Dawntrail Graphical Update - Au Ra Feedback

[Berkilak]

I am not a fan. It is particularly egregious on Raen, who do not naturally have the black elsewhere to compliment it.

Here is my character as he is now:



Here he is in the benchmark:



That added black eyeliner might work for a few looks, but it doesn't mesh with mine at all. If it was an additional face option, this would be all good, but there is no way to opt out of it.

It really affects the general feeling I get when I look at my WoL, and I do hope that this is reconsidered before launch.

[SabrinaScribb1es]

I appreciate the devs working hard to give us the new graphics update, but the Au Ra's faces are just off-looking. Part of what made the female au ra so charming was that each face had a very distinctive shape and vibe, but now all of the faces feel somewhat homogenised.




I don't want to be all negative so first I want to list the things I really like about the update:

• I like how the limbal rings have been redone. I am very glad that they still look like they glow!
• I also like the updated textures on the horns and tails (though the artifacts on the scales are defintely an issue).
• The backlighting and subsurface scattering on the horns looks amazing. The way the light shines through the horn tips is amazing!

As for what I really don't like about the graphics update (specific to female face 2):

• As everyone else has pointed out, the lips have been greatly changed. My Au Ra originally had very round and wide lips. Her new lips aren't as wide across her face, which makes them look weirdly small compared to her other facial features. The lip shape is also more angular, and the cupid's bow is wider than before, completely chaning the entire lip shape. The lips lack the darker line that seperates the top lip from the bottom lip, which makes for an awkard straight-faced expression. The lips also lack the previous gloss/shine. My biggest grievance with the new lips is that they lack the previous dimples! The dimples gave my Au Ra a soft expression and helped to accentuate her facial expressions.
• The nose has also been greatly changed. The nostrils are more prominent and well-defined, which I feel gives a weird uncanny look. The tip of the nose/nostrils also looks more upturned than before, which makes some of the shadow that fall onto the nose look strange. Overall, I think that the new noses look almost a bit too realistic.
• The eye shape has also been changed. The change is subtle, so it's a bit difficult to describe, but my Au Ra's new eyes appear to be slightly shrunk horizontally and stretched vertically, which makes her appear less youthful. The eyeliner/eyeshadow is also subtler.
• The new philtrum is also much more defined, and it meets the lips at an angle rather than going straight down like it did before. I think that the sharper philtrum further exacerbates the issues I had with the nose and lips, especially in harsher lighting.
• The actual shape of my Au Ra's face has been changed. Her cheeks used to slightly pucker out before meeting with the chin, but now the transition between the cheeks and chin has been smoothed (this is easiest to see at the 3/4 angle). My Au Ra's cheeks aren't quite as chubby, and she has lost some of her baby face. Her overall jawline looks sharper too. This new face shape also affects how all her other facial features are placed too, particularly her new lips.

[karadazkar]

Some Before (Left) and After (Right) shots of my Face 3 Fem Ra.

Features used:

• Eyebrow Shape - 1
• Eye Shape - 2
• Nose Shape - 2
• Jaw Shape - 3
• Mouth Shape - 4
• Eye Color - R: 92 / G: 30 / B: 30
• Limbal Ring Color - R: 85 / G: 24 / B: 35
• Face Paint #1 (Eye Shadow), Dark, Fully Black

Both game and benchmark are set to Gamma 50.



Overall, a lot of generally positive changes in the surface texture department. However, I do some have... concerns.

1. Pupils are larger and less distinct compared to the rest of the iris, which gives the eyes a very different overall look.
   
   
2. The limbal ring is much duller. I was able to "correct" this by moving the ring color to a much lighter hue (R: 143 / G: 49 / B: 74), but I feel like that shouldn't be necessary in the first place.
   
   
3. Similarly, her hair is much lighter than previously.
   
   
4. The horns and scales are very dark now, which results in some of the improved details and textures being lost.
   
   
5. Aside from the face, the edge of the scales looks very jagged, with irregular small protrusions where the original has relatively smooth contours.
   
   
6. Where the scales on the horns and face look clean and detailed, the scales on the body look much different. Not in a good way. They seem much less detailed and don't appear to have the same style of texture, or even the same color palette. It's jarringly inconsistent compared to the face, and the body scales need to be brought in line with the face scales.
   
   
   
   
7. I know this is optimistic to ask, but doesn't hurt: I'd love to see some additional options for scale coverage on the body—arms, legs, back, etc. Current auri scale coverage just feels very sparse, almost entirely around the ankles, wrists, and hips.
   
   
8. The lips feel very dull. They no longer really look like lips at all, but rather like skin that just has some red highlighter brushed over it. There's no gloss or sheen, and the texture feels lifeless.
   
   
9. The bottom of the nose / nostrils is not only noticeably wider, but is noticeably flatter than before. (See markups below for comparison). The nose lost a lot of its "narrow" appearance. =(
   
   
10. Her eyebrows are considerably thinner top-to-bottom and appear to be slightly shorter left-to-right as well. Perhaps because of that, they also appear flatter, with less arch than before. Perhaps it's simply that they're blending more with the skin along the edges, but they feel like they've lost a lot of their "pop." Fem Au Ra have no facial feature option to further thicken their eyebrows, so they seem to have lost their former character with no way to replace it.
    
    
11. It's hard to put my finger on it exactly, but her skin seems slightly more... grey? Her original skin has a faint red hue to me, but it feels like that's been desaturated in the benchmark

[Lucyeriae]

This has been said a lot, but I just feel like leaving my opinion as well because I feel a bit conflicted (I apologize for grammar errors, English isn't my first language).



The reshape of the mouth makes it look like it lost something. The edges of the mouth are not as deep anymore. But what I feel it affects more is the smile.





