I know the code (or other stuff essential for extensive editing.) for JA isn't released yet, so this wouldn't be possible now.

You know the moving mouths in JK2 was crappy. JA improved upon that by a lot (or rather, fixed it.), but still, it does not look convincing.
So... I really hope someone would update it so that the character can do mouthing better (if possible, actual lip-sync!).
This might sound trivial, but it really isn't. Why, then, would so many games now feature 'lip-synched' dialogue, and boast about them? :)

Is actual lip-synching not possible (even with released source code?) because of engine limitations?

I'm not a coder, so, I can't do anything even with the code and tools available. :(

BTW... any chance of a Senator/Chancellor Palpatine model? We already have the Emperor ones. :D

WJTW

real lip synching isn't possible from quite a few reasons, and most of them COULD be added in a fan-made mod, except one:

There are only a few bones in the face of the humanoid skeleton. Therefore, even if changing their position programmatically, while reading from a custom-made lip synch data file, the control over the is extremely limited, in fact the most you can do is open/close mouth and move the eyes (if I recall correctly). This does not count as lip synch. That, and the fact that since the engine does not support lip-synch directly, extra overhead would need to be added to each played voiceover (in an MP mod, no less, where the voiceovers are truly unneeded, whereas SP is NOT mod-dable) renders this to be infeasible/useless.

I read an article on gamasutra about this - that london based GTA rip off apparently has a very realistic human emotion and lipsynching 'module' in it's engine.

You can describe all of human speech very effectively with 8 different mouth positions, and if you want even more realism, you can up that to the full 15 (I think it was fifteen ...)

Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy uses something like 5, so it's hard to tell if the lip-synching is off, or if there just aren't enough cases (programming term) of animations for the mouth movements.

I'd say the larger problem with JA is the level of beleivability in the animations - some of them don't seem on par with other games, BUT raven was able to get a much much much larger degree of beleivability over JO, because in JA they could convert the entire map to .ASE and animate map interactions.

But, I digress, animation takes TIME, and Raven was on an accelerated schedule, as it was.

What we have versus what we *could* have (in either direction, good or bad), is still acceptable.

because in JA they could convert the entire map to .ASE and animate map interactions.
Really? I have never really noticed this. Would you be kind enough to explain it to me? :D Thanks.

So, is it true that the mouth animations does not rely on the engine, but instead on a certain file created by Raven that manages all the character's animations?

WJTW

Originally posted by Wudan
But, I digress, animation takes TIME, and Raven was on an accelerated schedule, as it was.

Well, and the game has a LOT more animations than what's usually required for a FPS.

Originally posted by WJTW
Really? I have never really noticed this. Would you be kind enough to explain it to me? :D Thanks.

So, is it true that the mouth animations does not rely on the engine, but instead on a certain file created by Raven that manages all the character's animations?

WJTW

Well, it's a very safe bet that lip-synching is part of the engine code. The animation is inside of a file, but that won't do you any good because you can't really change the file in the way that you'd want to.

The .ASE files are converted from .BSP by ydnar's Q3Map2, which can then be brought in to an animation program and animated.

Let's slow down for a second though - SP mapping is .... well, there aren't many people who do this. Second, there really isn't a suitable skeleton for animating available - Corto has made one available at www.cortocg.com), but I've heard that you can't make animations with it.

It just certainly seems like a waste of time ... maybe.

I'm just getting into engines (coding) and junk, and I already know or am pretty sure that small charater animations like lip synching or having a realistic chain with links in it is too advanced for our current technology. Further more, you would have to have a pretty awsome graphics card to show this. Probably in the future something will come out like this I'm sure. But at the moment, I don't believe there's anything that can actually have details like this in a game. I know, it's a speech. :p

What's wrong with the certain lip synching?