Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

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Originally Posted by Rueby

This, also please don't touch Zenos' face, I look at what happened to Thancred and feel nothing but dread for my favorites.

Not only did my character change which caused enough grief, but now I dread what they'd do to NPCs that I love way more than my character. It concerns me and honestly instills fear/distrust in me.

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I hope they do not touch the rest of the NPCs. Emet-Selch (and Hades) were good looking before and this update made them even better, but other ones like Thancred, lost their spark.

What worries me about the announcement me are statements like this:

"As noted previously, these issues are a result of the improvements made to graphical and computational accuracy, which have resulted in smoother visuals and a clearer representation of what was intended by the original data."

What especially bugs me is the: "[...] a clearer representation of what was intended by the original data."

What exactly is that supposed to imply?

When you design anything, it is the finished product that matters. When those designers more than a decade ago designed the original models, it was the actual finished output that met the players' eyes that was the intention, not some obscure notion of "what the data intended": the data intends nothing, the designer does, the data is rather a tool to accomplish a vision.

A good example of this fallacy regards old pixel-art games. One might argue that modern high-resolution displays "more accurately display what the original data intended", but actually, those games were designed with the imperfections of CRT-displays to create a more fluid, less pixelated image, which is completely destroyed by modern displays, despite ostensibly being more "accurate".

Or do they mean to tell us that our experiences for the past decade or more with our characters is somehow wrong because of this secret gem of data they are sitting on? Even though they themselves have admitted that they will try to respect our actual experiences of our characters for the past decade and will therefore try to change them as little as possible. Have they changed tune?

The graphical update changed my character from having obviously quite round eyes to now having really rather oval eyes. Are they implying that this might just have been intended all along (despite everyone from the past decade, including me, experiencing that my character has roundish eyes), but we are all too blind to see what this secret holy nugget of data truly "intends"?

I do hold out hope that they might still fix things like this, since other parts of their post were more hopeful, but this talk of "what the data intends" really worries me. That is not how design works.

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Originally Posted by azaleai

This is a pretty technical explaination so please bear with me, I'll try to explain it as plainly as I can.

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Thanks so much for the detailed and thorough breakdown, your posts are always wonderful and informative. I really appreciate you taking the time to do the write up. I think I understood most of it. I have noticed some of this stuff in other games before, like in KH, where the is a model with a ton of expression and detail for CS and others that have way less for outside of CS, but I imagine then they'd have an even more detailed model that the CS model was based one.

I want so badly to believe this had been done with good intentions, and I'm a proponent of getting the artist the tools then need, even AI, to help facilitate their work, but it's exactly because of how rushed and inaccurate so many things have been that I'm on the other end of it. I wish we could see the high poly models they're working from, cause it really feels like the new femroe face is so different from not just the other model but also from the art we've seen over the years. The new nose for instance being so round like a hyur nose... We had rounded noses in the game before, so it's hard to believe that the weird bulbous noses they have now are more "on spec" when they had rounded noses in the game and then gave Femroe sharp noses. And that's just one feature.

More emotes, more hair, more ways to express our character would be great, but a lot of the new feature samey and it's hard to believe that any human was involved with reviewing these features. Instead of getting more things it's like lets make the models all look like these popular ones. Shouldn't be that we have to lose stuff in order for other features to be made functional.

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Originally Posted by Hejligan

What worries me about the announcement me are statements like this:

"As noted previously, these issues are a result of the improvements made to graphical and computational accuracy, which have resulted in smoother visuals and a clearer representation of what was intended by the original data."

What especially bugs me is the: "[...] a clearer representation of what was intended by the original data."

What exactly is that supposed to imply?

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Couldn't agree more! It's like, cool that you have this data that tells you what something "should" look like but that's not what I was sold in 2013 and that's not what I've been putting my money into all these years. They should have made sure that the models looked like the models we have FIRST and then if they wanted to give features from this other data they could have added that later when expanding the CC.

