means to generate the highest quality speech and facial animation at scale and in multiple languages; with a solution that can be integrated into end-user pipelines, regardless of rig construct, production suite or (game) engine.
Facial Animations are a key aspect in crafting AAA modern day games to make them believable, especially when it comes to Role Playing Games that offer a high amount of immersion, complex branching narrative and overall sense of realism such as Cyberpunk 2077.
With JALI it makes it possible for the team at CD Projekt Red to offer linguistically and regionally accurate facial animation for ten languages: Japanese, Russian, French, Mandarin, German, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, and English.
In this video we're given a 20 minute dive into how Cyberpunk 2077 Facial Animation workflow works using JALI. Which is used to generate expressive high fidelity speech at unprecedented scale. We're joined by several members of CD Projekt Red and JALI Research and dig into the systems at play and how they have crafted the beautifully crafted facial animation system in 2077.
If you're interested in digging deeper into Jali Research, be sure to check out their in depth write up and also the Jali Research Co. website.
