In reconnecting with the social discussion on unnatural faces of the children of AC Valhalla, the independent developer known on Reddit under the pseudonym of Ehrand has given his opinion on the ugly polygonal models of young NPCs of games like Ubisoft’s blockbuster open world or Cyberpunk 2077.
In his speech to a post that went viral on Reddit, the developer starts from the simple observation that “The proportions of a child are different from those of an adult. Usually the ratio of the head to the body is larger than in adults and it is very difficult to replicate this effect with the same engine without giving it a ridiculous appearance. It is even more difficult. get appreciable results if you decide to replicate a specific age in a young NPC, also because all this would require a complete rewrite of the animations “.
According to Ehrand, therefore, the development of Younger NPCs in titles like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla or Cyberpunk 2077 it turns out to be less simple than it might seem in the eyes of gamers: “This kind of intervention has a cost in the production pipeline, for similar NPCs you need unique polygonal models, animations and rigs. In large open world games, pre-set rig models are usually created for the animations of the limbs and movements of the NPCs, so that they don’t have to individually animate thousands of characters. That’s why developers often end up resizing an adult and reusing their animation presets, it’s a system that greatly reduces the cost of production “.
Without a deep intervention on animations of the two blockbusters by Ubisoft and CD Projekt, therefore, for Ehrand the probability of seeing substantial changes to theaesthetic appearance of virtual children that populate the universes of AC Valhalla and Cyberpunk 2077 they are practically nil.
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