Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[SchwarzwaelderTorte]

This is correct. Besides specific changes like mouth shapes and such, characters do look a lot like before but only under specific lighting conditions.

Yeah, that's also where I'm placing my strongest suspicions.
The lighting in the character equipment window is also awful in my case, though (and probably using the same setup as portraits, which is not very limbal ring friendly).

But the light definitely has way too much influence on colors compared to before, and the only times where I'm "oh, my character is back" is in the shadows, at night, just before sunrise lol
(I'm also not sure about the glowing limbal rings personally, I thought I would like them but it's really distracting and making the gaze look unfocused... don't know how it could be better tweaked though)

I think something's off with the skin material too. I have legitimately no problem with the gear so far, I love the velvet shader, the high rez cloth textures are a little distracting but I could get used to it, but gear in general doesn't seem to be as blown up and overexposed when in direct light.
I had Ifrit in my Trial roulette yesterday, and if you remember the lighting there is very... unique and made the face look a little weird at times before, but now the same effect only applies on gear, and the skin material barely has that blue rim light effect... it looked kinda off tbh, but I'll have to properly compare it later.

[Doopliss]

Hi, just adding my voice to the choir. I appreciate the work that went into the graphics overhaul and the new textures look amazing in the overworld. My main grievance are the significant changes made to the faces. I tried giving it a few days to see if I would warm up to my WOL's makeover but three days on and I still can barely bring myself to look at her in cutscenes.

I have three main issues with my WOL's new face: 1) Darkening of her upper eyelid to the point where she looks like she's in a perpetual ಠ_ಠ face, 2) complete lack of depth on the eyebrows, and 3) entirely new shape of lips and smile. Here's a before pic:



... and after pic (both taken on PS5--not sure why the antialiasing is so bad in gpose):



Her eyes were heavily shaded before, but there was still a softness to the irises that made her eyes bright and open. Without that softness, it just looks like her eyes are half-shut in every cutscene:



The lack of shading on her eyebrows makes them blend into her skin. It's visible everywhere but it's especially bad in low lighting. And her upper lip is shaped completely differently than the same set of lips pre-7.0. Instead of having a soft smile with a full upper lip, the combination of a differently shaped upper lip with only the corners turning up in a smile gives her a C: smile rather than a (:




All in all, she used to have such a soft, lovely face. I was prepared for some differences but this is such a drastic change and I feel the end results are much more severe than I was expecting. Different lighting/shaders giving different effects I could understand, but I'm not sure why an entire reshaping of certain facial features (like lips) was necessary. One last before pic for good measure:



Thanks for hearing me out. I really did try to give the graphics upgrade a fair shake but the faces just aren't sitting right with me.

I apologize for potentially adding on to your woes, but I noticed this in the Benchmark too. Female Viera eyes were shaded so carefully and deliberately prior to the graphical update that I still can't believe this was allowed to pass...

It gives all of their stares a different feeling, and essentially changes most of their eye colors almost as drastically as limbal ring colors were changed.

I just cannot believe those eye colors are supposed to be the same, with or without the shaders.

[Gwen_Lavellan]

Hi, just adding my voice to the choir. I appreciate the work that went into the graphics overhaul and the new textures look amazing in the overworld. My main grievance are the significant changes made to the faces. I tried giving it a few days to see if I would warm up to my WOL's makeover but three days on and I still can barely bring myself to look at her in cutscenes.

I have three main issues with my WOL's new face: 1) Darkening of her upper eyelid to the point where she looks like she's in a perpetual ಠ_ಠ face, 2) complete lack of depth on the eyebrows, and 3) entirely new shape of lips and smile. Here's a before pic:



... and after pic (both taken on PS5--not sure why the antialiasing is so bad in gpose):



Her eyes were heavily shaded before, but there was still a softness to the irises that made her eyes bright and open. Without that softness, it just looks like her eyes are half-shut in every cutscene:



The lack of shading on her eyebrows makes them blend into her skin. It's visible everywhere but it's especially bad in low lighting. And her upper lip is shaped completely differently than the same set of lips pre-7.0. Instead of having a soft smile with a full upper lip, the combination of a differently shaped upper lip with only the corners turning up in a smile gives her a C: smile rather than a (:




All in all, she used to have such a soft, lovely face. I was prepared for some differences but this is such a drastic change and I feel the end results are much more severe than I was expecting. Different lighting/shaders giving different effects I could understand, but I'm not sure why an entire reshaping of certain facial features (like lips) was necessary. One last before pic for good measure:



Thanks for hearing me out. I really did try to give the graphics upgrade a fair shake but the faces just aren't sitting right with me.

