Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[GreenLeafy]

The "hyurification" is certainly real.

This approach would fall in line with that I've seen for the diffuse maps for everyone's eyes aswell. I don't have the diffuse maps from pre-DT but every single one in DT is literally the same one for everyone with just minor tweaks of value (or pupil shape for miqo/lalas). Which is what most likely led to something like au'ras losing their smaller pupil because they now have an identical diffuse map with the rest. Whoever was working on doing the update for characters was really trying to cut as many corners as possible , which in of itself isn't a terrible thing to do, but it was just executed so poorly and had literally no consideration for the finer details that made the racial differences what they really are.

[nattherat]

This approach would fall in line with that I've seen for the diffuse maps for everyone's eyes aswell. I don't have the diffuse maps from pre-DT but every single one in DT is literally the same one for everyone with just minor tweaks of value (or pupil shape for miqo/lalas). Which is what most likely led to something like au'ras losing their smaller pupil because they now have an identical diffuse map with the rest. Whoever was working on doing the update for characters was really trying to cut as many corners as possible , which in of itself isn't a terrible thing to do, but it was just executed so poorly and had literally no consideration for the finer details that made the racial differences what they really are.

Absolutely, I'm really glad for the players who have explained the technical side of things in this thread despite there sometimes being pushback/claims that these are imagined/subjective, that's what inspired me to go look at the meshes and textures and see for myself too. I wanted to be certain of the criticisms I had and why they were happening.

I understand efficiency in the workplace is important, and I understand why on paper this would have seemed like an awesome idea. Having one universal base mesh to cut your work down to a fraction? Sounds great! But universal only works if everything using that universal mesh is fundamentally the same in the first place. Actually making a Lalafell, Hrothgar, and Roegadyn all use a Hyur mesh is beyond absurd. It's no longer optimised if it causes so many issues that they now have to do their second major revision to the graphics - and potentially third+, depending on the results of the late August revision. That's now significantly less efficient than if they'd made a bespoke mesh per race to start with. Literally doing a lazy subdivide on the original lalafell mesh, whilst would need cleaning up, would have produced better visual results that more players would have been happy with because it would have structurally remained lalafell. (It also would have saved them time. I can't imagine what a pain it must be to first try and mash a hyur face into something as extreme as a lalafell, and then try and force the shape keys into the same as old shape keys. This is why everyone's noticing their mouths/noses/eyebrows/cheeks/etc are different. Basically this has made way more work for the dev team than just doing bespoke meshes to start with.)