Spaghetti hair in the graphic update

Hello,

First I want to thank the development team for their incredible efforts into bringing us a new benchmark to adjust and address most of the feedback that has been given. You didn't even need to give us an actual second benchmark as you could have just shown us the correction through pictures and videos, so I am appreciative of the effort.

I want however to point out at something that has been bugging me for years and that the new graphic update didn't seem to address in any way, shape or form: the hair textures in the game make hair look like spaghetti. Most hairstyles but a few have textures that are literally drawn like our favorite pasta and it seriously bugs me how unsatisfying it looks.

It gets even worse with the update because not only the texture resolution has been improved, so the spaghetti is less blurry and pixelated and more obvious to see, but it also clashes even more with the rest of the update that looks more realistic and overall way better. It feels to me that hair rendering, especially compared to other new FF titles like FF7:R, has a 10+ year gap with the new characters' looks. Hair textures just feel like from another time era and it shows.

Could you do something about it, even if not for release?

Taken from the pictures shown in the last lodestone announcement, those hair textures are not satisfying to look at, at all:

https://img.finalfantasyxiv.com/t/46...jpg?1717144805
https://img.finalfantasyxiv.com/t/46...jpg?1717144805

It really kind of feels like when a beginner artist tries to draw every strand of hair.

The lalafell in the after looks a bit better, but the miqo'te is rough with those dark shadows on every strand and white hair. (also that clear, what 130 degree angle bend on that clump of 6 strands in that red circle?)

It generally does look better on characters with darker hair because the shadows blend in more.



Forgive the sub-minute hackjobs I hope you can get the idea while understanding that I didn't wanna bust my butt deciphering what resolution the hair textures are and then recreating them and editing those recreations...
https://i.imgur.com/z9PQ9KQ.png
vs
https://i.imgur.com/1JBN0uk.png


The fact that the male lala's hair is less severe in the "after" side gives me hope that they're addressing this

To bring it more into perspective as well, if you compared it to ff16 hair textures for example, which is a game created by the same team and shares a lot of similarities visually, the gap is abyssmal. Now, I'm not saying that I'm actually expecting the same amount of finer details on a MMO, and I also know that the goal was stated not to fall into ultra realistic, but do I dare hope to find at least a middle ground?

https://i.imgur.com/izy3qPu.png

I'm bringing up 2 different sore points for me on XIV's hair:

1) The shadering itself, which doesn't seem to follow the updates on the other parts of the faces, notably on normal and PBR mappings. It looks like hair to me is still stuck in pre PBR technologies (aka specular textures).
2) The art itself, which essentially draws big fat spaghetti or mops.

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Originally Posted by Roda

It really kind of feels like when a beginner artist tries to draw every strand of hair.

The lalafell in the after looks a bit better, but the miqo'te is rough with those dark shadows on every strand and white hair. (also that clear, what 130 degree angle bend on that clump of 6 strands in that red circle?)

It generally does look better on characters with darker hair.

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The problem is, the hair still consists of low polygon geometries. They have only increased the texture resolution. And this is the reason why it looks so weird.



Cheers

I actually think this is a model problem. They created the hair models with a very limited amount of polygons. They are effectively a bunch of triangles mashed together. So the result is the hair is just textured on.

Whereas the hair is clearly not made like that in FF16 and it appears every strand is an actual strand.

They can't really go back and change it for old hair styles without flat out remaking all the hair models they've ever made. But maybe there is hope for future hair models where they should be able to use more polygons?

The introduction of Clive into FF14 could be a preview of what they can manage https://www.reddit.com/r/FFXVI/comme...image_by_ff14/

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I actually think this is a model problem. They created the hair models with a very limited amount of polygons. They are effectively a bunch of triangles mashed together. So the result is the hair is just textured on.

Whereas the hair is clearly not made like that in FF16 and it appears every strand is an actual strand.

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ff16 is a single player game, so they have complete control over how many characters are displayed, therefore they can allocate them a higher budget (for memory, GPU usage, cpu usage possibly as well if there's jiggle physics on the hair strands). And it also mean that there's only one player character and a bunch of NPCs, so they can easily give a higher budget for the player character.

