Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Astronis]

I'm sorry, man, but I just can't see whatever it is you're seeing; in no way to me does your character's case look worse than the example Cheapshot gave.

....I know. I SAID I didn't have a screenshot of the truly egregious. The screenshot I posted happened to be what I could find to illustrate that this issue was happening in Endwalker, too. I didn't happen to sit around obsessively taking screenshots of all the examples of terrible ARR to Endwalker lighting, why in the world would I have wasted my time doing that? I surely hope you do see the only point I was trying to illustrate by posting that: That this issue is not new to Dawntrail.

Regarding hair, yeah, mine starts glowing too in strong light. It's weird and not ideal. Overall, I like what they've done with hair and making it sleek and shiny, but it came at a certain cost for sure.

Right, I see what you mean now. I had actually never noticed that this was a result of the same phenomenon. I think the reason why is that, while the lighting on your lips here for example is not accurate to how realistic light should work, it's very subtle and diffused compared to how it is now. Whenever I walk into somewhere with overhead lighting, like the markets in old gridania, my WoL's lower eyelids GLOW like lightbulbs while the rest of her face is in total darkness. It's subjective of course, but yours and Turnintino's screenshots give me the impression of "solid objects with janky lighting", whereas Cheapshot's screenshots look more like "hollow plastic figurines with light shining straight through them." I can't agree that they've mitigated it.

Yeah, this screenie is hardly the worst I had seen. I just...well, like I said, hadn't sat around taking screenshots of (mostly ARR's) atrocious lighting. It was simply a given. It's certainly going to still be a problem. It's not something they can fix without doing something truly insane. "Solid objects with janky lighting" is absolutely the goal for instances where this particular issue rears its head. But you'll always be able to find locations and whatnot that make the inside of your character's mouth glow. They can't stop it, just make it so it doesn't happen as often (or as obviously) by not using as harsh of lights.

Once you know what to look for, though, you'll be able to find this phenomenon everywhere in all kinds of old screenshots and new environments. Mostly I think they've mitigated it because they've fixed some of the really terrible ARR lighting and I can't go to the places where I noticed it being excessively obvious and replicate the old results. I wish I had a screenshot of what I am thinking of in the Gold Saucer, it was so strong. Now the effect is still there, but it's softer to my eyes.

In any event, they can't eradicate it. That's only possible with truly ridiculous performance cost.

[noumen0nn]

In any event, they can't eradicate it. That's only possible with truly ridiculous performance cost.

For sure, I'm not expecting that. To me there's two things I'd like to see happen: One, as I've mentioned, I think the lighting in general is just WAY too strong right now, and would like to see it toned down. This mostly applies to bright sunlight which makes pale skin glow to the point where you can't make out facial features, but it could also help with this issue; it's fine if they can't stop light from hitting my eyelids and lips, but I don't think said light needs to blaze like the sun. Two, and hopefully this is already happening, I think there's an element of this being a model issue for the characters. Almost everyone's eyelids got way thicker in the update, increasing the amount of surface that can catch light this way. My WoL's lower lip also got caved in, making more of it "point up" and thus be prone to the same issue. We'll have to see if 7.1 brings any improvement there.

[Astronis]

For sure, I'm not expecting that. To me there's two things I'd like to see happen: One, as I've mentioned, I think the lighting in general is just WAY too strong right now, and would like to see it toned down. This mostly applies to bright sunlight which makes pale skin glow to the point where you can't make out facial features, but it could also help with this issue; it's fine if they can't stop light from hitting my eyelids and lips, but I don't think said light needs to blaze like the sun. Two, and hopefully this is already happening, I think there's an element of this being a model issue for the characters. Almost everyone's eyelids got way thicker in the update, increasing the amount of surface that can catch light this way. My WoL's lower lip also got caved in, making more of it "point up" and thus be prone to the same issue. We'll have to see if 7.1 brings any improvement there.

The angles and thickness of eyelids and whatnot surely do make this issue stand out more, totally agree with that. Probably why I almost never saw my character's eyelids glow now or then--they're at the wrong angle to catch the light. I shall hope they do more to mitigate it.

[Doopliss]

....I know. I SAID I didn't have a screenshot of the truly egregious. The screenshot I posted happened to be what I could find to illustrate that this issue was happening in Endwalker, too. I didn't happen to sit around obsessively taking screenshots of all the examples of terrible ARR to Endwalker lighting, why in the world would I have wasted my time doing that? I surely hope you do see the only point I was trying to illustrate by posting that: That this issue is not new to Dawntrail.

