Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Tarath]

This will be a lengthy one which I had to split up into several parts, please bear with me.

I wanted to give some time before leaving my feedback to see if I could get used to the changes made with the graphics update, but even though I have completed the MSQ and focused on less story oriented content, I still can’t get used to them. And the more I play, the more I notice changes that fares for the worse.

Won’t be labeling the comparison images this time. Images to the left/top are pre DT, right/bottom are DT screenshot unless stated otherwise.

1/7 Changes to the face

To start off, I want to highlight the differences made to the face type I use. I’m including a traced drawing of the face to help isolate the differences with the facial structure.


It's not perfect but I hope it illustrates the key differences

The eyebrows are generally fine, though they're not as aggressive, and the eyebrow texture is softer now.
The socket line has gotten wider which makes that area of the eyebrow seem bigger than before. In a way it feels like it’s weighing down the eyes. At first I thought these changes were for the better, but I much prefer how they were previously as it followed the shape of the eyebrow, which also helped lift the eye.

The shape of the eye is relatively the same along with the eyeliner, no complaints there..
The iris is bigger which might be the reason the pupil is placed higher than before, I think. The pupil is also surprisingly smaller now which I find to be better than the bigger one in the benchmark. It also seems like they tried to go for an inbetween with the fuzzy eye look from the benchmark and the original eyes. However these changes give the eyes more of a dreamy glance rather than a sharp look. I’ll get back to the limbal rings.

The bridge of the nose is wider and I thought this was something I would get used to, which sadly isn’t the case. In some angles and light conditions it does resemble its old pointy self, but other times the lights highlight how much wider it has gotten. And in some lights it seems bumpy too.

The upper lip has a cupid bow to it while the overall upper shape has gotten a bit smaller. The width of the lip is also shorter. There’s now a more pronounced shadow at the edge of the lips that goes downwards instead of a soft shadow laying only next to the top lip.

The face scales generally have softer edges to them and the scales that are a texture on top of the skin have been moved downwards near the jawline.

I didn’t notice this until I traced these screenshots, but the neck has been shifted so it’s more straight instead of twisted.

All of these changes aren’t overly offensive or too jarring on its own, though with the changes to expression they aren't faring for the better.

[Tarath]

2/7 Expressions

Comparing these two screenshots is what made me realise that my character also got the bishonen treatment. He’s squinting which helps with the dreamy ambiguous look, and there’s something about the shadow on the corner of the lips that makes the smile look goofy.

DT screenshots

I can live with these smiling expressions, but not so much with sneer. I really couldn’t take my character seriously when I first saw him sneer in the MSQ. The shadow from the eyepatch isn’t helping either.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, it got even worse when he’s talking.

Reminds me of Joey from Yu-Gi-Oh

Serious emotes makes the eyebrows furrow too much downwards covering the eyes. The eyebrows are losing its “S” shape, turning it into more of a straight line.

And for some reason in the beginning cutscene of the Endsinger trial he’s giving off more of a pouting expression. Isn’t this supposed to be the same expression as the image above?


Worried seems rather faithful to how it was previously, it’s mainly the bottom lip being more straight than having the corners bend downwards.

Though in the next shot, instead of him looking concerned about what will happen next, he looks completely lost.

Perhaps it is just an unfortunate outcome with the wonky face type I’m using?
I had that thought until I saw this highlander.

What on earth is going on, why are his (non existing) eyebrows bending so far up that they’re covering half of his forehead?
Even on this Hyur I find the worried look to be a bit intense. Though perhaps it wouldn’t be as bad if the shadow underneath the eyebrows weren’t so strong?



My alt didn’t fare well regarding the simper emote. No longer does she have a subtle yet gentle smile, it now looks like she’s trying to be seductive with her eyes. The corner of the mouth is turning more upwards, giving her a duck face.

The duck face gets even more prominent in portraits. Unfortunately I don’t have any before screenshots, however I got quite a whiplash when I first looked at them.

The expression really makes her face look swollen.

I tried to fix these, but ended up scrapping the poses, made new ones that allowed for her to look upwards, and use directional light to remove shadows from the face. This made her look somewhat as she used to, but still it doesn’t fully eliminate the duck face.

[Tarath]

3/7 General Au Ra changes

- Limbal rings
The new limbal rings give off quite a glow in some settings, however they are less consistent as they used to be. Comparing them to the old glow, it really shows how little it takes to dim them out. The limbal rings weren’t perfect before, don’t get me wrong, but I was really hoping that they would stay just as consistent as they used to, along with an overall better brightness.

I really thought they would shine brighter in these settings.

