June Benchmark feedback - Miqo'te M dead eyes

The new benchmark is definitely an improvement! There's just one little tweak that I don't think is quite right yet. In the April benchmark, my own character had one of the worst cases of the dead eyes that people brought up: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...ec92a41fd0c32&
My character does have pretty narrow eyes, but that's never been an issue before, and his eyes are plenty expressive in-game currently. Always has been.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...5baa22606ffd1&https://media.discordapp.net/attachm...793&height=665https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...0d004dbe3a7c2&

Below is an edit I made during the first benchmark where I thought it'd look better if they put the shine back in, and possibly pull his eyelids up ever so slightly
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...71a16b13fd3a8&

New benchmark:
https://i.gyazo.com/45b57322a7915035...bd0c9a7bff.jpghttps://i.gyazo.com/9b9c055f2deabca5...0741b5fc2e.jpg
as well as the same shot from before side by side, old first, new second
https://i.gyazo.com/6c06c3dd34cc1534...39e2a09e53.jpghttps://i.gyazo.com/0e518437c7f75d4c...204ec9bc61.jpg

Its slightly better. But compared to the artificial shine that has been put in for other characters, mine still doesnt have it. He seems to still only have the realistic shine, albeit slightly improved. My face is face 4 eye 3, though I dont know if this is exclusive to my characters face and feature combo or whether its more general with Male Miqo'te

Edit to add:
https://i.gyazo.com/ccb4b8fbfca3bd14...2c4610d8a3.jpg
I can see the shine when I look at my character from a downward angle, perhaps it just needs a little more rebalancing?

There has always been a weird visual trickery going on with male Miqo'te eyes, where there's a gap between the visible eye and the eyelid that you assume is shadow but on closer inspection is actually blank.

https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...7417fcd21f.jpg

The upgrade has tried to obscure this by adding dark makeup to the eye and the lower edge of the eyelid so it all blurs together, but the end result is that it looks blurry, and that characters are wearing makeup where they weren't before.

I suspect that what actually needs to happen to make them look "right" in the new graphics is to fill that blank space with the rest of the visible eye that you naturally assume is there, and use either permanent shadowing or get the right amount of eyelashes to create the same impression as before.

I made this comparison a while back of (1) actual eye shape in the current game, (2) how it would look if you "made the illusion real" and filled in the rest of the eye and (3) how it actually looks in the benchmark.

(under a cut because the image came out quite big)

https://lds-img.finalfantasyxiv.com/...2462d70b71.jpg

As a test, I also posted the full version of the altered image by itself to a group chat, and nobody could immediately identify what I had changed in the image.

Admittedly I may have inadvertently exaggerated the difference between game and benchmark because it's impossible to pick that vibrant red shade for a playable character, but you can still see that the shape is so changed from what it currently is.

The eyes are not dead. Now they look more realistic and do not reflect an invisible lamp 1 m in front of you.





Cheers

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Originally Posted by Larirawiel

The eyes are not dead. Now they look more realistic and do not reflect an invisible lamp 1 m in front of you.





Cheers

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In OP’s example besides the final photo where he is looking from the bottom he 100% looks blank and dopey eyed. Like he is looking with unfocused half closed eyes

The image with the natural reflection looking from below looks rather natural though

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

In OP’s example besides the final photo where he is looking from the bottom he 100% looks blank and dopey eyed. Like he is looking with unfocused half closed eyes

The image with the natural reflection looking from below looks rather natural though

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This. The eyes look dopey, dead, not juicy, not glossy, not like a real eyeball, dry like cardboard and most importantly not better

Took pictures of my main male 4 miqo in the new Benchmark as well as the EW Benchmark for a crude comparison. I wanted to be excited for the update, but he looks atrocious.

EW Benchmark
https://i.postimg.cc/cHTyh3yS/GPJxk8-WXs-AA70yg.pnghttps://i.postimg.cc/5yRcdM2K/GPJxm-W7-XUAAR96i.png
New DT Benchmark
https://i.postimg.cc/kG4rp5qt/GPJxm0l-XYAA4-Ydp.pnghttps://i.postimg.cc/3rSQD2Fj/GPJxnb-EXQAAl-LEW.png

There's something so uncanny about him now with those dopey eyes and for some reason he's now smiling like Joker as well??
I looked at my alts in the Benchmark and they all look more or less fine. Definitely better than in the 1.0 Benchmark. Meanwhile this guy looks absolutely high or possessed and it makes me disappointed they waited till last minute to present us with this.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

There has always been a weird visual trickery going on with male Miqo'te eyes, where there's a gap between the visible eye and the eyelid that you assume is shadow but on closer inspection is actually blank.

The upgrade has tried to obscure this by adding dark makeup to the eye and the lower edge of the eyelid so it all blurs together, but the end result is that it looks blurry, and that characters are wearing makeup where they weren't before.

