Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Adamantini]

I didn't have much to complain about regarding my character until now, except for the strange feeling that he lost his serious look and gained a sad expression. But recently, I checked out some emotes and noticed that his big grin looks terrible.

The smiles are decent, but whenever he smiles showing his teeth, it looks so forced and strange that I decided to come here and ask if anyone else feels the same way (since I tried looking for old screenshots to compare, but couldn’t find any that could serve as a reference for the old big grin). I use face 4 for the male Viera, and I'm noticing that all smiles showing teeth (like the big grin) seem to be very wrong.

[Iscah]

Some screenshots of G'raha as an example of what I think has been going on with all of the male Miqo'te eyes. I think it is a change that has been applied to all Miqo'te faces but it shows up most clearly on face 3 where the eyes are bigger to begin with.

My character is the same height as G'raha so I got the camera right up in his face to take comparison shots before and after the update.



Up close you can see that the eye shape has changed considerably between versions.

Original design

The original eye shape has quite wide-open eyes going by the shape of the eyelids, and the eyelashes go all the way out to the outermost corner of the overall eye shape. There is no makeup used on this face type.

There is an odd blank space under the eyelid that technically seems to be a stretched-down inner eyelid but design-wise just creates the impression of a dark shadow cast by the eyelids and lashes. Because of this space, there is no need to have any shadowing on the visible eye surface.

There is a clear division between the eye surface and the rim of the lower eyelid.


Dawntrail modified design

The position of the eyelid has been lowered, and heavy eyeliner has been added to the upper eyelid to disguise the shifted position. This has multiple negative effects: it alters the look of the eyes; it makes the upper edge look blurry instead of the sharp edge of the eyelid; and it also means that personality-wise this is now a character that wears makeup instead of one that does not.

The eyelashes are in a different position and the outer corner of the eye has shifted downwards. The eye is now primarily framed by makeup rather than the eyelashes.

The eyes seem to have additional shadow cast onto the eye surface from the lowered eyelid.

The eyelid rim is oddly lit and there is no clear division from the eye surface to eyelid, so the eye seems to stretch out even further horizontally as it blurs into the eyelid. (I had the same issue regarding my female Midlander so I suspect this is widespread across characters using pale skintones.)

The eyebrows have lost their colour.

Small wrinkles have been added below the eyes around the base of the lower eyelid - this is more detail than I want to see. The early announcement of the graphics update made a point that the devs were not planning to go overboard on realism.

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I think the artists have made the error of seeing the visible surface of the eye as the entire size of the eye, when actually the shape of the eyelid creates an impression that the eye is bigger than that.

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One interesting thing of having this happen with a major character is that we can also look at how they were interpreted for trailers.

G'raha's appearance in the Endwalker trailer was quite "off" and I think that was again down to them looking at the shape of only the visible eye surface and using that for the trailer model's eye shape. They reviewed their approach for Dawntrail and got a lot closer to the character's original appearance - ironically just as the appearance has been changed to something else.

To compare the Dawntrail trailer to the pre-Dawntrail eye shape:

[lunartears]

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Sorry, I ended up making this more into my own post so I'll omit the quote.

I have been feeling strongly about both the grin and smile changes, but most of my contempt is because of the lip / mouth changes.
As you mentioned big grin, I used it on a lot of my portraits but it's totally different now and I'm too demotivated to make anything new. I mentioned big grin a few pages back in my definitive feedback post here (ableit from an exaggerated angle).



Regarding teeth, my character looks like she had an entire replacement set of teeth installed that don't quite fit her mouth. The excessive whitening and the diminished lines seperating each tooth don't help either. Also, I've only seen it once or twice but I don't like the new bright red tongue and gums either.

[Adamantini]

(...)

Sorry for not seeing your first post, I haven't been following this topic very often. But from what I noticed in your post, the expression has indeed been altered. I didn't use this expression much for screenshots, so unfortunately, I have nothing to compare it to, but I really don't remember this expression being like this on my character. To me, it seems like the character is forcing a smile while thinking 'please kill me.' And what's worse is that it's not just limited to the big grin, but to any emote where he smiles showing his teeth.

[Louhikko]

Personally I do like the new teeth. One of my biggest petpeeves before was how pronounced the teeth were but I quess it's a matter of taste.

[CidHeiral]

Personally I do like the new teeth. One of my biggest petpeeves before was how pronounced the teeth were but I quess it's a matter of taste.

Agreed, the lines on the old set were way over defined, like a wacky PS1 character in the 90's.



The new teeth are a night and day improvement over the old teeth.

[ConantSivrha]

Personally I do like the new teeth. One of my biggest petpeeves before was how pronounced the teeth were but I quess it's a matter of taste.

I sometimes thought the outlines between the teeth (pre-Dawntrail) were a bit too dark, which could make the teeth look like they’re too far apart or too small. However, the new teeth look unnaturally white and unshaded. Overall, I found the pre-Dawntrail teeth less distracting. In my opinion, the new ones look unrealistic to the point of being offputting, and they draw too much attention to the broken lighting inside of characters’ mouths because they’re so blindingly white to start with.

[Kaziek]

I sometimes thought the outlines between the teeth (pre-Dawntrail) were a bit too dark, which could make the teeth look like they’re too far apart or too small. However, the new teeth look unnaturally white and unshaded. Overall, I found the pre-Dawntrail teeth less distracting. In my opinion, the new ones look unrealistic to the point of being offputting, and they draw too much attention to the broken lighting inside of characters’ mouths because they’re so blindingly white to start with.

The lack of baked in fake shadows is really distracting in a lot of places. I agree that both versions of the teeth aren't the greatest, but the new ones are pretty disappointing when they look as off as they do considering they were just updated compared to a decade old asset.