In ff14 they instead have to restrict the per character budget to make sure things will still fit in a typical "worst case scenario" (like limsa at peak hours). Plus they are also constrained by the crappier platforms (consoles) which have more limited resources.

It's not going to change and folks just need to be happy they've addressed many of the main complaints. The INSANE crunch and overtime this team is working through just to deliver on 6/28 is over the top thanks to you folks. Be happy you're getting anything at all.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I actually think this is a model problem. They created the hair models with a very limited amount of polygons. They are effectively a bunch of triangles mashed together. So the result is the hair is just textured on.

Whereas the hair is clearly not made like that in FF16 and it appears every strand is an actual strand.

They can't really go back and change it for old hair styles without flat out remaking all the hair models they've ever made. But maybe there is hope for future hair models where they should be able to use more polygons?

The introduction of Clive into FF14 could be a preview of what they can manage https://www.reddit.com/r/FFXVI/comme...image_by_ff14/

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Speaking as someone that has worked for a while in the 3D art department in the industry, this is hardly a mesh/3D problem. This is a problem of texture scaling first and foremost. The hair strands are displayed as if they were looked at through a magnifying lens right now, like x10 or something. The start for a fix to this is to take those strands and scale them out by ten or something more fitting.

After that, they'd need to actually port them to PBR tech and shaders like they have done for the rest of the character parts, which means making metallicness and glossiness maps as well as normal maps to get actual grain come out of the texture.

The meshes can stay as they are right now. At best they can subdivide them and add more triangles but that's not the core of the issue by far.

FF14 Clive import has the same issue, although it's one of the least egregious hairstyles for sure (and it's also possible it still tries to conform to the old engine).

Only my opinion though, since I haven't seen all the actual details of their graphic processes especially when it comes to the new update.

People really cant wrap their heads around the fact that this games roots are based on the ps3...

dude posted a photo from the newest FF running on ps5.

Massive graphical improvements will not be possible in this MMORPG as long as it has to run on the old XBOX and the PS4 and i assume they will ditch both of the last gen consoles next Expansion. Not that it helps all that much since they already have to forcibly enable LOD for Xbox Series S

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Originally Posted by Araxes

Massive graphical improvements will not be possible in this MMORPG as long as it has to run on the old XBOX and the PS4 and i assume they will ditch both of the last gen consoles next Expansion. Not that it helps all that much since they already have to forcibly enable LOD for Xbox Series S

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PS4 is capable of good looking hair, the issue is going to stem from the simple fact the engine this game runs on isn't equipped to do anything fancy that makes hair look good.
FF16 and FFXIV are not on the same engine, I don't think the XIV engine is even used anymore.

FF7R used Unreal and FFXVI is on a different proprietary engine.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

PS4 is capable of good looking hair, the issue is going to stem from the simple fact the engine this game runs on isn't equipped to do anything fancy that makes hair look good.
FF16 and FFXIV are not on the same engine, I don't think the XIV engine is even used anymore.

FF7R used Unreal and FFXVI is on a different proprietary engine.

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Incorrect. XVI's using XIV's engine, obviously expanded
Source: https://www.gamesradar.com/final-fan...ive%20surprise

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Originally Posted by Acelyn

People really cant wrap their heads around the fact that this games roots are based on the ps3...

dude posted a photo from the newest FF running on ps5.

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Uh-uh, and the graphic update is also based on the ps3 I presume?

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Originally Posted by Araxes

Massive graphical improvements will not be possible in this MMORPG as long as it has to run on the old XBOX and the PS4 and i assume they will ditch both of the last gen consoles next Expansion. Not that it helps all that much since they already have to forcibly enable LOD for Xbox Series S

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This also has nothing to do with the thread at hand, the new graphic update is introducing PBR processes and it works on xbox and ps4 even if not with all options. They can remake and update the faces, skin, shaders, there is literally no reason they cannot do the same for hair as well.

If people actually read what I wrote, it's not a problem of platform, it's a problem of bad art combined with a lack of new updated shaders on hair.