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This is really interesting, It could be when they decided to fill in that empty space, the decision to fill it with the eyelashes only gave us a harsh black where there was more of a gradient before. Doing it this way lost us some of the perceived space, hence the droopy look. Thanks for the reply!

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

In OP’s example besides the final photo where he is looking from the bottom he 100% looks blank and dopey eyed. Like he is looking with unfocused half closed eyes

The image with the natural reflection looking from below looks rather natural though

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Originally Posted by cutestfox

This. The eyes look dopey, dead, not juicy, not glossy, not like a real eyeball, dry like cardboard and most importantly not better

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Vindicated ahahah. I really glad it wasn't just me that thought so, thank you for the replies!

Yeah it seems to be 2 things going on at the same time

Male miqote’s propensity to always be looking slightly down because of their posture means it’s harder to see the natural reflection of the light in their eyes and it over pronounces the “makeup” look iscah explained as being a way to hide the fact they currently functionally just have holes in their eyes

Then they have this weird upwards curve on their lips that gives them a “dopey” esque smile

Remove the first but keep the second and you just end up with them looking excessively happy, remove the second but not the first you go back to benchmark 1’s weird dead eye problem and keep both of them and they look almost high or just (and I know I’m using this word a lot) dopey

None of these three options fit the design of face 4

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Originally Posted by BKNTD

Took pictures of my main male 4 miqo in the new Benchmark as well as the EW Benchmark for a crude comparison. I wanted to be excited for the update, but he looks atrocious.

There's something so uncanny about him now with those dopey eyes and for some reason he's now smiling like Joker as well??
I looked at my alts in the Benchmark and they all look more or less fine. Definitely better than in the 1.0 Benchmark. Meanwhile this guy looks absolutely high or possessed and it makes me disappointed they waited till last minute to present us with this.

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Oh my goodness! I see that your character clearly has the same eye problem, but I suddenly feel a lot better about mine when looking at that smile yours has, what on earth. I think the mouth and lips overall look good, but the corners of his mouth seem to have been pulled up, or at least appear that way because of the lighting? I hope that gets fixed for both of our sakes. Considering we had the EW benchmark 6 months in advance, they really left this one to the last minute, considering how big and important an update this is, they should have given themselves more time, I agree

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Male miqote’s propensity to always be looking slightly down because of their posture means it’s harder to see the natural reflection of the light in their eyes and it over pronounces the “makeup” look iscah explained as being a way to hide the fact they currently functionally just have holes in their eyes

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This is a really good point, I wonder if they did a general edit in an "apply to all" kind of way that they should have checked and readjusted for individual races/sex/face

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

In OP’s example besides the final photo where he is looking from the bottom he 100% looks blank and dopey eyed. Like he is looking with unfocused half closed eyes

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So? You can easily make anyone irl look super weird by taking pictures of them at random times. Looking for every angle of every frame in every lighting condition to look perfect is absurd.

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Originally Posted by Taliriah

So? You can easily make anyone irl look super weird by taking pictures of them at random times. Looking for every angle of every frame in every lighting condition to look perfect is absurd.

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But that's kind of the point, in a shot that is well lit, and looking directly into a characters face from eye level, the eyes dont look quite right. we should not need to search around with the camera to find an angle that looks correct

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Originally Posted by Taliriah

So? You can easily make anyone irl look super weird by taking pictures of them at random times. Looking for every angle of every frame in every lighting condition to look perfect is absurd.

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So the answer to that problem is to………..make male miqote look terrible in all but a very specific unnatural camera angle?

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Originally Posted by DizzyAlyx

Oh my goodness! I see that your character clearly has the same eye problem, but I suddenly feel a lot better about mine when looking at that smile yours has, what on earth. I think the mouth and lips overall look good, but the corners of his mouth seem to have been pulled up, or at least appear that way because of the lighting? I hope that gets fixed for both of our sakes. Considering we had the EW benchmark 6 months in advance, they really left this one to the last minute, considering how big and important an update this is, they should have given themselves more time, I agree



This is a really good point, I wonder if they did a general edit in an "apply to all" kind of way that they should have checked and readjusted for individual races/sex/face

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https://i.postimg.cc/B6TvRRrG/image.png

Here’s my catboi with the same mouth pull up problem

Face 1 is screwed too. The eyes look as dead as ever, and they completely screwed the mouth. I really hope they fix our catboys.

https://i.imgur.com/Pngbvi4.png

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Originally Posted by DizzyAlyx

But that's kind of the point, in a shot that is well lit, and looking directly into a characters face from eye level, the eyes dont look quite right. we should not need to search around with the camera to find an angle that looks correct

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Look, that particular shot is weird, because it's a closeup on a character whose height can very a lot depending customization, and it's probably the worst possible case. You say it's "well lit", well that depends entirely on your character. Here's what it looks like for me:
https://i.imgur.com/M4rmATZ.png

The eyes do look alive but the lighting is pretty awful overall. Conversely I've seen this shot look super good for some other characters. My point is that particular shot is a huge compromise that they have made that can't really work for every character size. Perhaps if they positioned the lights relative to the character's face, regardless of character height? But that would probably create other issues.

