Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Louhikko]

I agree, I actually mentioned this in my post as well but it really makes our characters look so much older, like our cheeks are sunked around the eyes. Don't know if it's a bug (like Larirawiel mentioned) or a "feature" but it's super distracting especially because it's so pronounced.

[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.

[ConantSivrha]

One thing that I don't think anyone has pointed out directly is that several faces have a dark shadow underneath their eyes hear the nose now that doesn't go away in pretty much any lighting (though darker, more contrasted areas make it worse). This is definitely due to the more prominent eyebags along with the harsher lighting, but I figured it might be helpful to point out. This really seems to me like an actually unintended consequence of the new lighting and models rather than an artistic choice. I've seen it on several different faces so it seems to be a fairly universal issue.

I can’t speak for hyur and elezen, but I know that my face 4 female miqo’te already had tear troughs before the update. Light would catch on them from some angles, but they were generally hard to see. Nowadays, they’re still hard to see in most lighting conditions, but there some lighting conditions that make them obvious where they didn’t before.

I hope this feature won’t be removed from any faces that already had it before the update. But, of course, it would be better to remove it or make it optional on any faces that it is a new addition to, so the original look of those characters is preserved.

[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:

[Rueby]

Those dark shadows are messed up normal maps. I made a bug report here:
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...e-Elezen-faces

But they closed it as "Insufficient Information". I still do not know why it is insufficient. But SQEX does SQEX things. Maybe it is too difficult for them to fix it.


Cheers

I feel like you need to baby feed them information. At least I had some success having my stuff accepted. You're showing stuff but relying on the person to observe, which to you I guess is obvious. I think you can add coordinates of where you're standing for good measure too just in case. I haven't made a character related bug reports because I'm not sure they'd accept it...But mine either went into dupes or accepted/working on fix.

I'm honestly not really sure. You included alot of screenies and they were obvious to me, but I'm still puzzled what classifies as 'insufficient information' and it can be abit frustrating.

[Kaziek]

Those dark shadows are messed up normal maps. I made a bug report here:
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...e-Elezen-faces

But they closed it as "Insufficient Information". I still do not know why it is insufficient. But SQEX does SQEX things. Maybe it is too difficult for them to fix it.


Cheers

Thank you! This is good information to have, even if SE doesn't act on fixing them.

[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.

[noumen0nn]

Since CantDecide’s previous post went over most of the feedback I had been wanting to touch on, I want to make a followup post going over some other details that I think are worth pointing out and looking into.

Eyebrows

The default eyebrows (that is, with facial feature 1, which thickens them, unselected) have become much lighter and thinner. The old eyebrows had a natural “gradient” where the hairs thinned out toward the ends and were thicker and closer in the middle. The new eyebrows, by contrast, are unnaturally uniform, with none of the individual hairs overlapping or touching like real eyebrows do; this makes them seem like they were drawn on with pencil.



Viewed from a distance, this gives the impression of the new eyebrows being a drastically lighter shade than the old ones. Additionally, though the eyebrows have technically stayed the same length, the old eyebrows used to fade significantly at the inner ends. The new, uniform thickness creates the illusion that the inner ends are closer together than they used to be.

I believe all of these issues could be solved by adjusting the thickness of individual hairs, and increasing the density of the hairs toward the middle/decreasing density towards the ends, in order to more closely match the original shape.

Eyes

Many users have already documented the changes to the shape of midlander eyes, and how they have become smaller overall.



I want to highlight one effect of this change in particular: Viewed from the side, the eye not only looks significantly smaller, but appears as if it has actually shifted upwards on the face.



This issue is caused by the lower-outer eyelid having been shrunk inward while the upper-outer eyelid was raised, and could be fixed by adjusting the eyes/eyelids to match their original shape and proportions. Following this thread, it seems that many eye shapes that used to have a similar downward curve in the lower eyelid have had it removed, so I wanted to point out just how serious a difference it can make depending on the angle it’s seen from.

Eyeliner/shadow

It’s already been pointed out how midlander’s eyeliner option has gone from dramatic and winged to tame and “natural”, but something I’ve seen talked about less is how it looks with shut eyes. In the old graphics, the makeup colored the entire eyelid black, whereas now it’s only present just above the lashes. Additionally, there is a noticeable “smudge” to the texture of the eyeshadow when the eye shuts now.



(Here's a higher resolution still image for a better visual on the smudge)



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[noumen0nn]

Eyebags/Face Shape

I have nothing new to add about the eyebags, but I want to provide another example of how unnatural they look--here they are casting a harsh and distinct shadow, despite the entire face already being in the shade. As other users have pointed out, the eyebags were always a part of the face geometry, so I believe this is likely a normal map issue rather than a geometry one, and could be solved by adjusting the normal map.



Also visible in this gif is the subtle, but noticeable, change to the overall face shape. Her upper cheeks are wider, but her jaw and chin have both shrunken, giving the whole face a rounder look.

Tear Tracks

Many races have had the presence/impression of their tear tracks amplified, and some races that didn’t have tear tracks received them. Midlander face 1 falls somewhere in between: We had tear tracks, but they were much less defined. In addition, the new tear tracks have been raised and angled upward/outward, which contributes to the “swollen” look of face 1. I suspect this is both a geometry issue and a normal map issue. In any case, I believe that tear tracks are now far too prominent across most races.



Nose

Myself and other users have already shown how the nose has become wider and more wedge-shaped, as well as slightly more downturned and flared at the nostrils. I wanted to add another important detail that is contributing to the wider shape: on the old face, the inner cheek overtook the nose just above the nostril, whereas on the new face, the nostril overtakes the cheek. This angle also does a better job at showing how the nostrils have shrunk away from the nose tip, which further contributes to its “swollen” impression.



Philtrum

The issues with Midlander philtrums has been well-established in this thread already, so instead I want to show how it compares to discrepancies in other races between the old and new graphics.



As shown here, Midlander face 1’s philtrum became narrower and more uniform, Au Ra face 2’s philtrum became wider and more cone-shaped, and Miqo’te face 1’s philtrum stayed almost exactly the same (and unlike the other two, wasn’t made deeper). It would be one thing if the shape changes were all in the same direction, but given that the graphics update made these changes (or didn’t) seemingly at random, I think it just means that more care needs to be taken if further adjustments are to be made, to make sure these features match.

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[noumen0nn]

Lips

The changes to Midlander face 1’s lips have been well documented, especially regarding the cupid’s bow being a totally different shape and the lower lip being overly round. I wanted to add that the lips look strange from a side profile, with the bottom lip looking as if it’s being sucked in, further contributing to the tense, pouty impression of the lips.



Lip Color

The shape of Midlander lips has changed, as has already been shown in many previous posts. However, I wanted to highlight a further issue with lip color: Lip color no longer covers the entire area of the lip like it used to, inexplicably vanishing at the corners of the mouth. As a result, Midlanders with lip color enabled seem as if they are always pouting. Also worth mentioning, the lip color fades away before reaching the edge of the lips, leaving an awkward pink line around the whole mouth.



This change is especially obvious with any expression that has the mouth open.



Expressions

This is not a midlander-specific issue, but expressions across the board are uncanny right now. Mouths, especially, move in a way that looks like they are being manipulated by invisible strings or hooks, rather than natural muscle movements.

With “smile”, for instance, the corners of the mouth curve up much too sharply, and the expression looks much more tense or forced than it used to.



“Amazed” is particularly egregious, with the bottom teeth somehow sitting above the corners of the mouth. Try to mimic this expression in real life, and you will find that it requires you to tense up your entire lower face and purposefully jut your lower jaw out.



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