Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Kaziek]

Bumping to whine about the lighting, because it really is such an eyesore sometimes lol.



For the record, this is with character lighting turned all the way down, and yet he's fully illuminated in a completely shadowed environment, as if cut and paste from another image.

This is one of the worst parts of the update in my opinion that affects everything and isn't race/face specific. Characters are just way too illuminated, and barely have environmental lighting colors applied to them. Looking at the difference between the night scenes in the EW benchmark vs. live really shows how off everything looks in comparison.

[lunartears]

Bumping to whine about the lighting, because it really is such an eyesore sometimes lol.



For the record, this is with character lighting turned all the way down, and yet he's fully illuminated in a completely shadowed environment, as if cut and paste from another image.

I've been replaying Heavensward lately (to help someone) and it's been so egregious that I complain about it every single time I enter a cutscene. Azys Lla was the worst one.
I can't forget about "how it's supposed to look"... Not to mention of course seeing how off all of the NPCs look now.

Also, it reminds me of my earlier post:

Found this video today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgBEkzT8xhU
Good reference for the way that MSQ has been affected by the graphics update.

[CuteBucket]

This is one of the worst parts of the update in my opinion that affects everything and isn't race/face specific. Characters are just way too illuminated, and barely have environmental lighting colors applied to them. Looking at the difference between the night scenes in the EW benchmark vs. live really shows how off everything looks in comparison.

It's particularly egregious in many old cutscenes now, as have been posted previously in this thread. Oh, did a scene once have harsh, dramatic lighting in it for artistic effect? Not anymore!

[Arzalis]

I'd say the issue is that "harsh, dramatic lighting" often just looked really bad. In those quoted examples above, the new one looks better every time to me because the old shadows were terrible. They often also ended up highlighting all the issues with the old face models.

To my knowledge, they haven't fully updated all the old zones with the new lighting and such yet, so that's probably a big reason why your character sticks out sometimes. The character models are using the new shaders but the environment hasn't been updated to reflect that yet.

[Turnintino]

I've been replaying Heavensward lately (to help someone) and it's been so egregious that I complain about it every single time I enter a cutscene. Azys Lla was the worst one.
I can't forget about "how it's supposed to look"... Not to mention of course seeing how off all of the NPCs look now.

Also, it reminds me of my earlier post:

Like... I can understand the desire to soften the harsher lighting that we previously saw in cutscenes for the sake of clarity or whatever, but these examples plainly aren't doing that -- or they aren't only doing that anyway. The shadows weren't just softened, the characters have been illuminated. It's jarring, I would argue even without the side-by-side comparisons in some cases. Turn the dimmer down even a little bit lol.

But where I can at least understand the intent behind the above tweaks (I still agree they way over-corrected, rest assured), I don't think there's any good reason to apply this "fix" outside of cutscenes, especially. It bears repeating, I would really love to see further adjustments, across the board.

[Kaziek]

Like... I can understand the desire to soften the harsher lighting that we previously saw in cutscenes for the sake of clarity or whatever, but these examples plainly aren't doing that -- or they aren't only doing that anyway. The shadows weren't just softened, the characters have been illuminated. It's jarring, I would argue even without the side-by-side comparisons in some cases. Turn the dimmer down even a little bit lol.

But where I can at least understand the intent behind the above tweaks (I still agree they way over-corrected, rest assured), I don't think there's any good reason to apply this "fix" outside of cutscenes, especially. It bears repeating, I would really love to see further adjustments, across the board.

I feel like a good middle ground would be to adjust the character lighting slider to allow for it to go even darker than it currently is at zero. That would let people who enjoy the way things look now continue to do so, while letting those who preferred the old style have it back again.

[Astronis]

I'd say the issue is that "harsh, dramatic lighting" often just looked really bad. In those quoted examples above, the new one looks better every time to me because the old shadows were terrible. They often also ended up highlighting all the issues with the old face models.

Yeah, at least the last two in that example look better. I remember playing through that cutscene for the first time and thinking the lighting was atrocious. I don't know that they've gone through and adjusted that cutscene for the new lighting, but at least now the characters are visible, and the last shot of Alphinaud is nicely balanced artistically with the red in the background.

The first two...probably the before pics are better.

The first benchmark lighting did make my character look flat while in shadow, though I don't recall saying anything about it, since who knows what it would have been like live.

[Arzalis]

Yeah, at least the last two in that example look better. I remember playing through that cutscene for the first time and thinking the lighting was atrocious. I don't know that they've gone through and adjusted that cutscene for the new lighting, but at least now the characters are visible, and the last shot of Alphinaud is nicely balanced artistically with the red in the background.

The first two...probably the before pics are better.

The first benchmark lighting did make my character look flat while in shadow, though I don't recall saying anything about it, since who knows what it would have been like live.

The before pictures just remind me of that one Game of Thrones episode. The first two are so dark you almost can't see Ilberd's face and certainly can't see much detail. There's definitely a better middle ground there somewhere, but the after is still the superior image to me.

[lunartears]

I really miss my character.

[roseychan]

Me too. I really miss her gentle look, and smile. Why they screwed with the lips the most is beyond me. Tons of faces ruined thanks to a botox kardashiened pair of lips.

Not to speak lightly of all the other issues, or dismiss them, but the lips are one of the biggest things that bother me.