Project Update #96: English Voice Recording Report!

hyo_razuki said:
Shenhua is looking gorgeous but why has her dress changed (the sleeves)? It doesn't make any sense at all.
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I like to think when she woke up at the river and saw Ryo she thought: 'Damn! He's hot! But my dad won't approve...'

Now after learning her dad has thankfully either run away, been possibly kidnapped, or better yet is DEAD, she's dolled herself up with earrings and a fancier dress and is like "Hey baby, wanna go to Bailu Village?" ;)
 
Haha.

I like the new costume quite a bit, personally. I think they wanted to freshen up Shenhua's image, as her hiking clothes from Shenmue II are sort of plain. Personal headcanon is going to be that she changed out of them on the day she and Ryo went to the stone pit.
 
Spaghetti said:
Haha.

I like the new costume quite a bit, personally. I think they wanted to freshen up Shenhua's image, as her hiking clothes from Shenmue II are sort of plain. Personal headcanon is going to be that she changed out of them on the day she and Ryo went to the stone pit.
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Nah, man. I would imagine it was because she levelled up upon completing the quest "The Secret of the Sword of Seven Stars". Ryo did, too, but it merely changed his underwear.
 
Sorry for the double post but -

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Ryo and Shenhua open and close their hands as they're walking in this scene. DETAILS!
 
Didn't one of the updates mention they're using motion capture? It'd explain the natural body movement. I always expected the cutscene animation to be great -- I'm more curious about the in-game animation. No more NPCs spinning their necks like owls to talk to you? No more Ryo's UFO catcher hands when he picks up objects?!
 
orient said:
Didn't one of the updates mention they're using motion capture? It'd explain the natural body movement. I always expected the cutscene animation to be great -- I'm more curious about the in-game animation. No more NPCs spinning their necks like owls to talk to you? No more Ryo's UFO catcher hands when he picks up objects?!
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Way back in 2016 they were researching the Xsens motion capture suit. I assume they probably went with that in the end, it's probably one of the more cost effective solutions out there, plus you don't need an actual studio to set it up. Yu said they'd hire a studio for larger action scenes, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of animations were captured in the Ys Net office.

The originals used a lot of motion captured animations even for in-game stuff if I recall, but things like animation blending and locomotive systems were still pretty rudimentary. Those sorts of advancements should make in-game animation look a lot better these days, though I can't guarantee there might not be some weirdness if you try talking to an NPC at a strange angle.
 
I'm expecting modern animation techniques in-game -- I guess I'm just curious how a mid-budget "AA" game like this will hold up animation-wise, because Shenmue has such a huge focus on character interaction compared to other open-world games.
Suzuki Yu said:
i don't think this is a cutscene.
this is an in-game conversation similar to the ones used with Shenhua in SII with the same camera direction.
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I don't think the player is controlling Ryo at this point, so from an animation perspective it's basically a cutscene.
 
Suzuki Yu said:
i don't think this is a cutscene.
this is an in-game conversation similar to the ones used with Shenhua in SII with the same camera direction.
which gives me some sort of relieve because the animations here feels good enough to me.
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orient said:
I don't think the player is controlling Ryo at this point, so from an animation perspective it's basically a cutscene.
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The code in the top right has a totally different naming convention from how we know cutscenes are signified.

Obviously not going to disagree with the fact it isn't player controlled, but it's not explicitly a cutscene either. Trying to find a way to explain it...

Okay - think about the difference of animation in Shenmue II between a cutscene with Ryo and Shenhua, and when they're just walking down one of the many paths together in the Guilin sequence. This snippet shows they're closing that gap by including a lot more character body language as part of gameplay dialogue sequences, instead of reserving it for cutscenes. There's a lot more moving of the head as Ryo looks back to speak with Shenhua, the stuff with the hands, Shenhua looking ahead then back over to Ryo, etc.

