[Dawntrail Benchmark] Hair reflections feedback

The graphics update looks incredible and I cannot wait to see more. The environment is beautiful, characters are even more beautiful, the clothes are astonishing, everything looks amazing. Thanks the team for all the effort.


One thing that I did notice is that some hairstyles look really flat compared to how they looked before and even comparing to some other hairstyles in the benchmark. My hyur looks absolutely beautiful with the update but her hair looks "flat" when it didn't before. There's some notable lack of highlighting in her hair.

Here are some side by side comparisons (Left is 6.58, right is 7.0):
https://i.imgur.com/ARsfjjh.png
https://i.imgur.com/oahp0J8.png
https://i.imgur.com/m9cOMel.png
https://i.imgur.com/0d0vlUJ.png

As you can see in those images, everything has depth but the hair looks very very flat. I believe its lacking some reflective property.


In the benchmark, we can find a few examples of hairstyles that have some proper highlights:
https://i.imgur.com/r8GVz8z.png

Now the previous hairstyle in our black-haired elezen lady:
https://i.imgur.com/G2RXOS9.png




So I'm not sure what happened here, but I hope we can have some shiny highlights back to our hairs.

They upscaled the hair texture only to make it look even less detailed and like a rag
https://i.imgur.com/HQIhQdg.png

Adding my comparison to here as well. My current hairstyle with the same colours looks totally flat now, lacking proper shine and colour. The texture itself has become overly sharp and thread-like. Some hairstyles on the other hand look really detailed and reflective as were shown above. Here's hoping that this is all just a heavy WIP and that there's still time to improve upon these issues.
https://i.imgur.com/EN94LaB.png

Hair is obviously glitched or not finished in its current state. If you remember the liveletter, it was also unaffected by rain or any water effects they were showing. If anything, it's a given that it's gonna be addressed.

If it varies between hair I'd assume it's just that some hairs are unfinished, yeah. Unfortunate look for the moment, but I would be shocked if it wasn't addressed by release unlike some of the other changes.

Yeah, hair has lost almost all of its luster, it's kind of crazy.

Hair now also looks really inconsistent depending on where you are and what kind of lighting situations you're in. Easily noticeable just by pulling up the Character window next to your character standing in the world.

I've posted about this on the feedback mega-thread but I'll reinforce here too: this specific hairstyle still seems to be unfinished and lacking the proper shine/reflections.

Here how it is currently on 7.0:
https://i.imgur.com/L1TbPPl.jpeg

Here is how other hair, with proper shine and highlights, currently looks in 7.0:
https://i.imgur.com/cByG01T.jpeg



I hope they take a look at that, because they clearly have the tech to make this hair even more beautiful than it is currently and I'm starving for some good shine on it.

Yeah hairstyles are inconsistent as heck right now and the quality swings wildly between one and another. It doesn't feel finished still.

They removed detail shading and highlights and reflections on hair. It's partly because they wanted to make the characters look brighter for the new lighthearted expansion. Hence why characters are now a light source. You will look lit up even in environmentally dark areas, but this clashes with detail shaders on the character including hair and face.

Its okay to say it looks awful and is a bad decision. This isnt a graphics upgrade anyway, its a compatibility update.

It kind of blows my mind that this was here before. I absolutely noticed it's not here now, though. Everyone's hair is made of paper.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Valence

Hair is obviously glitched or not finished in its current state. If you remember the liveletter, it was also unaffected by rain or any water effects they were showing. If anything, it's a given that it's gonna be addressed.

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I want to eat my hat for writing this.

I'm actually surprised that hair is still in such a derelict state after the upgrade. The only thing that's been upgraded is the resolution of the diffuse textures, but we lost every kind of reflection shader in the process... It's flat cardboard spaghetti now.