- Scales
I honestly dislike the new scales, very little about them feels “higher quality”. Of course they’re higher in resolution, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re now have lost their original color which no longer matches the horn color as it used to. The body scales are slimmed down which makes them lose depth and feels overall flatter despite reflecting better to light. The edges are distractingly pixelated even after being cleaned up since the benchmark.

In game close up to the right with 3D resolution scaling set to 100

- Moving face scales
The face scales are now moving along with expressions, even stretching them. It gives this uncanny rubbery feeling compared to how they were before. I really preferred how they behaved previously as they gave the impression they’re hugging the face instead of being glued to it all the way. I wouldn’t mind some bending with expression, but it’s too much right now, especially when the jaw and chin scales are so static in comparison.


And in my case, even if it's a bug, it makes even less sense when the face spikes technically aren’t attached to the face.

The shadow on the corner of the mouth looks out of place too

- Subsurface Scattering
Subsurface scattering on horns and tail is an interesting choice. Sure this can work on female Au Ra, but on male Au Ra it feels like a mismatch when face scales are not affected.

[Tarath]

4/7 Hair
Similar to the complaint about the scale texture, despite the new hair being higher in resolution, it has lost much of its depth and contrast compared to the old texture. It’s almost as if there’s no normal map to it.


- Inconsistent texture
When I went to make some minor adjustments to a retainer of mine, I noticed some of the texture was rather wobbly.

Believe it’s a byproduct of the hair mesh remaining low poly and it’s not a big deal, but it does highlight the clash in quality between the mesh and the texture.


Though it gets wild on some hairstyles.


2B hairstyle suffers even more, and to top it off some of the smoother texture is still low res.


And that’s not the only hairstyle with spots of low res textures


The highlight on top of the head for this one is poorly blended.


In general hairlines look worse than before due to the lack of depth, and it’s quite jarring on the hairstyle with the pigtails.



- Eyelash
Bit of a nitpicky point, but the lashes feel thinner which is telling from a side angle.


Despite my male Au Ra having more prominent lashes now, they are no longer blending with the eyeliner. Before they would start off black then turn red, now it’s straight red all the way.


Unrelated, but while we’re at the close up of the eye, the blue part of the eyelid is more noticeable now, but blends poorly with the skin color. There’s also a bump near the corner of the eye where it sort of looks like a reverse tear duct. Not sure what’s the deal with that.


- Npc during ship cutscene
In the very second cutscene of the MSQ I noticed one of the npcs' hair isn’t properly fitted. There’s a gap between the hair and the side of the forehead along with “balding spots” on the hairline. The neck looks pretty crooked as well.
In addition when getting off the ship we get to see some more clipping happening on the neck. Also the hair overlapping the sea texture has a highlighted border around them.


Mystery girl lack of highlights
During 97-ish in the MSQ, our mystery girl lost her green highlights. They returned again during a different section of the same zone.


- Illuminating hair
The twins, Y’shtola, Thancred, Ryne and Urianger to a degree suffer from illuminating hair in the dark.

[Tarath]

5/7 Shadows

Interestingly enough shadows on characters still have jittering textures which sometimes is worse than how they were before DT. Here’s a screenshot I took of a friend of mine and my alt in Endwalker along with a comparison after DT release. There’s now jagged shadows most notably on the cheeks.


Doesn’t seem so bad on a screenshot, however they’re distracting in motion. Perhaps this is related to areas where lighting has yet to be updated?


I don’t think that’s the case when this npc’s hair jitters in Solution 9.

Also have the ears always been that poorly fitted to the hairstyle? It looks like they're floating on top of her head.

I also experience something similar inside my house.


Tancred had some weird shadowing going on during an early-ish DT cutscene. Other npcs in the same cutscene were not affected.


- Shadow under upper eyelid
When it comes to painted shadow, the shadow below the upper eyelid is too harsh, making it blend with the eyelashes and eyeshadow.

The highlight might help, yet on this viera the shadow gives the impression that her right eyelid sits lower than the left one.

Bringing this npc with his shocked face again, at first I thought the highlight was coming from the eyelids, however they’re from the sclera. I have to zoom in on the picture for my brain to realize what is truly going on.


Even on milder cases, the shadow blurs the line between the eyelid and eyeball, making the highlight at the top of the eye seem more unnatural.

[Tarath]

6/7 Other observations

- Hands
One thing I feel this game desperately needs to update are hands. They did, yet they honestly look the same. There are added edges to the tips of the fingers, but the overall fingers are still square shaped. As much as I adore how well they have worked around these limitations before, it’s simply not enough when MSQ puts a lot of focus on the hands.


