Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Cyrtip]

No, I think we cannot all agree on that. The 2.0 character models had issues that have been visible for years. In addition, they added a lot more bones to the models so they can animate better in the future. I also suspect they remade the models the way they did so future cross-race items will be easier to make for them, but that's just a guess.

Could just be the particular face I use and scrutinized the most had no lingering problems pre 7.0, what with it being a 3.0 addition race and not a 2.0 race, but I had no problems with the old face models.
As an end user, facial animations looked so much better with the fewer bones the devs had to work with pre 7.0. Sure, 7.0 models might be a technical upgrade and better to animate in future because of additional bones, but the animations we have right here in the now are definitely worse than what we had in the past. I don't want to have to look forwards to a fix, for something that worked just fine three months ago. We've updated but backwards haha...
I've heard about the cross race gear explanation too, I think in LA Fan Fest they talked about auto-adapting headgear to fit different races. If its true that the face models were remade to cut development costs, quality be damned, then that's just saddening to hear.

[Astronis]

Could just be the particular face I use and scrutinized the most had no lingering problems pre 7.0, what with it being a 3.0 addition race and not a 2.0 race, but I had no problems with the old face models.
As an end user, facial animations looked so much better with the fewer bones the devs had to work with pre 7.0. Sure, 7.0 models might be a technical upgrade and better to animate in future because of additional bones, but the animations we have right here in the now are definitely worse than what we had in the past. I don't want to have to look forwards to a fix, for something that worked just fine three months ago. We've updated but backwards haha...
I've heard about the cross race gear explanation too, I think in LA Fan Fest they talked about auto-adapting headgear to fit different races. If its true that the face models were remade to cut development costs, quality be damned, then that's just saddening to hear.

I know that in one of the Fanfests, Yoshi-P took great pains to point out some of the issues lalafell had that they were correcting, and I know, playing a Highlander, there were issues there also, issues I've been very pleased to be rid of now. I can just imagine that he was playing his main and just being irked at the things he saw that couldn't be fixed...until now. Faces added after 2.0 probably didn't have those same issues. At least, I never saw the same kind of problems on my au ra alt that has the same face as yours judging by the horns.

And yea I can see people being unhappy with the current animations. Some of them need correcting as they didn't quite translate (I know some expressions cause a weird twitching on the eyebrows that absolutely should not be there).

I really, seriously disagree that it was "quality be damned", as I can see a great deal of care has gone into making the faces as close as possible while still maintaining the same feel. I know quite a lot of people disagree with that, but the faces do, in my eyes, still have the same aesthetics while being an upgrade. Faces either designed by or inspired by Tetsuya Nomura's work still look unmistakably like Tetsuya Nomura's work. I do think there's some work left yet--some faces have some crazy tall foreheads and there's some weirdness here and there, but no, the quality was not to be damned. If it was quality be damned, they wouldn't have gone through the effort correcting things from the first benchmark (and maybe second, though at least on my Highlander's face, if there was such a pass it was so minor as to be unnoticeable).

[Turnintino]

Faces either designed by or inspired by Tetsuya Nomura's work still look unmistakably like Tetsuya Nomura's work.

I hate to be that person, but small nitpick: the 1.0-2.0 races, at least, are based closely on Akihiko Yoshida's concept art. Kazuya Takahashi and Tsubasa Masao seemed to largely take over from there, as far as player character designs are concerned. The only designs Nomura's directly contributed (not counting crossovers, that is) have been for Gaia and Eden's Promise (the boss, not the entire series lol).

[Astronis]

I hate to be that person, but small nitpick: the 1.0-2.0 races, at least, are based closely on Akihiko Yoshida's concept art. Kazuya Takahashi and Tsubasa Masao seemed to largely take over from there, as far as player character designs are concerned. The only designs Nomura's directly contributed (not counting crossovers, that is) have been for Gaia and Eden's Promise (the boss, not the entire series lol).

Haha that's why I said "inspired by", because I wasn't sure who exactly designed them directly, though I can still see Nomura's 'fingerprints' all over my character. Probably because he's designed enough characters for Final Fantasies that it's become part of the DNA in the same way Amano's work has. Akihiko Yoshida has a very distinct style, which you can still see in some of the face models for sure.

Thanks for the correction!