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Originally Posted by Taliriah

ff16 is a single player game, so they have complete control over how many characters are displayed, therefore they can allocate them a higher budget (for memory, GPU usage, cpu usage possibly as well if there's jiggle physics on the hair strands). And it also mean that there's only one player character and a bunch of NPCs, so they can easily give a higher budget for the player character.

In ff14 they instead have to restrict the per character budget to make sure things will still fit in a typical "worst case scenario" (like limsa at peak hours). Plus they are also constrained by the crappier platforms (consoles) which have more limited resources.

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I'm aware and I usually say this as well. But arguably they can at least use more polygons on the hair than they did with the original hair styles released in ARR and that's my point.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Speaking as someone that has worked for a while in the 3D art department in the industry, this is hardly a mesh/3D problem. This is a problem of texture scaling first and foremost. The hair strands are displayed as if they were looked at through a magnifying lens right now, like x10 or something. The start for a fix to this is to take those strands and scale them out by ten or something more fitting.

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I guess they could do that and just make the gaps between the strands invisible so it looks like there's gaps when there's not. The polygon thing just became really obvious due to the issues in the benchmark combined with trying out ARR hairstyles.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

FFXVI is on a different proprietary engine.

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...which is based on the FF14 engine. There are a number of things in FF16 that make you know it's the same engine too.

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Originally Posted by Acelyn

People really cant wrap their heads around the fact that this games roots are based on the ps3...

dude posted a photo from the newest FF running on ps5.

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Scaling the size of a texture on a 3D mesh has nothing to do with hardware limitations. You literally just paint thinner hair strands, or a better texture overall. The texture can be the same resolution. Or even just have the UV map size that's assigned to the hair increased a small bit so that the existing texture looks more zoomed out. If you don't do it by much you won't get any tiling or repeating of the texture and it can still look good.

Hair may very well be the last in a long line of improvements yet to be worked on over the next few years.

It doesn't really matter if the hair looks perfect if it is still clipped when wearing armor with hoods or high collars.

Hair clipping is a much, much less trivial problem to address. It requires the introduction of solid mesh collision systems. I'm not saying it's not possible though, you'd have to see that with their programmers, but it would be introducing a brand new system all the same, and probably adapt all the hairstyles and gear with very basic physical 3D meshes (envelopes, similar to the invisible ones you already have behind the 3D environment, furniture, etc) acting as blockers used by such a system.

What I'm discussing here however, requires literally nothing but some work on the art department side because all the tech is already here for it.

The reason the scaling was so big before is more likely because of the low res of the textures that blurred everything, and in order to see any macro detail come out of that soup you actually wanted to have extremely broad spaghetti strokes. Right now though, it feels obsolete and counterproductive with higher res textures. And to be honest, even without talking about the diffuse map scaling, there is still the fact that hair doesn't seem to have been reworked to include the new shaders brought by the update, sadly, the texture just got a higher res.

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Originally Posted by Araxes

Massive graphical improvements will not be possible in this MMORPG as long as it has to run on the old XBOX and the PS4 and i assume they will ditch both of the last gen consoles next Expansion. Not that it helps all that much since they already have to forcibly enable LOD for Xbox Series S

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Read the post above yours. Besides, even if factoring that out (and correct me if I'm wrong) aren't the minimal OS requirements to run the game even weaker than Xbox and PS4? I'm not a tech guru, but I'm pretty sure consoles are not the constraint. It actually has much more to do with what consumers can afford than anything. It's just something that has to be accepted for any game that is multi-platform.

Hair is spaghett, add marinara sauce and garlic bread.

This is what happens when you create an MMO where the premier end game content is afking in Limsa zoomed in on your character's face.

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Originally Posted by Rekh

Incorrect. XVI's using XIV's engine, obviously expanded
Source: https://www.gamesradar.com/final-fan...ive%20surprise

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"Square Enix revealed the upcoming RPG uses neither Unreal nor Luminous Engine in a recent interview with YouTuber Skill Up."

https://gamerant.com/final-fantasy-1...engine-choice/

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Originally Posted by Gralna

"Square Enix revealed the upcoming RPG uses neither Unreal nor Luminous Engine in a recent interview with YouTuber Skill Up."

https://gamerant.com/final-fantasy-1...engine-choice/

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From your same source "The company refused to elaborate on the matter." Safe to assume they're using modified Luminous but were/are still deliberating as to what to call it as its specifications and technology has been modified so much that it would be unfair to still call it Luminous.

