Cyberpunk 2077, officially gold, will cement the release date of November 19th, a few weeks after the release of the Xbox Series X, Series S and PlayStation 5. Cyberpunk 2077 will send 10 different languages with support for voice-over, but the technical presentation developer has revealed that it will all have an animated lip-sync.
Animating for a single language track is a lot of work, but doing it for 10 sounds is like a huge effort. To streamline the process as much as possible, CD Project Red worked with Fake Research Inc. to develop a model that could automate the process from reality. This technology allows audio track and tagged animation data to be fed into the model, which in turn produces facial animations that accurately call the right parts of speech with facial movements. Given the large number of dialogues involved in the game, these animators should save considerable time.
The full break is a 20-minute clock, but this snippet (shared by Twitter user Shinobi 602) captures how impressive the system is when bouncing between incredible variety of bids.
Lip-sync is sometimes crucial for immersion when playing in alternative languages, which can conflict with many players who are not the default in English. Earlier this year, Sucker Punch’s Ghost Tsf Sushima lip-syncing was animated according to English and voice-to-toe, leaving a sense of lack of space for more appropriate Japanese acting if you decide to switch. This was especially true when playing in black-and-white Kurosawa mode.
It remains to be seen how well this system handles the integrity of Cyberpunk 2077, which seems like a large-scale role-playing venture. Cyberpunk 2077 will launch on Xbox One, PS4 and PC, while Xbox Series X / S and PlayStation 5 also support backward compatible game. The next optimized next-gen patch is planned for 2021.