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Originally Posted by Taliriah

Look, that particular shot is weird, because it's a closeup on a character whose height can very a lot depending customization, and it's probably the worst possible case. You say it's "well-light", well that depends entirely on your character. Here's what it looks like for me:
https://i.imgur.com/M4rmATZ.png

The eyes do look alive but the lighting is pretty awful overall. Conversely I've seen this shot look super good for some other characters. My point is that particular shot is a huge compromise that they have made that can't really work for every character size. Perhaps if they positioned the lights relative to the character's face, regardless of character height? But that would probably create other issues.

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But he offered like 2 other shots at different roughly neutral angles and they all look terrible, this isn’t just the weird smirking image that looks terrible on near everyone

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Taliriah

Look, that particular shot is weird, because it's a closeup on a character whose height can very a lot depending customization, and it's probably the worst possible case. You say it's "well lit", well that depends entirely on your character. Here's what it looks like for me:
https://i.imgur.com/M4rmATZ.png

The eyes do look alive but the lighting is pretty awful overall. Conversely I've seen this shot look super good for some other characters. My point is that particular shot is a huge compromise that they have made that can't really work for every character size. Perhaps if they positioned the lights relative to the character's face, regardless of character height? But that would probably create other issues.

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Out of curiosity, could you try taking the same shot I did, before the character smirks? In which their head isnt tiled downwards and their expression is more neutral
As an added note, if I were to give you an example of a "well lit, and looking directly into a characters face from eye level" I'd probably pick this one
https://i.gyazo.com/45b57322a7915035...bd0c9a7bff.jpg

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Originally Posted by DizzyAlyx

Out of curiosity, could you try taking the same shot I did, before the character smirks? In which their head isnt tiled downwards and their expression is more neutral

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https://i.imgur.com/4gZ4lbB.png

Very similar result, lighting is still not great (which I don't care about, it's just in this particular shot, there always will be shots with bad lighting in some cinematic or another), although the eyes are alive.

But:

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As an added note, if I were to give you an example of a "well lit, and looking directly into a characters face from eye level" I'd probably pick this one

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I've tried to make a male miqote similar to yours and the eyes catch a reflection that makes them look a lot better in all the other character creation background (both in day and night), at pretty much every angle. See, the problem is that this character's pupils are very large, so they can look dead very easily (my character have that exact same issue on live currently in fact), and even with the new lighting, the atherial sea backdrop is still pretty artificial and its envmap is still pretty subdued. (I guess they went with a bunch of small bright dots, which is what you'd expect in that environment. So there are no large objects to be reflected, and therefore no large bright spot on the eyes, and this type of eye really need good reflections to bring them out)

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Originally Posted by Taliriah

https://i.imgur.com/4gZ4lbB.png

Very similar result, lighting is still not great (which I don't care about, it's just in this particular shot, there always will be shots with bad lighting in some cinematic or another), although the eyes are alive.

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Your characters eyes look very alive! Very pretty. I think the direct comparison really helps my point, so thank you for taking the pic

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Originally Posted by Taliriah

I've tried to make a male miqote similar to yours and the eyes catch a reflection that makes them look a lot better in all the other character creation background (both in day and night), at pretty much every angle. See, the problem is that this character's pupils are very large, so they can look dead very easily (my character have that exact same issue on live currently in fact), and even with the new lighting, the atherial sea backdrop is still pretty artificial and its envmap is still pretty subdued. (I guess they went with a bunch of small bright dots, which is what you'd expect in that environment. So there are no large objects to be reflected, and therefore no large bright spot on the eyes, and this type of eye really need good reflections to bring them out)

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Yknow what, you make a fair point here, so I went in and took the same picture in the other ones for fairness' sake:

https://i.gyazo.com/c454d92e03a9941d...69d.jpghttp://https://i.gyazo.com/715b81a509be37b9...6e81a7db31.jpghttps://i.gyazo.com/621e39d60095e893...a695af9c8b.jpghttps://i.gyazo.com/cb6283eac5439b0f...18f7ad250e.jpg

Unfortunately though, the dead look is pretty consistent throughout, interestingly you can see it does change with environment, though it could do with being pulled down so the shine is not hidden underneath the eyelashes, because thats what the problem is.

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Originally Posted by DizzyAlyx

Unfortunately though, the dead look is pretty consistent throughout, interestingly you can see it does change with environment, though it could do with being pulled down so the shine is not hidden underneath the eyelashes, because thats what the problem is.

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In real life those reflections would be caused by windows, or lamps, or the sky. Things that are usually at eye level or above, but it doesn't reflect in your guy's eyes because he's constantly looking down. So it's really a posture issue.

i have the same issue with the eyes! the change makes my character look less serious and lively and more calm/tired
https://imgur.com/gallery/benchmark-...face-4-9WVqYkt