...Brother, I acknowledged what you said in my post. From this not being your best shot of what you meant, and to the idea that lighting used to go through characters, too.

I know I'm not good at condensing my words, and most of the time I don't actually expect most people to read all of it; but can the least people do is please not infer I tried arguing something different than what I actually said?

What I'm "arguing" in the post is that light more than likely didn't go "through" characters in 6.58x prior, and suggested it was something different happening. That what you're claiming isn't "new" isn't exactly comparable. I was trying to suggest rim lighting interacted with places strangely, while now light unnaturally goes through places it shouldn't, and that it actually leads to results significantly different from DT in many other areas.

I know my word flow is often messy, but, come on, man. If you don't have the time to read through it just tell me you disagree instead of insinuating I implied things I didn't.

EDIT: My point would have been better illustrated if I also had any screenshots from 6.58x and prior of what I felt was "worst case" then versus "worst case" now, instead of some GPOSES, but since I have a lot of dark skinned characters and rim light is often used to get them to stick out in screenshots...I just feel so certain that worst case feels so much worse now. Unfortunately both of us kind of have to go with "trust me bro" with the limited comparisons we have, I guess.

[Astronis]

I was wordier but I had to snip it down so the forums didn't yell. Thank you for engaging!

What I'm "arguing" in the post is that light more than likely didn't go "through" characters in 6.58x prior, and suggested it was something different happening.

This is the worst (most obvious) example of light going through someone's head I could find in my screenshots pre-7.0. Cid does not have blue lights shining inside his throat, nor any other color for that matter. Blue light came from behind his head, passed through, and hit the back of his teeth. White light passed through the front of his face to hit the top of his teeth (it's also highlighting his eyelids more than they should be, but that's not so bad). Some softer white light passed through the right side to hit the inside of his mouth. Light absolutely passed through character's heads before Dawntrail.


This is probably the closest I have in screenshots that illustrates the exact issue people are talking about. Strong light, passing through the head, illuminating the lips in a completely unnatural glow-light kind of way. The light isn't coming from behind, that's the only thing missing. It is, however, passing through the model to make that poor lala's mouth glow.

EDIT: My point would have been better illustrated if I also had any screenshots from 6.58x and prior of what I felt was "worst case" then versus "worst case" now, instead of some GPOSES, but since I have a lot of dark skinned characters and rim light is often used to get them to stick out in screenshots...I just feel so certain that worst case feels so much worse now. Unfortunately both of us kind of have to go with "trust us bro" with the limited comparisons we have, I guess.

Of course, we can't just copy and paste our memories onto the screen. Probably a good thing! There is a certain amount of "trust me, bro" we'll have to do. In any event, nothing you'd posted in your previous reply was any worse than things I'd seen pre-Dawntrail (admittedly I use light differently to do rim lighting so likely never encountered the same issues you have before or after), except the hair. That does react to light quite a bit differently now, in extreme light it's very weird, while in normal light it's quite nice. Of course, you have to trust me all of this is the case, since I didn't take a lot of pre-Dawntrail lighting failure screen shots!

[Doopliss]

[Snipped for post length.]

I should have mentioned earlier that I can still indeed see what you mean in the old screenshots, too, particularly regarding the undereye area. Cid's case is especially strange to me though, and still reads as some sort of different funky lighting mechanic because the inside of his mouth remains dark minus that tooth and the lip corner on the left, since he also appears to be hit by a lot of bounce lighting there as well. Although it's possible you're still right about the light position and I got used to avoiding it in GPOSES.

However--in my personal opinion--I do feel like on some faces that the way light goes through the eyes still appears too extreme in too many common-occurrence situations now (particularly ♀ Miqo'te and ♀ Midlanders, unfortunately). Yet, to concede with you, I also noticed the same ♀ Viera I showed in my example no longer has weird rim lighting around her lips in the update, so I also still see definite areas of improvement.

I submit, my perspective can be getting skewed into thinking it looks worse versus more-or-less the same because of things like how hair interacts becoming far too extreme (as well as ears, in my Duskwight's case), which does give, at least my character in particular, a more "see-through" feeling than before. But overall I do think this can be adjusted to be less messy without requiring extreme measures--and more importantly without settling on this level of inconsistency being "okay". If they're going to dedicate a portion of this expansion to the graphic update, I'd like to not be having a Louisoix moment just by looking out the default yellow-lit windows in every house.