[Cyrtip]

snip

What problems were there with the older race models? I remember the live letter where he went over the lengths they went through to preserve the way shading?/shadows? (it's been a while) looked on lalafell pre 7.0, and how the devs talked about preserving the dead-eyes look of Au Ra♀'s face 1 (The small backwards horns face), but both of those were aspects of the races that they tried to keep, not to fix.

That and as far as I know the devs have been pretty good with fixing actual bugs found in the newer graphics (Au Ra♀ hands having an untextured scale, or their body scales looking incredibly jagged and low quality where they met the skin, both fixed sometime between 7.0-7.05). Was that not the case with the old graphics, were issues like those present and left unfixed?

Personally, due to my dissatisfaction with the new graphics, I'm inclined to think the issues were 'issues,' or artistic choices made for one reason or another (Could even be due to technical limitation) that players grew to love over the years, which are now gone. An example that could have been a technical limitation I personally miss is how <7.0 Au Ra limbal rings were just a hard edged solid color ring placed over the edge of the eye that followed the brightness of the eye, being dark when the eye was in darkness, and bright under light, while the new limbal rings are fancy gradients that are dark when light shines directly on them, but glow on their own when in the dark (Appearing to grow thicker in the process because the transparent parts of the gradient become more distinct). Whether limbal rings were the way they were for the last nine years due to technical limitations or something else entirely, I don't really care. Even if they failed developer expectations almost a decade ago, they were also part of the character impressions we were promised would be maintained three months ago, and I wish that had taken precedence.
This post from the JP forums shows what I mean with the limbal rings:

I've noticed this as well. I recently rewatched Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (excellent movie) and there's a scene that takes place in an elevator with light directly overhead. When I reached this scene I had a good chuckle because I realized it looks exactly like so many pictures people have posted as examples of how bad the graphical update looks.

The best way I can think to articulate my gripes with the lighting is that I don't want it to look realistic, I want it to look good. Lighting like that would probably fit right in and look great in a tense scene like the bloody banquet, but in Gridania's markets or inn?

[Astronis]

What problems were there with the older race models?

Specifically with the lalafell, Yoshi-P pointed out some polygons on their faces that, because of the downgrade from 1.0, resulted in a look that was uneven and bumpy.

Personally, due to my dissatisfaction with the new graphics, I'm inclined to think the issues were 'issues,' or artistic choices made for one reason or another (Could even be due to technical limitation) that players grew to love over the years, which are now gone.

Some of this is certainly part of it. I know that people complained about losing visible vertex edges (on an elezen I believe) in one of the older threads. That could be in the realm of technical limitation that some people liked. I don't think the artists should make visible vertex edges intentionally, though.

An example that could have been a technical limitation I personally miss is how <7.0 Au Ra limbal rings were just a hard edged solid color ring placed over the edge of the eye that followed the brightness of the eye, being dark when the eye was in darkness, and bright under light, while the new limbal rings are fancy gradients that are dark when light shines directly on them, but glow on their own when in the dark (Appearing to grow thicker in the process because the transparent parts of the gradient become more distinct).

I can see that. However they're doing limbal rings now is definitely different. They now do quite a lot to change the color of the eyes when they didn't before. I had to adjust the color on my au ra alt's limbal rings to get closer to the original look.

In any event, the devs wished to update the character models, and obviously, a lot of people simply wished they hadn't, while a lot of people are very glad they did. I think, with some things still outstanding that could be adjusted, the devs delivered on their promise about as well as humanly possible, given millions of players will never agree on anything so ephemeral as "impression". Humanly possible, not divinely possible. It's not slip-shod, lazy, lacking in quality, but there are still some things that can be tweaked. How do you think the devs should navigate the path between players who feel they failed to deliver on the promise regarding "impressions" and players who are more than satisfied with the delivery on those same "impressions"?

Maybe they'll do what some other games have done, and let players flip a switch on the models. They can't do that with the lighting, so the results might not be that great, and it would close the devs off from what they hoped to gain from standardizing the models, but maybe they'll do that.

[Len_]

In any event, the devs wished to update the character models, and obviously, a lot of people simply wished they hadn't, while a lot of people are very glad they did. I think, with some things still outstanding that could be adjusted, the devs delivered on their promise about as well as humanly possible, given millions of players will never agree on anything so ephemeral as "impression". Humanly possible, not divinely possible. It's not slip-shod, lazy, lacking in quality, but there are still some things that can be tweaked. How do you think the devs should navigate the path between players who feel they failed to deliver on the promise regarding "impressions" and players who are more than satisfied with the delivery on those same "impressions"?

