Technodemo with Ji-Man from Half-Life 2 from E3 2003 recreated on Source 2 – Igromania

For many fans of the universe Half-life game exhibition E3 2003 remains epoch-making: the company Valve presented Half-life 2… And the main part of the presentation was the demonstration of the advanced facial animation and lip synchronization at that time using the example of Ji-man.

Animation enthusiast Corey Laddo has recreated Ji-Man’s famous tech demo on a modern version of the Source engine. For greater reliability, he retained the original voice acting in the video, except perhaps adding a later line to it about “will this work on my 486”.

It is easy to see that the improvements were made exclusively to the appearance of Ji-man and the textures of his clothes, face and hair. If all the movements of the facial muscles look realistic, then thanks to the fact that back in 2003 the creators of Half-Life 2 were way ahead of their time, creating convincing animation of the characters’ faces. And it is still difficult to make a revolution in this area.

Recall that the original tech girl looked like this.

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