Dawntrail Graphical Update - Au Ra Feedback

[Nebty]

I would encourage people to look at their characters emoting in the benchmark (on the voice selection screen, they will emote when you select one). For me, she looks good while emoting, it's just her resting face is a little different.

While I think for some the changes really are that big, it might put you at ease if you emote and it looks familiar. I do feel like I've come out better than others, but it's sad to see how many people don't recognise their characters. It's worth seeing if you do while they're in motion.

Nope, lol. The emoting is specifically what I'm worried about with the new mouth.

What is this joker smile. The corners go up way too far...

[Fuyume]

I would encourage people to look at their characters emoting in the benchmark (on the voice selection screen, they will emote when you select one). For me, she looks good while emoting, it's just her resting face is a little different.

While I think for some the changes really are that big, it might put you at ease if you emote and it looks familiar. I do feel like I've come out better than others, but it's sad to see how many people don't recognise their characters. It's worth seeing if you do while they're in motion.

I did try that, went through the whole benchmark and everything, but she only looks even a little familiar when her face is in shadow and thus I can't see the dimples they gave her, her pout is less noticeable, and her cheeks aren't so highlighted so they don't look as chubby. The second there's any light on her face it becomes "who is this person".

[Kyu-Kyu]

I'm happy with my character overall, I still recognize her and the changes aren't too drastic. I do feel like the scales could be blended in a little bit better though, there's a clear outline and it's quite distracting. There's barely any shine in the eyes but it looks fine during the benchmark so it's probably just the bad lighting in character creation.
Seems like they've removed the lip gloss though, which I'll hope they'll revert because I'm really not into the matte look.



From the side, chin doesn't seem as pointy as before. Also easier how the eyes are more rounded, which idk how to feel about it yet, I liked how bored she looked.

[Roda]

I know there's a lot to criticize about these new faces, but on a positive note, shout out to whatever dev decided we needed backlight/subsurface scattering on the horns!

(spinning gif warning)

[Kiku_Sazanami]

Exactly! There are some issues with Xaela scales too, and I hope they get that blended and textured better. The horns turned out great!

[resonance_of_terror]

I don't know if this was the case before but I don't like that the Raen scales/horns are tied to skin color. I hope they consider making them the same color au'ra wide. The light skinned au'ras are getting a pretty pink hue to them & us darker skinned au'ras aren't getting that v.v

Besides that I like the changes and hope they keep the lipstick the same as what it is now or put in an option to put in gloss. I really like the matte look but I know some people don't.

https://imgur.com/a/pqOlXJx

[rchmides]

I decided to leave feedback because I felt it was necessary, even though it will be more positive. And for the most part, I'm very happy with the graphics update for my character. I got a case where, roughly speaking, the overall impression of her appearance has not changed at all, but in the details has become better. I like how the lips look now, how the eyes are more alive, and the limbal rings are now really round and well inserted into the iris. And love how the white hair doesn't blend in the light. I also think the skin colour has become slightly paler (with the same colour), something I was dreaming of and a bit jealous of Raen Au Ra lol.

A few notes I found on my character that are worth fixing: the mini-horns that are on a few of the default hairstyles are still blurry; the horns are now not touching the scales, which looks weird if the hairstyle doesn't cover those areas; the horns clip with this hairstyle; and also, at the back, where the connection line between the head and torso is located, the difference between the updated lower part of the scales and the old blurred upper part is very noticeable.

Also, after looking at a bunch of examples from other people and looking at my own, I think the open environments in the editor (The Black Shroud, La Noscea, and Thanalan) have some weird lighting and don't fully convey how the character will look in game (comparing to the example from the benchmark itself).

Even though I'm happy with my character, I still notice quite noticeable changes in face 1 Au Ra on others, such as on my wife's character. And she generally like the update as well as me, but there are some concerns: type 1 eyebrows are now slightly curved upwards, so the character looks more innocent-looking; the new small iris are now even smaller than they were, making a distinct gap between the iris and the lower border of the eye visible, and type 3 eyelashes point downwards instead of straight up. Examples are respectively:

Although I can't say anything but general impressions about the other face presets, but as a female Au Ra enjoyer with a lot of friends with different face presets, I really like the new face 2 and face 3, but I can really see that face 4 needs improvement and understand the strong dissatisfaction.

I'm still grateful to the development team for the work they've done on the overall graphics update, and I hope they listen to the feedback and can address important player concerns. Also, I apologise that the text turned out to be so long...

[EliaStormblade]

Some pretty good notes there, to be honest. Especially on some easy to miss things, like the way the horns and scales no longer connect. Definitely something that needs a fix. And yeah, the character creation lighting is all kinds of horrid.

I know there's a lot to criticize about these new faces, but on a positive note, shout out to whatever dev decided we needed backlight/subsurface scattering on the horns!

(spinning gif warning)

Wow, that's pretty cool. I hadn't even noticed that. I knew they did that for Elezen ears, but not Au Ra scales.

Ok, I -think- I'm going insane. Was doing some fine tuning, when I noticed that in the La Noscea and Thanalan backgrounds my character resembled the og look. Then I turned her around to have light shine on her face... and it looks completely different?? I know I have prosopagnosia (face recognition disorder), but it is still weird that the change of lighting would cause the face to look completely different, which wasn't the case with the old lighting, imo. Explains why the usually very bright cutscenes of the benchmark also made her look "wrong".

Nope! You're absolutely not going insane. This is the biggest marked change between current live characters and benchmark/Dawntrail characters. The shaders/materials of the skin are made to respond to light more like it would in real life, so that means that depending on the lighting angle, intensity and quality, the results are gonna be considerably different. If there's no light anywhere near their face, they also won't have that shine in the eyes. Or at least not with that familiar intensity. It's definitely a change, but it's also kind of inevitable with these updates, because old skins just didn't really do much more other than evenly light up (or darken) where light fell or didn't fall.

(Also, the character creation lighting is pretty poor. Not sure why, but what they did with it is not working out for them. I feel like the environments are all the old pre-Dawntrail stuff, and therefore also provide cheaper and lower quality lighting.... which doesn't really play nice with these new models.)

[Xygran]

Noticed some issues with scales and tail for female Xaela.
The tail appears to be a diffirent colour/shade than the scales.
In addition to scales appearing more "flat" than the old ones I also noticed that they seem to have been poorly cut from the old texture; some of the thinner extended parts seem to have become thin malformed lines.

Left side is endwalker benchmark and right side is dawntrail benchmark. (angle bit different due to weird lighting issues)

[CecMiller]

Even though I'm happy with my character, I still notice quite noticeable changes in face 1 Au Ra on others, such as on my wife's character. And she generally like the update as well as me, but there are some concerns: type 1 eyebrows are now slightly curved upwards, so the character looks more innocent-looking; the new small iris are now even smaller than they were, making a distinct gap between the iris and the lower border of the eye visible, and type 3 eyelashes point downwards instead of straight up. Examples are respectively:

I really dislike the lack of the eye glint present in these photos too.

I also think the pupils are way larger than before (2/3x the size previously). I'm hoping this becomes an option rather than a forced feature. The pupil being so large makes the eyes look more dead because of the lack of the eye glint too.

But yeah pretty evident the iris is smaller and the pupil is larger which I don't think many expected in a graphics update? I feel like those are stylistic changes rather than a direct graphics update.