Impressed by the realistic facial animations in #Cyberpunk2077 ? They were automatically generated by #AI developed by Canadian #computerscientists including @SFU professor @EugeneFiume. Story: http://ow.ly/DcqL50CMhZ3 . Summary below. 1/7

. @CDPROJEKTRED envisioned high-quality facial animations and lip-synching for every single character and hundreds of hours of dialogue in the #openworldgame #Cyberpunk2077 – an ambitious feat to tackle by animators alone. 2/7

So they recruited a team of Canadian #computerscientists ( @JALIResearch) that includes @SFU professor and dean @EugeneFiume to apply their automated facial animation technology to #Cyberpunk2077 . 3/7

The #AI workflow developed by @JALIResearch analyzes the audio and text transcript of the dialogue to procedurally generate an emotion-driven visual performance, including facial expressions and lip-synching. 4/7

The facial animations you see in #Cyberpunk2077 are the result of extensive research in anatomical, linguistic and #artificialintelligence methods. This research was presented by @JALIResearch and @CDPROJEKTRED at #SIGGRAPH2020. 5/7

. @EugeneFiume says the goal is not about developing #AI methods to create the perfect facial animation; instead the goal is to create a believable and expressive speech performance that doesn’t distract you and keeps you immersed in the virtual world of #Cyberpunk2077 . 6/7

Learn more about the #AI technology behind the #Cyberpunk2077 facial animations, including how it adapts to different languages, in this story featuring @SFU computing science professor, and @JALIResearch co-founder, @EugeneFiume: http://ow.ly/DcqL50CMhZ3  7/7