WIll the character shadows get fix soon?

It's look too rough and being the only issue in the graphic category, the only problem when I want to show the screenshot to my friends, alway make me scare if my friend will ask me "what's that garbage shadow?"

Hmm I dont have this problem, my shadows are crisp and clean, you go it on highest?

It does look like garbage. And I'm sure they know what we're talking about..

The shadows that show up on your character model. Not the one projected on the ground.

Character shadows within the game need to be turned on for you to see this effect. And it is more noticeable while playing at low resolution.

Here's an example that was posted on Eorzeapedia:

http://img27.imageshack.us/i/98050058.png/

my shadow effects from my character look pretty good, at least as good as every other mmo out there.

shadows are not that easy to make. Trust me on this.

This is an old img:
http://viion.co.uk/upload/files/ffxi...5-01-55-95.jpg

But it looks fine to me, can see it sharp on her face, even the glasses have a little shade.

My shadows don't look choppy like that but it does seem like just half of my body turns darker.. Then again maybe its just be the time of day when i notice it..

no video game ever made has perfected shadows yet. Its not that easy to do since you need it to be casted from artifical lighting effects. All we see is a lens flare effect. Teamed with lighting effects. The one who said shadows are garbage with pic. Thats normal for any video actually if you look extremely close. Its a clipping thing. Since the shadows are just a layers on the character. Some times layers clip.

You try to make a shadow, I can tell ya this, it is not easy to do.

I've had this same problem ever since the beta.

I realize this is a hardware issue and that not everyone gets it, but it seem for the people who do, it is impossible to simply change some settings and get it to go away.

This problem is a "major" source of stress for me since every single cutscene in the game that has "high" lighting casts these ugly shadows over my character and others as well.

I've gone through 5 different nVidia cards trying to fix it, changed the settings in the nVidia control panel, the FFXIV control panel, and still I cannot get these ugly lines off of my character.

Then when I go online I see screenshots and videos of people without the problem... It makes me want to throw my video card against the wall in frustration.

SE, I realize this is not the most pressing problem on your plate at the moment, but I humbly request that it be looked into at some time. Even if it means just listing the compatible hardware specs that do not experience this problem, that would help out enough so that we all know what "works."

The shadows are that way because the geometry for the arm, legs, face and other areas include "flat" polygons. Those are not "round" like your mind thinks.

The Crystal engine can not shade them the way you are expecting because DX9 does not support it.

TLDR:
DirectX9 Limitations

my shadows look like that on me but the floor one look good it just when shadows is on my Char i see weird looking shadows like the pic Grit post

so everyone running on DX9 has this issue?

My system is running DX11, but the game force runs in DX9...
There's always the option for SE to switch over later, but I'm not really happy with how it is now.

DX9 almost defeats the point of buying a high end card or running in SLI mode.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Evangela

so everyone running on DX9 has this issue?

---

Everyone IS running DX9.

The GAME is DX9.

It's the self-shadowing that is "broken" and it's definately not due to a DX9 limitation. The dev team has other things to do at the moment and even if we wait another year I doubt they will fix any unimportant graphical glitches on the PC-Version :P
Sadly simply increasing the shadow map resolution won't fix this I think. Seems to be a problem with the smoothing or locating the pixel on the shadow map.
For those interested: if the polygon is not lit by the sunlight it's either due to it not facing the light or the self-shadowing (some part of the body blocking the light)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DoctorMog

Everyone IS running DX9.

The GAME is DX9.

---

Yeah, I was going to ask if there was a way to NOT run it in DirectX 9. XD

- Terra

I think the fact that light sources (especially the sun) are all wrong. The sun doesn't really 'move', your shadow just snaps to a different direction at certain times of the day. and light sources like lanterns don't alter or add to your shadow count. Shadows are pretty much just all jacked up. Can very well just turn shadows off in this game, they aren't anything impressive and are just buggy.

