Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Kaziek]

I am extremely grateful for this response, as I'm sure many are. I'll be posting my cumulative feedback ASAP, now that I'm out of the savage raid grind! Thank you again

I'm looking forward to your post since we have many of the same issues with F midlander face 1! I'll also be putting together my own thoughts and hopefully we'll be able to come up with something useful for the devs to go off of.

[Cheapshot]

We would like to thank everyone for their feedback regarding the graphical update.
The Development team has been carefully reviewing this thread and many others, including bug reports and concerns raised outside of the official forums.

We are currently working on an update based on the feedback provided, as well as preparing to share details about our planned course of action.
As these are undergoing thorough final inspections, we expect to make an announcement in late August.

Thank you all for your patience as we continue fine-tuning the graphical update.

Let me join in the voices saying thank you so so much for reaching out to us and letting us know we’re being heard. I was really losing hope, and it means so much to me.

[Grimmlei]

The interval between the eyes and the skin is very wide and deep. The shadows around her eyes have been greatly reduced, and now it feels like her eyes blend into her face with a lot of lighting, without contrast. If there is a possibility that more shadows will be added, as in benchmark 1.0, her nose is also very pinched in the last update as well as her lips being plumped up a bit much. Her face looks completely different from the original.

[tensopestilence]

Now that many glasses are available as facewear items and are able to be worn alongside head pieces, perhaps some eyepatch gear items should be added to this feature as well, such as the Scion Rogue's Bandana. I use an eyepatch in almost all of my gearsets because of my character, so it is very limiting to not be able to wear most of the head gear items in the game at the same time as an eyepatch.

In addition, many of the eyepatch items in game are only able to be worn on one side of the face. People such as myself, who use eyepatches for character reasons, only use the eyepatches that cover the "correct side" of the face, leaving many of the other eyepatches unused. This may not be possible given the limitations of the game, but an option to use the visor toggle to switch the side that the eyepatch is worn on would provide many players with more gear or glamour options.

[strigiformes]

My main concern is how blurry and dull and grey my eyes are now. They were so clear and sharp and bright before. Eye and skin colours have also been changed for some reason.

I'm so glad you made these comparison shots because the eye film is my biggest issue with the graphical overhaul as far as Keepers go. Everything else I've made peace with, for the most part! Emotes look a little funny now but I'll live with it I guess! The eyes though...

Left is EDW benchmark; right is newest DT benchmark


In game in nearly all lighting conditions, the haze over my character's eyes makes them look really "dopey" in a way that doesn't really fit them. A friend referred to it as "catnip-addled," which was funny but also very true. I miss the sharpness of their old eye color! That specific hue of silver had a nice emissive quality to it that I'm very sad to do without!

Additionally, I've found that at least for miqo'te, black doesn't seem to be "true black" anymore when it comes to hair color and eyebrows.

Left is EDW benchmark; right is newest DT benchmark


Now, this character has grey highlights in their hair but even without those:



Barely any difference, right? I've noticed this on other friends' characters as well, mostly in the eyebrows, but there is something going on with hair black values in this game now that does not play nice with the new lighting engine. It's too "soft."

[Kaziek]

The interval between the eyes and the skin is very wide and deep. The shadows around her eyes have been greatly reduced, and now it feels like her eyes blend into her face with a lot of lighting, without contrast. If there is a possibility that more shadows will be added, as in benchmark 1.0, her nose is also very pinched in the last update as well as her lips being plumped up a bit much. Her face looks completely different from the original.

Thank you for bringing up the benchmark again, it's actually crazy looking back on it and seeing how much nicer the lighting played with the new faces. I know this isn't a perfect comparison since they changed the time of day for each scene between the benchmarks, but this is with each one looking directly towards the sun.

6.x

Benchmark V1

Live

While there are still things that were definitely off with it (skin looking way too waxy, faces having freckles that didn't before etc.) it was overall much more flattering and felt more faithful to the original lighting. I hope they will reconsider the extremely harsh lighting that they went with in Benchmark v2 and Live, perhaps some sort of middle ground can be achieved.