I love my girl's smile. I feel like the change of the corners of the mouth, as well as the shape in general, makes it look less like a natural smile and more like a hard curve upwards, and that makes it feel like she is forcing a smile and doesn't even want to be there.

[AdventZero]

The limbal ring is much duller. I was able to "correct" this by moving the ring color to a much lighter hue (R: 143 / G: 49 / B: 74), but I feel like that shouldn't be necessary in the first place.

Not sure if this will work for your Au Ra or not, but might want to check in different areas and times of day. I thought mine were duller at first too, as you can see the old look (left) is brighter than the new one (right).



However, if I switch to night in limsa it looks like this. Again old left, new right.



The rings are much brighter now, at least at night. It seems that the rings will be super bright at night, but not very noticeable at daytime.



And as an aside, I think my girl looks great with the update an can't wait to play DT. Though, I do hope SE can find a way to make everyone as happy as I am in the end. ^^;




About the only thing I'd ask for is slightly shiner lip colors. Otherwise I'm good.

[Iscah]

Not sure if this will work for your Au Ra or not, but might want to check in different areas and times of day.

Even if this is the solution, I don't really want my previously consistent characters to only look like themselves in particular lighting.

[Tarath]

I feel a lot of creative liberties was taken when updating the facial structures of the player models
It's understanding that the general facial structure becomes softer with higher poly count, but I'm not found of how noticeable different some of these changes are
My character now has a slightly wider face, bigger facial scales (though I like this change), nasal bridge is wider and more even, lips are more plump and the iris feels much more fussy than before
What I liked about this face type is how sharp everything is, but now it has lost a bit of its charm and edginess with the new nose, mouth and eyes



Not quite the same angle, but his overall expression has gone from sharp and determined to mysterious and ambiguous


And regarding the iris and limbal rings I gotta admit they're pretty neat on its own, however they deviate from the original design
The glow can get fairly muted sometimes too, which is noticeable with the aetherial background in character creation and towards the end of the benchmark
I would personally like to see that limbal rings get a more consistent glow regardless of light source


Last but not least I'm not found of the new scale texture, it has lost some of its lively colour, depth and thickness
They don't seem to match the horn colour as much as they used to either (though that's a nitpick)



However the horns looks great
Exactly what I expected from the graphical update, edges are slightly softer with the higher poly count, the overall volume feels fuller/rounder, yet it retains its original silhouette
I do hope this feedback gets taken into consideration along with everyone else's, keep up the remarkable work

(oh almost forgot, the glove is clipping through the hand)

[Aadrian1234]

Face 4 lips got changed almost as much; it's like they removed the dimples from 2 and added them to 4. Add the other changes on top of that and the result is that all the faces have a more standardized look now... but the fact that they were all stylistically different is what gave each of them their appeal in the first place. 1 was conventionally cute, 2 was soft and silly, 3 was a bit more mature, and 4 was sharp and a little threatening. Now they're all cute. Which is great if you like cute, but everyone else is up a creek without a paddle.

Yeah, I don't want cute and soft, I don't want dimples, I want my character to still be looking as fierce, bold, and fiery as she is now in the live game. That's her defining character trait, and it's no longer her without her fierceness and determined look.

[SchwarzwaelderTorte]

Not quite the same angle, but his overall expression has gone from sharp and determined to mysterious and ambiguous

Not to take away from your otherwise valid feedback, but I think the facial animation in the benchmark screenshot is unique to the benchmark and meant to mirror the CGI trailer, so it looks a lot more "> : )" than what we're used to (on my character it looks a little uncanny to be honest). So this shouldn't reflect on how existing facial animations will look, if that can give you some reassurance.

or at least I hope so...

[Ribey]

This is my first time posting on the forums. Personally never felt the need to give feedback until now because of these graphics changes. They are so drastic that my WoL doesn't even look like the same person anymore. Sorry about the image links. I'm not sure how to get them working

The most egregious change would have to be the eyes and lips. The pupils have at least doubled in size, coupled with the gradient of the iris getting darker (than 6.58) near the upper eyelid plus the lack of reflections further adds to that undesirable dead eye look... It's especially apparent on lighter colored eyes like my own WoL. The narrower pupils, consistent iris color and eye reflections makes her look much more focused.

The lips now have dimples (why?) and more shading around the lips that makes it look more pronounced as if it's jutting forward. It also seems to contrast more noticeably around the bottom lip giving it a different look that seems larger than the original. I also noticed the glossy-ness of the lips seemingly swapped with the glossy-ness of the skin. Now lips look matte and the skin is more shiny which is the opposite of what it is in 6.58 right now. I prefer the way it is in 6.58 by a large margin.

The skin is noticeably lighter/less saturated as even at the lowest gamma setting, my WoL's skin still looks very bright. Under certain lighting conditions however, her skin looks worse off as if she's sick like in the 1st comparison.

The hair is hard to describe. Colors seem to be more pale but also darker parts got darker? It makes the hair seem more coarse or rough and less smooth or soft as it is in 6.58. Despite upscaling textures, pixels are still very much there and will be noticeable when gposing (which is my end game). I'd much prefer 6.58 over 7.0 hair.

Comparisons (left 6.58 - right 7.0)
All pictures are taken at 0 gamma correction.

1.

https://imgur.com/a/CVypQlb

2.

https://imgur.com/zg7U6AM

3.

https://imgur.com/R8gTlcW

4.

https://imgur.com/A41xQ0b

5.

https://imgur.com/A41xQ0b

6.

https://imgur.com/jI9wz0X

7.

https://imgur.com/DTF1DmY

8.

https://imgur.com/9Lp3HAF

9. Eyes

https://imgur.com/g5HDePj

10. Lips

https://imgur.com/0t8uIx5

Ribey is scared of the changes T-T



part 1/2