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Originally Posted by Hejligan

"As noted previously, these issues are a result of the improvements made to graphical and computational accuracy, which have resulted in smoother visuals and a clearer representation of what was intended by the original data."

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It's also, again, disingenuous, because it suggests that these are still the original models, or that the normal maps have simply been upscaled from the originals, and the new lighting and higher fidelity simply revealed what was always there -- when we know both are completely brand new. The diffuse maps I could believe are simply machine upscales, and some clearly got more human attention in the editing process than others, if that's the case, but there's nothing "original" about any other element of the update.

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Originally Posted by azaleai

This is a pretty technical explaination so please bear with me, I'll try to explain it as plainly as I can.

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Thank you for this explanation, that does shed some light onto what is happening with the faces. The fact that they probably don't have a high poly mesh to make the new normal maps is...concerning, but also would explain a lot. Also wouldn't be surprised if they tried to cut even more corners with some BS "AI" upscaling that softens features and homogenizes everything, because that is what that kind of generative model program does by its nature.

Ah you guys really shouldn't harp on the "official statement" too much. As a software developer, a higher-up spouting some bs that sounds good while the people actually doing the work cringe and facepalm behind the scenes is the most natural thing in the world. It's just, given my knowledge of that, as a consumer, I would rather hear no news than some obvious smoke blown up my you know where. In this case it is even more cringey when the subject matter, 3D graphics, is something highly accessible that even hobbiests and amateurs with base knowledge are able to contradict. There is already a mod out that restores Thancred's face to what its supposed to look like. Is YoshiP aware of that? I'm guessing not.

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Originally Posted by Anarnee

Thanks so much for the detailed and thorough breakdown, your posts are always wonderful and informative. I really appreciate you taking the time to do the write up. I think I understood most of it. I have noticed some of this stuff in other games before, like in KH, where the is a model with a ton of expression and detail for CS and others that have way less for outside of CS, but I imagine then they'd have an even more detailed model that the CS model was based one.

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That's a very similar concept! Games that don't have customisable character models tend to use pre-rendered cutscenes, in which the studio will animate a scene and then record it on their end and just put the recorded snippets into the game files, rather than the models, animation data and camera data. It allows them to use much higher detail models (and more accurate animation) for cinematic cutscenes and can take up a bit less space for the files in the final product. But rendering with complex models takes a long time (we're talking days with multiple machines rendering a selection of frames each), so if the player has the ability to change anything about how their character looks (equipped weapons or clothes, any character creator data), they'll end up using real-time rendered cutscenes instead. Like how the trailer we're shown for expacs at fanfests is super detailed down to individual strands of hair, but the cutscene we get in the benchmarks, while the same cinematography, is much lower quality. Our PCs and consoles wouldn't be able to render that level of detail quick enough to be anything other than a slideshow, so we're given what we call "game ready" assets instead.

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Originally Posted by CuteBucket

Thank you for this explanation, that does shed some light onto what is happening with the faces. The fact that they probably don't have a high poly mesh to make the new normal maps is...concerning, but also would explain a lot. Also wouldn't be surprised if they tried to cut even more corners with some BS "AI" upscaling that softens features and homogenizes everything, because that is what that kind of generative model program does by its nature.

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I'm glad my explaination helped! I worried it might be a little too wordy and jargon filled, just because I work with this kind of stuff so most of it is second nature to me. Of course, I can't guarantee they don't have high poly models for these faces... my personal workflow was always to make the low-poly, duplicate, then up the detail on one of them to sculpt, so it's entirely possible they took the morphed faces and sculpted from there, but... I'm making a pretty educated guess looking at my face that they didn't bother, because there's no additional data on that normal map that couldn't have come from the original hyur face or special material textures (programs like Substance Painter can be used to apply normal map detail especially for surface textures like skin or woven fabrics without any sculpting).