It looks like FF14 is reverting to a dithering affect. But i have a fix for it, I take off my glasses.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Grit

http://img27.imageshack.us/i/98050058.png/

---

Eww. That looks bad. I'm happy mine doesn't look like that.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Reika

I think the fact that light sources (especially the sun) are all wrong. The sun doesn't really 'move', your shadow just snaps to a different direction at certain times of the day. and light sources like lanterns don't alter or add to your shadow count. Shadows are pretty much just all jacked up. Can very well just turn shadows off in this game, they aren't anything impressive and are just buggy.

---

True... but even if you try to disable them your game won't run any faster! xD
The thing is that there's no low-detail versions of the characters which means every light source that casts shadows increases the rendering time by an inacceptible amount. Shadows also cause graphical glitches on stuff like bridges (shadow on multiple surfaces) if you don't do the ambient lighting with something like Ambient Occlusion. Sadly AO in this game is horribly coded. At least we can disable that though :/
I think shadows and AO are part of a high quality game these days. But without DX10/11 it's impossible to fully optimize those features.

I think I found the exact problem as I was able to reproduce it with my own engine. It's the "fudge factor" for the floating point error. This is basically a latitude for the depth value. If the factor is too small there will be ugly shadows(this is what we got in this game).
"if shadowdepth-0.03 > ourdepth then shade"
Where -0.03 is the factor. This is done in the pixelshader.

THREAD NECROMANCY!!!!!

I really hate this damn character shadows bug.

The ONE THING that ff14 has over other MMOs are the top-notch character graphics, but they're completely ruined when all the characters I see are covered in crazy stripes instead of functioning shadows. It ruins all the cutscenes for me.

Has anyone found a fix yet?? Do some people not have this issue?? Have the devs talked about it at all??

WHAT CAN I DO TO BRING IT LOUD AND CLEAR TO YOSHI-P's ATTENTION?

I'm psychic so I know what SE will say. It will all be fixed in 2.0, so please look forward to it!

You're welcome!

http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com...ser/index.html

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Answa

http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com...ser/index.html

---

Well referenced.

We will see what happens with the new 2.0 graphics engine...

While I've noticed this problem I hesitate to say it's a problem. It appears irregularly and doesn't distract from the game. I've always assumed the appearance of characters, and how they are lighted, is deliberate.

Even with max settings, in the current game shadows on character models looks absolutely awful 90% of the time, makes the game graphics look alot worse then they realy are sadly, and it very much does distract from me enjoying the game at times.
Like others said for example showing of the game to a friend trough screenshots will make them ask "why are the graphics so bad?" due to this.

Alltho I belive this is hopefully something that wont show up in 2.0

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Laraul

While I've noticed this problem I hesitate to say it's a problem. It appears irregularly and doesn't distract from the game. I've always assumed the appearance of characters, and how they are lighted, is deliberate.

---

When I first saw that shading I wasn't pleased with it but now i consider it rather artistic in a comic book kind of way.

I seen a similar issue on another game recently, but it was caused by anisotropic filtering being set too low or off. Not logging out to look at the config to see if XIV even has an AF option, but you might be able to force it directly in your graphics card's config.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Laraul

While I've noticed this problem I hesitate to say it's a problem. It appears irregularly and doesn't distract from the game. I've always assumed the appearance of characters, and how they are lighted, is deliberate.

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Supergroovegear

When I first saw that shading I wasn't pleased with it but now i consider it rather artistic in a comic book kind of way.

---

I think you're saying the lined shadows in FFXIV are supposed to be intentional like the Valkyria Chronicles manga-style graphics?

I really don't think so... If only I could take screenshots during cutscenes I could show you how bad it looks during EVERY cutscene, and not like Valkyria Chronicle's awesome graphics at all.

SCREENSHOTS FORTHCOMING!

Take a look at the following images... I'm pretty sure both are supposed to look like that.

Image 1

Image 2

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vaen

I think you're saying the lined shadows in FFXIV are supposed to be intentional like the Valkyria Chronicles manga-style graphics?

---

I didn't say they were intentional, thought I can see how you might think that. What I really mean is that that is what the shading looks like and I have accepted the shading for how it appears.

The problem is that the polygon casting the shadow and the polygon the shadow is being cast onto are too close to eachother. There's 3 ways to fix this: a higher depth resolution(unlikely in DX9), shadow maps for each character or PSSM. I have high hopes that it will be fixed in 2.0.