If they don't want to reveal the name it's safe to take their earlier statement of "modified Luminous" as the most probable answer.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

Read the post above yours. Besides, even if factoring that out (and correct me if I'm wrong) aren't the minimal OS requirements to run the game even weaker than Xbox and PS4? I'm not a tech guru, but I'm pretty sure consoles are not the constraint. It actually has much more to do with what consumers can afford than anything. It's just something that has to be accepted for any game that is multi-platform.

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You just have to look for the twitter thread of Benchmark performance, there's a significant amount of people running this game in hardware worse than PS4.

Problem of this game is that 1.0 failed massively and 2.0 as a result was not as optimal as it could be (and to make matters worse they HAD to launch the PS3 version). As time went on, they had to build up on this foundation which was already compromised.

compare FF12's hair with XIV and you will understand why it looks the way it does. I don't mind them changing it slightly as it still keeps the overall aesthetic that they were going for when they originally redid XIV

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Originally Posted by Oizen

PS4 is capable of good looking hair, the issue is going to stem from the simple fact the engine this game runs on isn't equipped to do anything fancy that makes hair look good.

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The hair does not look like it does because the engine is not capable to render better hair. The engine itself can do it without any problems. I have seen some modded characters with much better hair. The reason for it is performance. It is a huuuuuge difference whether a game is a multiplayer game or not. You cannot apply many optimizations on player characters because you cannot predict the movements and actions of them. And you cannot predict how many characters you will have in one place. With NPCs however it is perfectly doable and you can reuse many things etc.




Cheers

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Originally Posted by Araxes

Massive graphical improvements will not be possible in this MMORPG as long as it has to run on the old XBOX and the PS4 and i assume they will ditch both of the last gen consoles next Expansion. Not that it helps all that much since they already have to forcibly enable LOD for Xbox Series S

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Nex expansion will drop PS4 support, and new xbox is powerful enough to handle everything

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Originally Posted by faris_minamino

Nex expansion will drop PS4 support, and new xbox is powerful enough to handle everything

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incorrect, M$ wants full support for both the series X and S meaning if you support one you have to support the other (the only game to not do this fully has been BG3 when it came out). The S has the same amount of power as the Ps4 so don't count on them dropping either.

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Originally Posted by Balmung_Griffin

You just have to look for the twitter thread of Benchmark performance, there's a significant amount of people running this game in hardware worse than PS4.

Problem of this game is that 1.0 failed massively and 2.0 as a result was not as optimal as it could be (and to make matters worse they HAD to launch the PS3 version). As time went on, they had to build up on this foundation which was already compromised.

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Compare screenshots of people who were able to run 4K (eg SLI configurations) in 2010 to those who can run 4K now. The irony is the Version 1.0 engine would have looked nicer once hardware caught up, but they couldn't wait for that. It was literately faster to build a whole new game engine that was purposely designed as a MMORPG first, and not some "single-player game engine (unity/unreal/crystal tools/source/etc) with retroactively glued on multiplayer"

Version 2.0 however is a lot LESS detailed than version 1.0. Just compare version 1.0 Thancred and Y'shtola to Version 2.0, even Version 5.0 (Shadowbringers)

What would be fun to do is see SE "bring 14" up to the quality 1.0 had originally, and backport the cinematic 1.0 versions of the class jobs that are otherwise the same as they are in 2.0. We don't need the belts to come back, but I'd appreciate seeing the original cutscenes come back where the job wasn't changed entirely with the new lighting system.

I think the biggest insult over time was the "grapes" incident.
https://i.ibb.co/L5jt129/lowpolygrapes.png
We went to that from this:
https://i.ibb.co/cbxw26M/highpolyflowers.png

Like, yeah, I get it, maybe don't spend the render budget on things people aren't going to zoom into more than once, but come on. No LOD? I know the game does LOD, could it not do that for things seen close up?