Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Doopliss]

Any word on if they will be touching things up? My Vieras face, especially the lips are really off

Unfortunately we still only have the "We'll continue to make adjustments in Dawntrail patches!" footnote on the final benchmark update lodestone post to go off of.

Unrelated to the reply, but I saw a JP bug report and wanted to check Stillglade Fane myself...and, yeah, E-Sumi-Yan's eyes are acting extremely strangely in the update. Aside from him now having a really intense thousand-yalm stare, his eyes also appear "squishy" when he blinks. They also deform horribly when he tries to move his eyes to look at you from the side...?

I don't even know how this would happen...

Also, I know this is more environmental and not a "character" graphic update, but I really hope they look over the grass generation again. Rhalgr's Reach looks really unnatural and flat now.

[Cheapshot]

Any word on if they will be touching things up? My Vieras face, especially the lips are really off

Nothing at all. The closest we have is the pre dawntrail letter from yoship saying they were goinng to keep looking at feedback, but nothing specifically about characters since.

[Neytirhi]

So, I can offer some kind of extra information that might help out your bug reports. It’s not that there was no problem in the first benchmark, it’s that there was the opposite problem. When they replaced the brow textures (with one the same resolution for some reason??) brows became too light. So they were more visible than they used to be on darker skin but looked completely awful on lighter skin. The devs did respond to complaints but their fix seems to have just been make them even darker than originally so they’re almost invisible on dark skin now.

One thing I’ve noticed is how flat the brow texture looks and I wonder if that’s part of it? It feels like there were multiple tones in the brow as well as different levels of transparency pre DT. Maybe some alpha info and maybe a secondary overlay were originally there and lost in the update? Or maybe the pre DT eyebrows struck a balance that they are finding themselves unable to recreate (probably not helped by lack of QA). I don’t know I’m just speculating on that.

Im kinda personally wondering why they can’t just use the old brow textures that worked? Same with the eyelashes. The new textures aren’t higher resolution so what was the point? Change for no reason.

Yeah you got a point here !

I myself am a 3D Artist / Game animator and I don't really understand what they did to get it this wrong twice.

About the textures, I couldn't say for sure but my guess is they can't re-use the old ones because it's generally part of a whole map, not eyebrows alone. But I don't know how they work so I can't really tell what their workflow is...
But yeah it feels like it's missing one or more maps ? It appears so grey...

Also I'm afraid this hasn't been reported much on the japanese forums, as it seems darker skin tones + light hair ain't very common there... sigh

[Neytirhi]

I watched a comparison of a cutscene of before and after the graphics update, and the new lighting really ruins the scene. The shadows are much lighter or nonexistent seemingly non existent.

The graphics update hurt the art direction of some of the old content, imo.

DT lighting really is terrible. Once again, first benchmark was way better...

[smitten_miquitten]

There was one person who did call the too-dark eyebrows issue out on the JP forums during the second benchmark, but I haven't seen anything since.

[smitten_miquitten]

I think there's an easy path forward there though. If they make Keepers use the same brows info as Sunseekers have, that'd be a nice middle ground for most hair and skin colors imo. They all look pretty decent on Seekers, unless I'm missing something.

[Iscah]

I was so happy with 1st Benchmark....

The thing with the lighting in the first benchmark is that I suspect it was only the "broken" lighting in the old example zones that was making it look acceptable.

This was a comparison I had made during the initial benchmark:

The appearance in the aetherial sea lighting looks like what we got in the end; the appearance in the outdoor lighting (which the devs said was not indicative of the final product) looks closer to the original appearance in this instance, although for some other races it looked worse – or possibly to do with skintone, because my pale-skinned Midlander was basically translucent in anything besides the aetherial lighting.

Then they updated the lighting for the second benchmark, and the "corrected" appearance just looked the same as it already did in the first benchmark's aetherial lighting. It wasn't newly changed, but I suspect a lot of people skimmed over that initial backdrop to do their comparisons in the usually-better outdoor settings.


Edit to add: A particular thing with this face is that people started talking about the smile expression being added to the face between first and second benchmarks, but as the screenshots show, it was already a problem from the start.

The change of expression is the biggest sticking point for me on this particular character, though I'm also unhappy about the weakened shading on the eyebrows and that he has wrinkles under his eyes now – this is not the kind of detail I wanted and I don't know why the artists are doing this.

[Feathetaria]

/think, /alert, /ponder. Why did they have to do Feathetaria like that? I can't stand this. I wanna cry.

Not even the same character at all

Also on a sidenote, WHY ARE OUR EYEBALLS NOT WHITE? They are like skin colored after 7.0. It's kinda gross. xD

[ConantSivrha]

Also on a sidenote, WHY ARE OUR EYEBALLS NOT WHITE? They are like skin colored after 7.0. It's kinda gross. xD
(…)

I apologize if this comes across as rude, but could you be more specific? In what context do the eyeballs look skin-colored? To me, characters’ scleras (the whites of the eyes) have looked whiter than usual after the update. My two most played characters both have grey skin, however, so it’s possible that you’re noticing something that wouldn’t stand out to me, since I’m not seeing the eyeball color next to a “real” skin color on my own characters. But if the eyeballs do look skin-colored, I can’t see it in the picture you posted, perhaps because of the lighting.

[Rueby]

/think, /alert, /ponder. Why did they have to do Feathetaria like that? I can't stand this. I wanna cry.

Not even the same character at all

Also on a sidenote, WHY ARE OUR EYEBALLS NOT WHITE? They are like skin colored after 7.0. It's kinda gross. xD

I have a palest skin tone and my char's eyes are greyish white, they don't look skin toned to me.. I didn't test it often, do you have more pics with different lighting settings?

Something I observed and perhaps it's obvious, the lighting engine kills that 'constant' look that we had pre-DT, your char looks the same-ish in most lighting conditions unless it's extreme. We're way more affected by light/shadow now, so maybe in dimmer settings the grey-ish white eyes might start to look skin-toned? Then again when I zoom out on my char I feel like hmm there's this weird blur? I'm not sure how to explain it, perhaps it's something they plan to address.

Side note : They butchered your upper lip, my condolences