Headcount: Who else wishes there were more facial hair options?

[MistyMew]

More hairstyle options period!!
agree with your facial hair request and please add some waist length styles for all females /races please!!!

[Shioban]

More hairstyle options period!!
agree with your facial hair request and please add some waist length styles for all females /races please!!!

Waist Length hair simply wouldn't work.

If you want an explanation why, read the following;

Each and every developer has a different way of approaching hair and it's problems, FFXIV ARR went for a low-performance, easy to design/implement and adjust method, albeit at the risk of clipping.




Almost ALL of the hairstyles that came out in 2.0 were short (for a good reason), it was only after large players requests that they dabbled a bit further.

Hair Clipping has some possible solutions. But from a developers point of view, it's very very difficult to avoid clipping, especially when you're encountering numerous gear types/shapes and possibilities. Long hair in a game like this using skinned weights as opposed to independent physical hair simulations, clipping IS going to occur, unless countermeasures are taken such as;


The easiest one being mesh deformation, where the hair simply takes into account the surrounding topology and whether it's more appropriate for the hair to sit over or "tucked into" the piece of gear. There's currently a system already in place (pending they carried it over from 1.0) that was developed to accomodate different gear types.

Simply put, if you have a pair of long trousers, and the character wore a pair of boots, the topology of the trousers would "tuck" neatly into the boots automatically, saving a metric ton of time and effort on the developers part, leaving room for creative freedom to experiment with all sorts of gear shapes and sizes.




The reason I'm explaining this is because the same thing could be used on hair, but that being said it would have it's own share of issues.

As all of the hair is rigged to the Head>Neck>Torso/Shoulders (just like a piece of clothing is), this isn't a particularly easy task without causing the topology to bend, stretch and distort.



If the hair was an independent physical simulation then the problem would be solved, but having 20-100 characters+ on screen at once with independent physical hair would be a nightmare to optimise. (With the PS3 currently it's just not worth the implementation time/effort).



"What do you mean rigged hair?"

Basicly, 3D animation relies on the animator to 'assign' what areas of the model are assigned to what 'bone' so, obviously you want the 3D faces for the head to be different from the 3D faces for the neck when you're animating.

Essentially you 'paint' what areas you want to be manipulated by each bone (fading the colours into one another for a smooth realistic body-type frame).
As shown below, the "painted" areas are where the skeleton will know to manipulate the 3D model.




Hair (for the most part in games) follows this rule also, where certain segments of the hair will be weighted to the head, neck, back or any other joints that are assigned for the animation skeleton.

"Why does that matter again?"

Basicly, the hair is stuck in one position, it may animate/move a little bit giving the impression that it's "free flowing" but it's still rigged to the body, an independnt physical simulation would not have this issue.

But as you can see that would have it's own problems;







As for the Glamour Restrictions, that's just obvious.

As liberal as FFXIV has become in terms of gear and the overall world/design composition, it's nice to have some integrity that tanks will look like tanks for the most part and casters like casters.

It's a silly restriction by this point, but from the developers point of view I can see why they'd want to keep it restricted this way.

[Noshpan]

I really would like more facial hair options for male Miqo'te (and the other races, too).

[abzoluut]

I am totally with this. Anything which gives us more character customization!

While we're at it: please give female characters hips. I mean what the fudge!?

[Eggnook24]

Chest hair for my Lalafell!

[Elim]

Yes please.

If lalafell had more facial hair and more hairstyles I'd probably switch back to one within a blink of an eye.

[KonaMochi]

Not a huge fan of Granpa Jethro beards, but some stubble or jaw beards would be a nice touch. Especially stubble for lalas.

[Seiryuukishi]

Sam Elliot manstache for Lalas please. Hard to be taken seriously as a tank when you look like a child. And yes I am being dead serious.

[Volkaru]

I would absolutely love more hair options! Facial hair, body hair, either or both!