Dawntrail Graphical Update - Au Ra Feedback

[CecMiller]

In my observations, they:

• The eyes are greatly improved, have real depth and look like actual eyes (no regard on shape.)

The lips aren't actually wider or narrower than before, but widening the face causes them to look extremely small now, and the character's overall look is just ruined. I don't know who was in charge of this update but they really missed the mark on au ra.

The only part I disagree with is that they greatly improved the eyes. The eyes look much worse in the benchmark here for me personally - they are less sharp and the pupils are massive and it looks more dead than before. I think for some, the blending of the umbral ring is more of a hit or miss - some love it, others hate it and prefer the harsher contrast/border. The red colour is more washed out so you have to select a brighter red to get the same effect. Currently in EW, you can have a deep, but also bright colour for the umbral rings, but now you either choose a watered down colour compared to current options or go for the brighter options which are not as deep as before. Not sure why they changed the colour options to the point that if you import your current character, you have to change the eye colour to get the same effect.

Would be nice to have an option, but I think the massive pupils look significantly worse personally. I'm hoping they give us an option to customize the shape of the pupil.

Overall, I think the graphics direction also resulted in a style change where the au ra were made to look more "cutesy" resulting in changes such as much larger pupils which isn't a graphics update, but a style change and not really what people were expecting.

[Ariel_Wind]

Hi everyone, here to give feedback as well.

I need the devs to know that I love their work and that I also play a femroe with a darker skintone and she looks absolutely stunning in the benchmark. But my main is an au ra and here she is:



Left is her face now as of 6.58 / right is her face in the benchmark.

This is face 4 / Mouth 4. For some reason the benchmark makes her look lifeless. My main issue is with the lips, I don't know why they got bigger like that. As other people have noted face 4 got rounder and so the character looks less fierce and imo the shadows look... strange. I also take issue with her new skin/eye color but I found that I can achieve the original look by changing colors slightly.

In the benchmark cutscenes those issues were less visible so maybe it's also a question of lighting and facial expression. But I still wanted to report on that!

[Taranok]

Hi everyone, here to give feedback as well.

I need the devs to know that I love their work and that I also play a femroe with a darker skintone and she looks absolutely stunning in the benchmark. But my main is an au ra and here she is:



Left is her face now as of 6.58 / right is her face in the benchmark.

This is face 4 / Mouth 4. For some reason the benchmark makes her look lifeless. My main issue is with the lips, I don't know why they got bigger like that. As other people have noted face 4 got rounder and so the character looks less fierce and imo the shadows look... strange. I also take issue with her new skin/eye color but I found that I can achieve the original look by changing colors slightly.

In the benchmark cutscenes those issues were less visible so maybe it's also a question of lighting and facial expression. But I still wanted to report on that!

Looking at it, I'd say the eyes look more dead primarily because of the eyebrows. They're higher up, less fierce, more neutral. They're also darker but the face as a whole is also darker. And, unlike you, I can't fix my skin tone because it was already at the extreme of its category, so I have no hope to fix it. I just have yellower skin now. I'll need to grab a comparison later.

[Loggos]

Hi everyone, here to give feedback as well.

I need the devs to know that I love their work and that I also play a femroe with a darker skintone and she looks absolutely stunning in the benchmark. But my main is an au ra and here she is:



Left is her face now as of 6.58 / right is her face in the benchmark.

This is face 4 / Mouth 4. For some reason the benchmark makes her look lifeless. My main issue is with the lips, I don't know why they got bigger like that. As other people have noted face 4 got rounder and so the character looks less fierce and imo the shadows look... strange. I also take issue with her new skin/eye color but I found that I can achieve the original look by changing colors slightly.

In the benchmark cutscenes those issues were less visible so maybe it's also a question of lighting and facial expression. But I still wanted to report on that!

Something else I noticed about the eye brows is that the crease/fold above your eyes is a lot more visible in the EW image and the shadow under your eye brows/in your eye socket is a lot darker, intensifying her gaze even more.

Eye lid folds can really change how an eye looks so the fact that it is less prominent in the DT picture adds quite a bit to the blank expression/stare for me personally.

I can see that the shadows in the EW picture are stronger in general, while they are a lot more mellow in the DT image, making your character's face look flatter.

But - without having checked - I am under the impression that the shadow under your eye brow/over the eye lid fold is darker relatively speaking than the corresponding shadow in the DT image.

That makes me wonder if they did in fact resculpt the eye socket, meaning that the eyes in EW are a bit more "sunken" (not in a bad way, I personally quite like it) while in DT they have been slightly flattened/ moved a bit further to the front.

I would have to actually boot up PS to compare the (relative) darkness of the shadows and perhaps looking at her in side view could also shed light on this because if the eye sockets are more sunken in EW then it should show up in side view.

Perhaps I'll find some time later because now I wanna know this about my character, too.

But even if this is just a case of pure lighting (which it could be) it's still a bit sad how the softer shadows lead to less definition and more wishy-washy features, when those stark shadowy edges and contrasts led to so much personality in this particular case.

If it's just the lighting though (in case of the eye sockets) I really hope it's just the CC.
Did you notice a similar lack of defining shadow between the eye brow and the crease of the eye lid while playing the benchmark or is the eye lid fold less prominent throughout the whole clip?

[Taranok]

The only part I disagree with is that they greatly improved the eyes. The eyes look much worse in the benchmark here for me personally - they are less sharp and the pupils are massive and it looks more dead than before. I think for some, the blending of the umbral ring is more of a hit or miss - some love it, others hate it and prefer the harsher contrast/border. The red colour is more washed out so you have to select a brighter red to get the same effect. Currently in EW, you can have a deep, but also bright colour for the umbral rings, but now you either choose a watered down colour compared to current options or go for the brighter options which are not as deep as before. Not sure why they changed the colour options to the point that if you import your current character, you have to change the eye colour to get the same effect.

Would be nice to have an option, but I think the massive pupils look significantly worse personally. I'm hoping they give us an option to customize the shape of the pupil.

Overall, I think the graphics direction also resulted in a style change where the au ra were made to look more "cutesy" resulting in changes such as much larger pupils which isn't a graphics update, but a style change and not really what people were expecting.

This is fair, when I say the eyes are improved, I mean mostly the limbal ring and iris texture. The limbal ring makes the eyes glow now, or can match and just brighten the limbal ring itself with no glow. The eye also appears to have a visible, reflective cornea with the iris as a 'flat' muscle, like it actually is.

And I agree they did make them a lot more cutesy, but they did it by copying the japanese doll aesthetic, which is extremely noticeable in the permanently puckered lips. I posted it in another thread but, no, really. Japanese doll.



Puckered lips, rounded face. We can disagree on the eyes, that's fine. I had larger eyes regardless. But the puckered lips look atrocious when I never had those initially. I can get used to a wider face and softer features even though that's not what I wanted for the character. Those lips kill it outright.