I apologize if I come off as aggressive. I've been particularly sensitive about this issue (mostly regarding hair/ears) because, even after sending extensive bug reports, I got slapped with "working as intended" and just...struggle to believe that. I'd struggle to believe even the issues in 2.x were "intended". I don't know, this is just a call for them to do better about it. Although it looks like they're saving to adjust more technical aspects like subsurface scattering in 7.2, according to the announcement post from September...

[Astronis]

I should have mentioned earlier that I can still indeed see what you mean in the old screenshots, too, particularly regarding the undereye area. Cid's case is especially strange to me though ....

The only way to have real bounce lighting in a 3D modeled environment is to use ray tracing. That's what ray tracing does--calculates each ray of light as it bounces off models. People have gotten really good at mimicking the way light bounces and scatters around without going through the computational effort of calculating each ray. Anyhow, any weirdness like lights inside mouths when it shouldn't be there comes from direct lighting illuminating rather than lights bouncing off anything.

Character mouths seem to have some shadows cast inside to keep them from being too bright.

I did some fiddling with lighting to see if I could come up with anything that would help you get the rim lighting you want without setting everything else on fire. Type 2 green light from a pretty good distance, off to the side a bit, put a fairly strong light around my character's face without turning his hair neon, being super bright around furry collars, or lighting up his stubby little ears.

However--in my personal opinion--I do feel like on some faces that the way light goes through the eyes still appears too extreme

Likely--my main is a male Highlander, and I don't see light inside my character's mouth as often now. Male Highlanders have pretty big mouths and I was perpetually seeing light hit the inside of his cheeks! It still happens now but it's not as severe. I don't see it much on my Au Ra female either.

I submit, my perspective can be getting skewed into thinking it looks worse versus more-or-less the same because of things like how hair interacts becoming far too extreme (as well as ears, in my Duskwight's case), which does give, at least my character in particular, a more "see-through" feeling than before.

The way hair reacts to light is much much different, totally agree, it's very weird in bright light. The subsurface scattering on your Elezen's ears intentionally makes them more "see through", but I can see not liking the effect in very bright, colored light!

I apologize if I come off as aggressive. I've been particularly sensitive about this issue (mostly regarding hair/ears) because, even after sending extensive bug reports, I got slapped with "working as intended" and just...struggle to believe that.

No worries, I get being sensitive about it. I'd be surprised if the way hair starts glowing in strong light is intended too, though I wouldn't be surprised if it's a side effect of the way they changed hair to naturally shine in more reasonable light.

I took lots of my wordy words out, forum limits. Anyhow, always hoping whatever they do makes things better for everyone.

If you're not already aware, that word count limit only applies to the original post. If you ever write a long post that exceeds that limit you can just copy half of it, delete it, submit the post, then edit the post and paste that part back in.

*tries*

Well hell. Thanks for the tip. Keeping my words down to a reasonable minimum is probably not a bad thing tho to be fair!

[CidHeiral]

I was wordier but I had to snip it down so the forums didn't yell.

If you're not already aware, that word count limit only applies to the original post. If you ever write a long post that exceeds that limit you can just copy half of it, delete it, submit the post, then edit the post and paste that part back in.

[Einnecy]

Strong light, passing through the head, illuminating the lips in a completely unnatural glow-light kind of way. The light isn't coming from behind, that's the only thing missing. It is, however, passing through the model to make that poor lala's mouth glow.

There is a discussion here to be had about style and how much lenience it gives to these sort of graphical glitches. With a shift to a more realistic style these glitches and oversights become more jarring and harder to unsee. In my opinion the changes to the lighting only exacerbated whatever issues there were prior to DT. The example you mentioned still exists and personally I think they are worse:

I didn't notice my characters glow like this when standing in front of an aetheryte (shard) prior to DT.

Taken in Ifrit's trial. The lips in particular look awful.

Whatever issues there were prior to DT, and I say that knowing how terrible the overhead light in inn rooms was, they cannot be worse than this monstrosity:

And please, no more mentions of ray tracing. The system requirements have leaped far enough as it is. If the fix is to add ray tracing, then it is not a fix at all.

EDIT: noumen0nn put it very well. Basically, this:

It's subjective of course, but yours and Turnintino's screenshots give me the impression of "solid objects with janky lighting", whereas Cheapshot's screenshots look more like "hollow plastic figurines with light shining straight through them." I can't agree that they've mitigated it.

[Iscah]

I think what makes the lighting errors really glaring now is that they've claimed the purpose of the change being "more realistic" lighting cast by the actual shapes of the models rather than artificially set-up ones, so it's a bigger problem if it hasn't actually made it any more realistic.