EU Graphical Update Feedback - Hands and Feet

[Iscah]

Regarding nails: what I would really like is to add nails to bracelets instead of hand pieces. Bracelets themselves are almost always covered by gear anyway, which is a shame but not really avoidable, and it would allow more interesting combinations between hand pieces that show fingers and colored nails.

I suspect that would be a few kinds of buggy. Bracelets don't have any movement to my awareness, they just sit inert on the wrist, and may not be able to move with the hand animations. Also, both gloves and shirts can have a "hide bracelet" command that would mean your hypothetical nails-as-bracelets would randomly vanish with anything that would require a normal bracelet to be hidden.

That said, something they have been adding as hand gear lately which can and should be a bracelet is watches. We've gotten two from Island Sanctuary as hand gear so they can't be combined with gloves.

Meanwhile for hands, no such luck. SE would need to go back and update most of the gloves out there. This late in the game that's a lot of work.

Isn't that exactly what they are doing with the graphics and dye upgrades?

[Sebazy]

Isn't that exactly what they are doing with the graphics and dye upgrades?

Not really, updating the materials is one thing, we might see an additional texture layer per item being used to define material properties and secondary dye templates or it might be something as simple as certain material types (Such as metallics) being applied to certain gloss values and detail texture combinations for example.

And perhaps more importantly, altering the textures that define the materials and dye etc shouldn't impact anything on the geometry.

Taking something like the feet and replacing it with a higher quality model is going to require all of those sandals and open toe shoes/boots etc to be reworked around said new foot. This in turn opens up potential issues with rigging and seams between the different model pieces.

It's a huge amount of development time AND QC to do well. I'd love to see it but I'll be absolutely gobsmacked if SE pull it off without massively sacrificing something for it.

[Siddiax]

Taking something like the feet and replacing it with a higher quality model is going to require all of those sandals and open toe shoes/boots etc to be reworked around said new foot. This in turn opens up potential issues with rigging and seams between the different model pieces.

It's a huge amount of development time AND QC to do well. I'd love to see it but I'll be absolutely gobsmacked if SE pull it off without massively sacrificing something for it.

Can't say it makes sense for them to increase each face's poly count and give them new textures but not update bodies and hands/feet. I'll assume that they're not quite ready yet which is probably the reason we haven't been shown anything so far.

[Yencat]

Can't say it makes sense for them to increase each face's poly count and give them new textures but not update bodies and hands/feet. I'll assume that they're not quite ready yet which is probably the reason we haven't been shown anything so far.

That's what I'm thinking/hoping as well, otherwise it's going to look even more shocking answering a Linkpearl call with the Frankfurter fingers right next to the updated faces and hair.

[Sebazy]

Can't say it makes sense for them to increase each face's poly count and give them new textures but not update bodies and hands/feet. I'll assume that they're not quite ready yet which is probably the reason we haven't been shown anything so far.

Look at it this way:

8 races, 14 unique heads once we factor in genders (sorry Hrothgars!), 4 base variants of each head, that gives us a worst case of 56 head models to update if we assume the worst case of them not being able to use morphs to transfer the updates across all variants at once in their development tools.

Now compare that to the hand and foot models alone. How many sandals, open toed shoes and glove models does this game have? Now multiply that for racial and gender variants. It's going to be in the 1000s. It'll be way more than an entire expansion's worth of new gear.

Again, SE *might* make the decision to create an updated base body for each race and use that going forward, but that's tremendously tricky to do well and with artistic consistency. It's an extreme example, but remember how weird Everquest looked circa Planes when you had a mishmash of old and new player models? Now imagine if WoW had have let you mix and match it's revamped models with the classic ones. Again, it'd just look strange.

It's not the option we want, but unfortunately it absolutely makes sense from a development perspective.

[Yencat]

There's only like.... 4 (I think? Midlander male & female, Lalafell and male Roegadyn) actual bodies though, so hopefully standardizing will be a little easier because of that.

[Sebazy]

There's only like.... 4 (I think? Midlander male & female, Lalafell and male Roegadyn) actual bodies though, so hopefully standardizing will be a little easier because of that.

It's not the bodies themselves that's the problem. It's updating the gear around and over it. Think of something as simple as the strap over the foot on a set of sandals.

With the current club feet that strap could be as simple as 6 tris. Rework the foot into a much higher poly mesh and suddenly that 6 tri strap isn't going to cut it. It's going to need to be remade to correctly fit the new high poly foot model. Now add in your Lala, roe and gender variants and that 1 sandal has spiralled into a not insignificant amount of work. Now multiply that by however many different and unique sandal models this game and it starts getting out of control fast. And that's before we start talking about gloves.

[Zeastria]

What you see is low polycount - thats why you have those sharp edges. :P
They will need to increase the polycount on models (feet,hands),
No amount of texturing will fix it.. it req editing of the mesh.

[Yencat]

It's not the bodies themselves that's the problem. It's updating the gear around and over it. Think of something as simple as the strap over the foot on a set of sandals.

With the current club feet that strap could be as simple as 6 tris. Rework the foot into a much higher poly mesh and suddenly that 6 tri strap isn't going to cut it. It's going to need to be remade to correctly fit the new high poly foot model. Now add in your Lala, roe and gender variants and that 1 sandal has spiralled into a not insignificant amount of work. Now multiply that by however many different and unique sandal models this game and it starts getting out of control fast. And that's before we start talking about gloves.

But things don't strap over or around the body in this game, a fingerless glove replaces your bare hand with a glove with a new hand in it.

I won't deny it'd be a lot of work anyway, but if they're updating the textures of a strappy leather sandal to actually look more like leather then the foot is baked into the sandal anyway and would probably need to be remade.

Edited to add: I definitely see what you're saying though, it's mostly wishful thinking from me. It'd be such a bummer to have all this work done and still be stuck with those ugly Lego fingers.

[Sebazy]

But things don't strap over or around the body in this game, a fingerless glove replaces your bare hand with a glove with a new hand in it.

Right, which leaves you with 1 of 2 options:

1: New base hand, existing items get left untouched and stay as they are.

2: New base hand, existing items get updated to match the poly count of the new hand, thus where my sandals strap reference comes in. You still need to remake the old item's unique geometry and detail to work with the new hand model.

This isn't WoW where you have a couple of shared models across all the gear and items are simply unique textures over those shared models. The vast majority of items have clearly unique geometry, all of which would need updating to work properly.

A strappy leather sandal isn't just a texture baked over the existing foot likely because of the combination of dyeable items and customisable skin tones? You can confirm this quite easily with Reshade and the mesh edges filter:



Those straps are geometry cut into the block foot and wrapping around the ankles. That's geometry that needs to be remade if they want to update those sandals to a new foot mesh. Sadly it's not as simple as polishing and upscaling the textures.

Option 1 is viable from a production standpoint, but nightmare fuel artistically.

Option 2 makes sense artistically, but is a complete horror show for the production.

I suspect both options will have the QA calling in sick