7.0 Graphic Update - Female Roegadyn Face 2 feedback

[faiarrow]

I brought it up in the nose thread but putting here too to add to discussion as a fellow face 2 enjoyer:

It's taken me a day to process because I'm still quite upset about this all, but compiled here with direct match-for-match comparison caps and my thoughs as to some of the changes. A little more in-depth than my prior mood of just 'well, goodbye to my character.'

For the record:
Yes I have run the benchmark. I am aware the CC lighting is not 'the same' as the dynamic in-engine lighting. I can't get comparable side-by-side caps of Sko outside of the CC. The only thing the benchmark actually running showed me was that her skin is a touch warmer and more like her in-game and PS5 CC colouration, and that my concerns regarding other things are still quite valid.





The pros:

• Texture update generally seems to be OK - there are issues with the way hair blends into the forehead made by floating sections on certain racial styles and the new lighting engine shading under them so it makes it blatant they're floating, but that can be ironed out.
• Racial gear texture update is great.
• Hair might be OK with tweaks, the clasp at the back on this style has clearly not been updated yet as it is very poorly textured and looks flat.

The cons:

• I can live without the permanent catch light. I don't think the black pupils works on f!roegadyn after almost 10 years of seeing them with the coloured/jewel effect. Impacts lighter eyes especially.
• Rhinarium/ash/smudge being made so light in the new skin is a problem; the lighting engine will not magically make it darker. Removal of prominent racial specific traits like this erases identity and makes it hard to believe the intended PLL statement that our characters will simply 'look better.'
• Lips certainly aren't fantastic - the new facial bones have adjusted how the lips sit and they seem to be quite a bit smaller?
• Tattoos and face paints still being 256px is pretty jarring. I suspect this will be fixed in time but it's really awful in the benchmark.
• Angle of the new lashes seems to be heavily impacting the visual of the already problematic new eyes, shades them intensely and even in scenes where there should be more brightness to the eyes it makes them very dark.

The problem of streamlining the workflow for the update so that all human-like characters are stemmed from hyuran models is really starting to show, even within the hyur themselves seeing a lot of disparity between midlanders and highlanders. I know roegadyn are not exactly a beastial race compared to the likes of viera, or au'ra, but we're losing a lot of the galkan origins from the XI roots of this race with so much smoothing out.

Large images: Image 1 - Image 2

[Anarnee]

I brought it up in the nose thread but putting here too to add to discussion as a fellow face 2 enjoyer:[/url]

Thanks so much! I thought your analysis of the stuff was great. Was really sad they didn't take the feedback about the pupils in your thread into consideration either. It doesn't feel like a femroe only problem either, dark part of the eyes seem to be darker all around.

[faiarrow]

Thanks so much! I thought your analysis of the stuff was great. Was really sad they didn't take the feedback about the pupils in your thread into consideration either. It doesn't feel like a femroe only problem either, dark part of the eyes seem to be darker all around.

PLL 79's femroe preview looked to have a less severely blackened pupil so for a while I had hope...

The pearification of most face 2 noses as well is pretty egreigous. It's just disappointing given there really was a lot of hype about how characters will keep their intended feeling while just looking better in multiple PLLs and JP interviews with 4gamer and the likes from Yoshida. Really makes me wonder if someone screwed the pooch and put in older updated assets? Especially given the lips issue wasn't present in PLL 79 and even PLL 80's comparisons on numerous face types across all races.

[Anarnee]

PLL 79's femroe preview looked to have a less severely blackened pupil so for a while I had hope...

The pearification of most face 2 noses as well is pretty egreigous. It's just disappointing given there really was a lot of hype about how characters will keep their intended feeling while just looking better in multiple PLLs and JP interviews with 4gamer and the likes from Yoshida. Really makes me wonder if someone screwed the pooch and put in older updated assets? Especially given the lips issue wasn't present in PLL 79 and even PLL 80's comparisons on numerous face types across all races.

Yeah, looking at some pictures I've seen of the other faces, the nose doesn't seem as badly rounded and bulbous on the other faces, it looks like face 2 is more shiny on the sides, where the others still look nice and sharp.

Yeah, that would be the best case scenario, even my Lalafell who barely had any lips just has none now. I hope we've just got a bunch of the WIP assets.

[faiarrow]

PLL 79's femroe preview looked to have a less severely blackened pupil so for a while I had hope...

Had to wait until I was finished work for the day to pull out my cap from PLL 79, but this was the last update we saw for femroe prior to the benchmark and PLL 80, and it made me think they had taken onboard the criticism about the black pupils on femroe as the darkest section of the pupil in this isn't even as black as the lashline and lashes. I have swatched them on the cap in the image.



This feels a lot closer to what they meant with regards to keeping character integrety. There also isn't the lip issue here in this preview, which again makes me wonder if the benchmark was released with older assets. PLL 79 was six months ago, it's a little concerning if the newer assets shown there aren't present in the benchmark which is meant to not only allow people to test their specs but get their first look at the new graphics first-hand.