Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[OgruMogru]

I also can't really get any notable, good rim lighting on my characters in GPOSE anymore, especially if I want to use a specific color, because things like this happen now:

I've been struggling with this soooo much!

[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...

[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.

[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!

[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.

[Astronis]

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.

They aren't glitches. It's the nature of the beast. They cannot be eradicated without insane, counterproductive effort. That's my whole argument. Yes, they can be jarring. But are you willing to play an MMO that requires the processing power to truly fix the issue? That's how much 'leniency' you have to give the issue.

The hair--maybe that could be fixed, I don't know enough about that.

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

Ifrit's trial before Dawntrail. Up to you if you think Dawntrail is worse.

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.

Exactly right. That's why I keep mentioning ray tracing. To underline how there is no fix at all, there is only mitigation, and there will never be enough mitigation to eradicate it.

[Kaziek]

I think loggos' viera is another good example of how much more gray/cool toned dark skin tones have become with the update. I'm not sure if its partially because of how overtuned the shine is on dark skin now, but its really a shame. xiv has never had the best color palette or skin tone options, but now (other than male mooncats bizarrely being a little bit more warm toned for some reason), it feels like across the board a lot of the little warmth that was there has been pulled out of certain colors.
(There's probably more going on than just the shine though because I just remembered that some of my friends who play dark skinned au ra with fantasy skintones also had their undertones completely change)

I think at least part of this is due to the fact that the environmental light seems to have far less effect on characters now. Warmer lighting used to influence skin tone a more substantial amount, so now things tend to look off because our characters just stick out from the environment way too much.

[Larirawiel]

I was wordier but I had to snip it down so the forums didn't yell. Thank you for engaging!
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This is the reason why raytracing is so much better than light maps. If you use the latter techniques then you need a game engine, which creates exact light maps. But creating exact light maps is very CPU intensive. It can be more expensive than raytracing. So i guess, FF14 lacks of accurate light maps because the game would run very bad on slower PCs and consoles.

You can see here the lack of accuracy. Light bleeding artifacts:



And here is the light source over my character. So there is no chance, that the face would be illuminated.





Cheers

[Loggos]

I think at least part of this is due to the fact that the environmental light seems to have far less effect on characters now. Warmer lighting used to influence skin tone a more substantial amount, so now things tend to look off because our characters just stick out from the environment way too much.

I think that's certainly a reason! But even in the CC the entire palette of skin tones is a lot more desaturated to begin with so I guess it's a combination of many issues coming together.