CD Projekt RED Uses Innovative Ciri Animation System in The Witcher 4
CD Projekt RED has begun talking about a major technical gamble in The Witcher 4: the game's animation system. On the AnsweRED podcast, Mateusz Petras (Animation Director) and Dominika Stanek (Senior Gameplay Animation Coordinator) described how they’re trying to make characters move in ways that feel alive, not just technically correct.
Much of the talk focused on Ciri. Unlike Geralt — who, per development notes, was told to "move his face as little as possible" — Ciri was given a far more animated treatment. For the first time at the studio they used full performance capture, i.e., the actress’s face, voice and body were recorded at the same time. Moving to that workflow wasn’t instant; it required roughly a year of negotiations with writers, quest designers, and game designers to line everything up.
Their approach leans on what they call "stylized realism." After mocap, many animations are intentionally sped up by ~20–30% so actions read faster on-screen and avoid feeling sluggish or unresponsive. The system itself is layered: multiple streams—walking and combat gestures blended with magic work, eye darts and facial detail, cloth sims—play in parallel rather than one after another (e.g., a run animation and a cloak collision are resolved together).
Fabric simulation proved to be a particular headache. Dresses and loose garments deform where they meet the world, so even a simple seated scene can cascade into a dense technical problem — physics, clipping, and animation all fighting for priority. The team’s enthusiasm is clear, but they admit it comes with trade-offs and lots of iteration.