AI is only as good as the data it is trained on; it reflects the bias of those who programmed it. If it is given only photoshopped perfect looking pretty models for the female faces and rough, rugged manly faces, that would explain why female faces are smooth and wax like, while the male faces are considerably more realistic in terms of wrinkles and pore texture.

Example from the Arcadion tier:

The cutscenes for Brute Bomber and Wiciked Thunder back to back are incredibly jarring. Brute Bomber's face is so wonderfully defined and then Wicked Thunder just looks... plastic by comparison.

It would make a lot of sense for the issues with my face too - Roegadyn brows aren't structured like human brows, so the AI that has only been trained on human faces would of course delete the parts it doesn't understand.

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Originally Posted by Hejligan

What worries me about the announcement me are statements like this:

"As noted previously, these issues are a result of the improvements made to graphical and computational accuracy, which have resulted in smoother visuals and a clearer representation of what was intended by the original data."

What especially bugs me is the: "[...] a clearer representation of what was intended by the original data."

What exactly is that supposed to imply?

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This line really bothers me too... 'Original data' meaning the old models and textures? So, my face having defined creases for the furrowed brow previously was a mistake then, was it? This is the more accurate version? Sorry, I don't buy it. Just a load of PR hogwash to shift the blame to "'incorrect interpretations'" of the old faces so anything they fix now is out of the goodness of their hearts rather than them correcting their mistakes.

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Originally Posted by Hejligan

What worries me about the announcement me are statements like this:

"As noted previously, these issues are a result of the improvements made to graphical and computational accuracy, which have resulted in smoother visuals and a clearer representation of what was intended by the original data."

What especially bugs me is the: "[...] a clearer representation of what was intended by the original data."

What exactly is that supposed to imply?

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Thank goodness this is being talked about. I keep being told that this is more accurate so the changes are just the consequences of having more polygons. It feels like gaslighting because that makes it sound like they designed all of their NPCs from ARR-EnW with the intention that they look like their "original data" and we're just seeing things clearer now. The veil has been lifted! It would make more sense that the characters we know, especially the later NPCs, were designed with the appearance that we were presented with and not something no one was able to see.

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Originally Posted by Doopliss

Regarding the philtrum for ♀ Midlander faces, I thought this JP user made an extremely good, extensive post about something I did not notice before:

While the lip shapes for these faces have always been somewhat similar, it appears that the philtrum and cupid's bow for Face 1 and Face 2 have been made identical in the update, when those parts of their lips were distinctly different from one another throughout 1.x-6.x. The entire curve of their bottom lip inexplicably changed for both of them, too, making them larger...

The bottom image of both sections comparing the different lip shapes from 7.x and 6.x accordingly also show how there is virtually no difference between the two lips now, when before they still had distinct outlines from one another. It's no wonder ♀ Midlander faces have felt suddenly difficult for me to tell apart. They absolutely should not be leaving things in this state, as, many users and myself have said before, the update has lessened our diversity of options.

The user was wondering if they started on Face 2, and just edited Face 1 from there and forgot to adjust the lips. From what I've noticed myself, ♀ Roegadyn have a similar issue going on, where it looks like the philtrum on all of their faces only line up for Face 4's mouth. Again, things like this don't make their newest statement feel honest.

Also, if quoting this user's post over here causes them any discomfort, or seems rude, I will delete this post. Still, for those affected by this issue, I'd recommend upvoting their post over there...

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I'm really glad you and solbianca brought this up, because since switching to Face 2 I noticed this as well. It was disappointing to see I couldn't escape the pinched upper lip and wonky philtrum even with fantasia. I really hope if they restore Face 1's old lip shape, that they also restore the old semi-heart shape to Face 2's lips. They had a unique charm to them.

I wonder if they will address the scales morphing with the face on Au Ra, I tried to report it as a bug with emotes but it was marked as insufficient. They even warp based on eyebrow choice (Face 4 - Eyebrows 2 and 3 in this gif):

https://i.imgur.com/cM3A422.gif

Surely this isn't intentional, it wasn't like that before.