Thank you for putting word right in the right place. This summaries why I feel I lost my girl…
I felt like plastic, all the gentle vibes gone.

[Noelani]

Putting this here in the main discussion:



Here is a really clear example of the puffy face problem. This user goes through many of the super fine detail differences in the middle of this image, but the single factor that is contributing more than all of those is the loss of several really important shadows that were previously contouring their face and are now so diminished that they aren't doing the contouring job anymore.

In EW, the face almost always has 'edge shadowing' where, near the edges of the face's viewed dimension, contrasting tones were used. Sometimes these were bright reflections instead of shadow, but they all served the same purpose! They showed the depth of the face in the Z axis into the screen, and they functionally narrow the visual space that the facial features are arranged within.



Look at the difference in shading along the jawline here. It's prominent from the sideburns down to the chin. The shadowing around the EW chin makes it clear that the chin is in front with the jawline smoothly tapering back. The loss of the chin's edge shading in particular has done a lot to make people's faces lose visual height, even if the model is dimensionally the same, as the chin blends into the neck and becomes indistinct.



Note the significant contouring work being done by the nose shadow. It really helps bring it forward from between the eyes, giving the face as a whole a distinct depth-read with the nose in front, the face in the middle, and the jawline receding backwards into shadow.

By contrast, when those shadows are missing or so faint they can't be discriminated, the face appears flattened and widened.



Here it is shown that the size and basic proportion of the face and jawline is identical. The DT face is not actually significantly rounder, but due to improper shading it appears severely rounder.

[SchwarzwaelderTorte]

Use imgur or another hosting website to post your images, linking from Discord directly doesn't work in a lot of cases.

[KageTokage]

Well, I just discovered today that it's the increased light reflect/shiny effects from the "glare" setting that was tanking my FPS and making it choppy in places, and ever since I turned it to low I've been getting consistent performance again outside of high traffic areas.

It honestly makes things look too shiny sometimes, so I don't really mind its absence too much.

[Aco505]

The lighting in the character equipment window is also awful in my case, though (and probably using the same setup as portraits, which is not very limbal ring friendly).

Yes, that's where my character looks the worst by far. The eyes are especially terrible in those. All my portraits look so different because of the eyes, the lighting and the skin's tone being washed out in them. The change to several facial emotes is definitely another factor for portraits.

[GreenLeafy]

After a few days I finally braced checking my WoL with the DT updates and , honestly my motivation to play just tanked entirely.
I can appreciate the increased fidelity of hair , clothes , backgrounds but I just don't feel like I'm logging in to the same character I was for the past 9 years unfortunately. And ultimately above else he was the tether that really kept me playing.




Nose looks smaller/more narrow , lips look different ( corners of the mouth feel even more sunken in ) , the exagerrated philtrum is extremely distracting , the eyes are so much more dull , the scars are for whatever reason longer , etc...

I really wish I could enjoy the update to the fullest like I see some people do but its just not the companion I had accompany me on the journey thus far and I kinda don't care on continuing without him.

[Doopliss]

Yes, that's where my character looks the worst by far. The eyes are especially terrible in those. All my portraits look so different because of the eyes, the lighting and the skin's tone being washed out in them. The change to several facial emotes is definitely another factor for portraits.

This is so strange to me because I feel like my Elezen actually looks more accurate in my equipment window... It's not 1-1, but it's helluva more close than any game lighting that isn't nighttime for her, and basically good enough for me.

I took screenshots of all my characters in the equipment window before the 7.0 maintenance, so, for reference, the ones with the Facewear tab are from 7.0.



On the other hand, I feel like in the equipment window, you can actually make out my Roegadyn getting less detailed in the 7.0 one, lol.


It seriously feels like the issue in the equipment/portrait window manifests differently for every race/character... It's so bizarre that I just don't understand it.

Sorry also that these are small, niche images. Sometimes it just actually helps me looking at certain details from far away. Opening them in a new tab might help, haha...sorry.

[Daralii]

It's noticeable in hair colour and eye colour but has anyone else noticed colour discrepancies on gear/npcs?

For example, I noticed that Alphinaud's clothes seem less blue and more like purple now (in the CG illustrations it's always been shown as a blue)

*I know that lighting can affect the colours but it looks purple even in the dark

It's something I've noticed with a few NPCs while playing catchup on post-EW MSQ, but I haven't tested to see if the sets have the same issues on player characters. The gold trim on Estinien's armor turned orange and Urianger's gold jewelry turned green.