DT screenshots, Wuk Lamat in the middle

Could it be that Claws of the Beast are using old mesh? Doesn’t make much sense on Wuk Lamat as she’s a new npc.
However it could be the case on a player character. At first I thought the tips of the fingers were clipping through the claws, but that doesn’t seem to be the case in the above image (thumb is rounded). The silhouette of the fingers remains the same which makes me unsure, yet the material on the skin seems off with the claws. Regardless if the claws are using old or new mesh, I was really hoping for a better upgrade on the hands as they needed it much more than the face in my opinion.


- Expression in Gpose twitching
Every smiling emote makes the mouth twitch in gpose.

Content, beam, taunt is shown here

Some other expressions like smirk have both the eyebrows and the mouth twitching.

The twitching didn’t align with the idle animation so they’re twitching twice in a row when the gif loops.

- Chest pieces with fur missing its edges
The fur on the shoulders for the edenmorn coats have lost its furry edges. I saw a bug report about it some time ago on a different chest piece, so I’m guessing several chest pieces with fur share the same issue.


- Retainer red under the eyes
Many of my complaints have been rather close up, but that’s not the case with one of my retainers.
Up close she’s fine, but from afar she looks sick and tired as it seems that she’s squinting along with being red under the eyes.


- Flickering Azem summoning circle
Final fight arena spoilers

When waiting for the queue to pop, I noticed the summoning circle flickers when zooming a bit in. I guess it has something to do with the camera colliding into the mesh, but I’m not sure.

[Tarath]

7/7 Final Thoughts

I’m not really bringing much new to the table as many have already posted about most of these issues. But I want to echo these things as I’ve encountered these myself without hunting for them.
A lot of people, myself included, feel a bit alienated from our characters not only because of the changes to face, but also the expressions being unfamiliar. Even though gameplay wise we don’t see our characters’ face, this is a story centric mmo that is not shy from being up close to character faces. Unfortunately a lot of the changes made to the graphical update feels rushed. Sure it looks fine on the surface, but give it some attention and a myriad of oversights shows up. Despite my criticism I genuinely have sympathy for the devs. The scope was simply too much with the time they were given. I know they can deliver stunning results as they have done in the past.
Though I fear that most of the changes are locked in now, I truly hope they will consider continuing to improve the player character and the overall graphics.

[CidHeiral]

Interestingly enough shadows on characters still have jittering textures which sometimes is worse than how they were before DT.

I noticed this as well and created a bug report about it here if you'd like to add your excellent examples as further evidence.

[Tarath]

I noticed this as well and created a bug report about it here if you'd like to add your excellent examples as further evidence.

Apologies for the late reply, was probably not the best idea to post all of that right before savage release.

I actually made a similar bug report during the second benchmark release. However I'll put my gifs into your report. If yours get declined, I'll repost them into mine.

If anyone else have already made reports of bugs I've mentioned, feel free to toss them at me and I'll post my images/gifs there. I don't have much free time to be looking through all the bug reports for the moment.

So well written, I really appreciate hearing from the perspective of a ♂ Au Ra player as I haven't seen many posts regarding them (at least ones that go into detail like this).

The sneer expression is one of the worst offenders, I can see that the same issue is on both ♀/♂. It doesn't seem as duck-like on ♂ Au Ra at the very least.

Looking at your ♀ Au Ra portraits, I get the impression of the lips looking more rougher. This has helped me to discover another factor where the "grotesque" feeling that I've been getting from ♀ Au Ra Face 1 is coming from.

I can see the face scales are warping like with ♀ Au Ra's, as you mentioned there's no doubt that this is an oversight considering how they fit on ♂ Au Ra. Really hope this gets fixed.

I agree with the hair texture losing detail, it happened with the hairstyle I use as well. It probably only affects the more "dynamic" hairstyles, the ones with a lot going on (which is plentiful for ♂ Au Ra).
It might be able to be resolved by darkening the hair in some very specific cases but with the limited colour palette and the changes to it there's only so much that could be done.

Also, I don't think the eyelash mention is a nitpick, my character's look feels totally lost with how they rotated and thinned them out and I can see the same on yours (though it might not bother you as much as me).

Appreciate the kind words.
Regarding the eyelashes I'm 100% with you there. It also bothers me how eye makeup in general isn't as bold as it used to be (my male Au Ra got lucky in that regard).

Your post has honestly inspired me to go and check for details I may have overlooked, but unfortunately I can't run the game at the moment.

I would advice that you save your sanity. The more bugs I encounter, the more disappointed I get with the direction of the game. And it can't be unseen once it's found. But if you do encounter anything I look forward in seeing your findings.

[Aco505]

I also experience something similar inside my house.

This happens to me in the market board of Gridania as well.