It bodes well for the rest of the game, as it looks pretty natural and detail-oriented.

I wish they'd shot this on a better camera. I'm not too bothered by the details on the laptop screen getting blown out, but the low frame rate kills any reasonable impression of how smooth the animation is. Premiere tells me the video is 15fps, so at least half the frames are being lost if it's running at 30 on the laptop.
 
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I think we're getting ahead of ourselves a bit, trying to analyse this type of thing from a tilted monitor in the corner of an amateur video :p

We'll have direct footage to analyse soon enough, then we can really compare gameplay vs cutscene.
 
orient said:
I think we're getting ahead of ourselves a bit, trying to analyse this type of thing from a tilted monitor in the corner of an amateur video :p

We'll have direct footage to analyse soon enough, then we can really compare gameplay vs cutscene.
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I mean, yeah. Actual footage feels right around the corner at the moment. Honestly it feels like we're just trying to fill time, haha.

That said, I decided to do something to get an impression of how the animation may actually play out at 30fps...

Basically I've rendered out a video at 30fps that uses Premiere's optical flow frame interpolation to fill in the missing frames. Take a look:


If the animation looks as good as that, I will be very happy indeed.
 
Spaghetti said:
The code in the top right has a totally different naming convention from how we know cutscenes are signified.

Obviously not going to disagree with the fact it isn't player controlled, but it's not explicitly a cutscene either. Trying to find a way to explain it...

Okay - think about the difference of animation in Shenmue II between a cutscene with Ryo and Shenhua, and when they're just walking down one of the many paths together in the Guilin sequence. This snippet shows they're closing that gap by including a lot more character body language as part of gameplay dialogue sequences, instead of reserving it for cutscenes. There's a lot more moving of the head as Ryo looks back to speak with Shenhua, the stuff with the hands, Shenhua looking ahead then back over to Ryo, etc.

It bodes well for the rest of the game, as it looks pretty natural and detail-oriented.
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exactly.
in my comment i referred to those parts where you talk with Shenhua walking the narrow roads of Guilin, this is exactly that with the same direction.
i call clearly tell that the scene itself isn't polished enough for a cutscene. (animations & camera work wise)
 
If the difference between a "non-playable in-game" scene and a "full" cutscene is the effort put into camera work and animation, then I'm not sure we can accurately judge which this is based on less than 15 seconds of bad footage. Especially with no gameplay footage to compare it to. March can't come soon enough :cool:

Anyway, this has reminded me of catching a glimpse of the notebook in an old update and how excited that got me, knowing it's coming back. It feels so close now.
 
Thanks for sharing the new ingame footage. It looks very good. You can really see how much the game has improved over the years. And it seems to get even better. I can't wait to see the final product.
 
Imo, even if it isn't labeled a cutscene, it still is. If you can not control the playable Character, or alter the geometry, affect dialogue choices, and generally do not control any gameplay besides camera, (unless controlling the camera is a core mechanic of gameplay itself, ie Fatal Frame, Siren, SnapShot puzzle platformer) and things are playing out in a scripted manner, it to me is a cutscene. A lot of old Japanese games let you control camera during cutscenes.

But there appears to be zero actual game play in that clip, ergo it is a cutscene imo.

Also I believe there are different types of cutscenes. Interactive and non interactive. There are also pre rendered and real time cutscenes and a mix between all of them.

A QTE for example is an interactive cutscene.
It is arguable that non player controlled segments with only dialogue options are also interactive cutscene but I think that is much more debatable.

Anyway, I think an easy way to determine if that clip is a cutscene is if Yu has his hands on the controller, and does the scene progress without player input.

Though he touches the keyboard, he doesn't have his hand on the controller, and the scene still plays and dialogue and clip proceeds even when he isn't touching the keyboard. So again, imo it is a real time Cutscene.
 
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The English voice of Shenhua is also doing the voice of Qatherine (the Pink haired one) which was announced today!

 
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