[ConantSivrha]

I hope the thread about male miqo’te face 1 is also being examined, because the new version of this face has some issues, but the feedback about it was concentrated to its own thread instead of this one. Most noticeably, all of the mouths have become wider, and mouth 4 in particular is completely unrecognizable.

The nose bridges of this face’s noses have also been narrowed, giving them an “hourglass shape” they didn’t have before and removing their catlike appearance…

(This image shows nose 3)

…and eyebrow shape 5 has lost the slight upward angle at the end that gave it a distinctive look.

[Portergauge]

Helion Hrothgar Face 2

These issues occur on all hrothgar faces, but I've noticed it particularly egregiously with this face.

1. Hair Color in new Lighting.
While the new lighting has worked wonders on the skin/fur for Hrothgar, the Lighting is not applied consistently between their skin fur and their regular hair. For reference, this is my Hrothgar in neutral lighting, with black fur and black hair.



In various lighting in game (especially blue lighting), however, the fur reacts normally and retains its brown-black undertones, but the hair and beard do not, and take on a very egregious glossy blue glow.



2. Reflectiveness of Hrothgar Facial Hair
This point partially ties into the previous one as well, relating to the lighting reactivity of hrothgar hair. While the head hair textures are mostly fine, I've consistently noticed that the lighting on the beard for face 2 is overly shiny even when it is faced away from the light source, and it always has the same white glow to it no matter the current lighting.



It is especially egregious in areas of low lighting when compared to regular hair. As you can see, the regular hair loses its shine in the absence of a light source, but the beard continues to be egregiously reflective from all angles.




3. Glassy Texture on Eyes

While this one is less egregious than the hair issues, it is still something I notice rather frequently, especially in cutscenes. Hrothgar had unique eye textures prior to the graphical update, as unlike other races, their light reactivity was already baked in. With the graphical update, however, an odd extra layer has been added that makes the eyes look glassy and fake rather than light-reactive, and when viewed from angles other than head-on, they lose the vibrancy of their color and turn murky.

Here are some image comparisons of previous ones at alternate angles to show examples of the difference in the same light situations.





Hrothgar thankfully got through the update mostly intact, but these few lighting issues are noticeable quite frequently during questing, and do cause immersion issues at times when I notice the artificial nature of the lighting. Hopefully they can be fixed relatively easily to allow for a more cohesive lighting application.

[threadspool]

Dropping in my highly specific two cents. Lip makeup applied to F Highlander's face 3 has been sharpened up with higher texture definition, and made more accurate to the mouth. This would not be a bad thing, but this has made mouth 4 seem much smaller, when before I was depending on the expanded lip makeup to achieve the look of a slightly larger mouth.

The head in general and its accompanying features also seem to be horizontally slimmer, resulting in a longer-looking face. This may be acceptable to some, but it's simply looked off to me since the expansion's release.

Old

New


Glasses seem to sit higher than they should, floating well above my character's nose.




I recognize that such small details may not be the highest priority for adjustment, but as the team is taking such feedback into account, I thought I would go ahead and provide it.

[ritualgoth]

I do not know if this has already been brought up in this thread before but I figured I would mention it.. Due to the new shadow settings and the fact that Au Ra scales are not flush to the face, there is a really glaring shadow from them in certain angles and lights.
This also extends to having a shadow from headgear like the eyepatch straps which are very.. odd at times.






While these scales and things like the eyepatch strap have never really been flush to the face, they did not cast such stark shadows before.
In certain lighting the shadows are very harsh and jagged across my characters face and I know other Au Ra players that were experiencing frustration because they couldn't figure out why there were strange floating shadows on our faces until I realized it was coming from the scales.
Scales that aren't a toggleable face option, so even if someone wanted to, they could not get rid of them to get rid of the shadows.