You are being extremely unserious. This isn't some kind of esoteric art. People are literally lining pixels up and showing how they're totally, OBJECTIVELY different for no reason. If you think it isn't humanly possible to do as good as a job on upgrading characters as they did on downgrading them 10 years ago I think you shouldn't bother speaking on what humans are capable of because you clearly don't know. I know you really love how your character turned out but come on lol.

[Astronis]

You are being extremely unserious. This isn't some kind of esoteric art. People are literally lining pixels up and showing how they're totally, OBJECTIVELY different for no reason. If you think it isn't humanly possible to do as good as a job on upgrading characters as they did on downgrading them 10 years ago I think you shouldn't bother speaking on what humans are capable of because you clearly don't know. I know you really love how your character turned out but come on lol.

It's a totally different mesh. There IS a reason. I think they can tweak it further, and they have, but I also think they've been working hard on a whole lot of things, not just the faces models for months on end. I am an artist. I know how extremely difficult it is to replicate something else with pixel-perfect precision, and I think expecting that is absolutely unreasonable.

[Len_]

It's a totally different mesh. There IS a reason. I think they can tweak it further, and they have, but I also think they've been working hard on a whole lot of things, not just the faces models for months on end. I am an artist. I know how extremely difficult it is to replicate something else with pixel-perfect precision, and I think expecting that is absolutely unreasonable.

Nobody told them to tell the players their main directive was to preserve the impression of the characters and then cheap out on doing the bare minimum first step necessary to achieve that of faithfully recreating and upscaling the assets. "They're working so hard on so many other things." Yeah, we could tell.

[Cyrtip]

snip

I was under the incorrect impression before the benchmarks and 7.0 that the old textures and models would be getting upscaled - just larger textures and more polygons. That's all I wanted or expected, and I don't think that would have left anyone dissatisfied (Though I could be wrong on that). Most of the criticism I heard about the game's graphics pre 7.0 were things like "I can count the pixels on Stormblood Zenos' model/my armor/my hair/etc.)," remarks that metallic materials looked plastic-y (Like the Genta/Genji fending armor from Stormblood's first raid tier), or people noting how obvious some polygons/jagged edges were.

I just wanted the characters to be higher definition, not redesigned. Chances are, in an alternate universe where there were no graphics replaced with 7.0, there would be no people wearing masks solely out of a dislike of how their characters look, because they wouldn't have intentionally made a character whose face they couldn't stand and couldn't fix. (Case in point, the profile picture left of this paragraph haha)

The solution to "I (Developer) want to change this face" would have been to add more options to the character creator, not to take away what we previously had to force changes like pronounced lower eye sockets, puffy cheeks, largened Au Ra pupils, etc. More options is still a possible solution, even now. At the end of the day, the new faces are a big group of vertices, edges, and faces, just like the old ones. It wouldn't be impossible to make another face, mouth, what have you that actually closely replicates what we had pre-7.0 while also keeping the new features (and technical advantages brought by all faces being morphs of the same standard mesh) that we have now, and I wish that the devs had either done that, or had never made these new facial features to begin with, just increasing the texture resolution and poly count on what we had instead.

My disappointment in the changes is that I expected them to be minimal, but a lot of them feel like the developer responsible didn't even have a reference photo open, or did, and put forth excruciating effort to do the opposite of whatever they saw.
For Au Ra♀ face 4 (mileage may vary depending on facial features),

Small pupils? They're large now.
Defined pupils? They're muddy now.
Lowered gaze? Its raised now.
Straight eyelashes? They're curved now.
Thin eyeshadow? Its thick now.
No margin (skin indentation) at the bottom of the eye socket? Incredibly pronounced one now.
Thin cheekbones? They're puffy now.
Thick nose bridge? Its thin now.
Matte lips? They're glossy now.
Upper lip shaped with convex curves? Curves are concave now.
Lower lip shaped with concave curves? They're convex now.
Neutral face had a mild frown? Gentle smile now.
And sadly, there's more, but char limit and I gave feedback here.