Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Hatsuoki]

This is with no camera tracking from either the head or eyes. Completely neutral position, using the ponder emote.


??? fake smile emote


This is just laziness because I firmly believe that anyone with eyes can see this doesn't look right. They sacrificed the faces to homogenize (lazy?) the animations for this?

I honestly held off on posting more because the pictures are so...bad? humiliating? But I'm tired of their wait and see approach. We're not going to get used to uncanniness because it's unnatural.

[Hatsuoki]

This is with no camera tracking from either the head or eyes. Completely neutral position, using the ponder emote.

Okay they did change *something* but please? The mouths are still the same creepy, unnatural expression (easily replicatable -> any smile + any emote that moves their mouth).

To be completely fair, *this* emote in particular always looked a bit unnatural even in 6.58 but at least he no longer looks like he's passing out.

Sorry for rant:
I think I would actually be happy if they fixed the mouths. Then I could ignore the ugly, lumpy eyelashes, the thinning eyebrows and the weird shadows on the nose that has completely removed any semblance of previous shape on my viera. The mouth is the worst though, the nose I could handle in gpose and try and direct the light in a way that it gives the correct shadows. But the mouth is so awful and plump that the only expression that works is /ponder. My character used to /beam but that is unusable now due to the weird banana shape that happens.

For the most part, I could live with the graphics update if all they fixed were the mouths+expressions but it seems to be the only thing that they haven't worked on/made progress on. I just want to know that it's something that's coming.

Picture added for the people who thinks we're being picky about the graphics update:

Regarding the ponder emote, I hadn't spoken up about how anything looks on the female au ra face 2 because the midlander was butchered so much worse but if possible, I would like the emote to be adjusted to be closer to the old "ponder". It used to also look like a cute pout but now the eyes are comically enlarged. I understand it's supposed to look like an eyebrow is raised/one eye is squinted but it just looks completely unserious. There's a clear difference in impression between the two as well. The old one looks introspective while the new one looks like she's not comprehending.

[Aniya_Estlihn]

For the most part, I could live with the graphics update if all they fixed were the mouths+expressions but it seems to be the only thing that they haven't worked on/made progress on. I just want to know that it's something that's coming.

Picture added for the people who thinks we're being picky about the graphics update:

Regarding the ponder emote, I hadn't spoken up about how anything looks on the female au ra face 2 because the midlander was butchered so much worse but if possible, I would like the emote to be adjusted to be closer to the old "ponder". It used to also look like a cute pout but now the eyes are comically enlarged. I understand it's supposed to look like an eyebrow is raised/one eye is squinted but it just looks completely unserious. There's a clear difference in impression between the two as well. The old one looks introspective while the new one looks like she's not comprehending.

Use it outside of gpose to get a proper look.

Here's how it looks for me on face one:


Anything that requires face or eye tracking in gpose, portraits, or when targeting other characters is fundamentally broken right now and you will not see the emote in its proper implementation. Your second shot is clearly in gpose or with you facing the camera, which we know has issues as of this patch as eyelids are broken and will not move the way they are supposed to; almost like the bones are improperly rigged or having no parenting with other facial bones. When you use it untargeted your eyes will look to the left everytime and it actually looks more annoyed now than contemplative or curious like it used to be in the past. So still broken, but the issue you're referring to is specifically due to camera tracking for the eyes/eyelids being busted.

The eyes are only comically large because the eyelids for all associated emotes are broken.
Taunt is utterly horrifying when you enable facial tracking and move the camera.

This is taunt:

These are, supposed to be, simper:

As you can see, the eyelids aren't following the eyes like they used to unless a character isn't targeted onto or forced to look directly at anything. Its a pretty big, far reaching glitch and I would encourage everyone to go into the bug reports forum and upvote the heck out of the player that already reported this as it has fundamentally changed how every character looks when emoting and cannot at all be intentional, nor is it really good for us when comparing things from this patch to those previously as the face is literally broken in a way it wasn't, and has never been, before, altering most expressions and emotes.

Personally, I've been fine with the graphics update for the most part; as I've made apparent many times in here, but this really upset me.
Emotes have been fine for years, the faces properly rigged, sure the shape changed and altered the look slightly, but to literally break the eyelids and eye tracking?

That's just crazy to me and I question how that even happened between patches.

[Hatsuoki]

Snip

A few posts above my quoted post was me talking about the eyelid bug so I knew about it.

Unfortunately:

1 - Ponder being like this has been since 7.0, not just 7.2.

2 - The picture of your character outside of gpose also has her eyes like mine except your hair is covering the enlarged eye. To be extra clear, this isn't about the eyes looking to the side as that was normal even in 6.58. The issue is the enlarged eyes making a "raised eyebrow" expression rather than the original "deep in thought" expression.

3 - Of course I'm going to want to use it in gpose. While the picture of my au ra was with eye tracking, it also does it without eye or head tracking. In a couple of hours, I can take pictures outside of gpose without any tracking and update my post.

Edit: Here it is outside of gpose.