Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Solazz]

Alright I'm finally home from work and got a chance to upload a little side by side of a screenshot from the night before 7.1 and one from today after it went live regarding face 4 female au ra. (7.0 on the left, 7.1 on the right)



Now, obviously, the limbal rings are a bit different. In all honesty I would not mind them being brighter like they were pre-7.0, but this feels like an over-correction to the point I can barely see the rest of my iris under it. Aside from them, though, I noticed the general outline of the eyes is a little more sharp along the outer corner like they were before which is very appreciated. I also saw the bridge of the nose was widened a bit and the tip of the forehead scale going down the nose made more pointy like they used to be.

I made a post back when the updated benchmark was released pointing out the prominent lower eyelids that had been added to face 4. https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...72#post6479872

Looking at her live now, that also appears to have been addressed.


Face 4 seems to have gotten several small changes that, for me at least, added up to a nice update. Nuclear limbal rings aside. At this point, I wish they'd just add some of these different features we've gone through as additional creation options like SchwarzwaelderTorte said. That way I wouldn't have to hold my breath with each new patch hoping the character I've been playing so long doesn't suddenly feel completely different again.

[Einnecy]

That these changes took 4 months to implement is honestly just insulting. I've lost all faith in the development team and this game's future. After 2 benchmarks and the expansion launch I should have known that a singular patch wasn't going to fix much no matter how much feedback everyone gave.
I knew, and yet I hoped. I hoped, and yet I am let down once again.

Reducing the philtrum has brought back some sense of style and stylized art direction to the game, but I guess the bleached ♀raen scales, strong shine and darkened colour of the lips, uncanny white eye texture, large pupils, new facial animations, etc. are all spec. lol

My subscription ends in 7 days and I will not be renewing. There's a lot of reasons for it. I already swore on it once, but 7.1 was the final nail on the coffin.

[Tsumdere]

Potentially unpopular opinion but they need to put the eyebags back onto male duskwight elezen face 2. or at least make it an option because I like my duskwight looking like a tired middle-aged man

They shouldn't make any major design changes for any races. It sucked major ass having my young-faced character of seven years (3.1) suddenly look like he aged ten years and lost the kids in the divorce.

Options are good though, but we don't have options currently so... no.

[Router]

Sooo they basically made limbal rings brighter and toned down the philtrums a little bit? Did I miss anything?

[Cheapshot]

Sooo they basically made limbal rings brighter and toned down the philtrums a little bit? Did I miss anything?

They added back some of the harder edges to Roe features thankfully. Very minor tweaks around mouths. They fixed some stuff with lighting intensity. That's about it though.

[Turnintino]

I haven't taken comparison shots yet, but I can tell at a glance that neither of my biggest concerns about male Miqo'te's 'face 4' have been changed, for better or worse. My main issues being the shape of the nose and upper lip sculpts (not the textures, in this case, though they have their problems).

Not necessarily surprised, since this isn't the most popular catboy face (though probably second most), but still disappointed. And I suppose there's no guarantee that my issues will be addressed at all, since critiques of this face tend to focus more on the eyes and bump maps (which I do agree should be adjusted, but they're lower on my list).

Still, very happy to see the dark circles removed from male Duskwights' diffuse maps, and the other positive changes y'all have shared. I hope they keep coming.

[CuteBucket]

Checking out my female au ra (face 3) as she's the one I've had the most issues with.

Photos taken in Gpose indoors in a studio. I tried to replicate the lighting as exactly as I could, though the temperature may be slightly different. 7.0 pictures were also taken before any changes they made to indoor lighting.




So...I'm not seeing much change. Not really surprised, I didn't have my hopes up at all, but yeesh.

Here's her old model next to the new ones for good measure. There has been a very slight improvement, but she still looks very different from her old self.


Pros:
- Her eye color is much closer to what it used to be now. This came with the downside of messing up every Au Ra with darker limbal rings though. The old graphics didn't struggle with light and dark limbal rings...so why does this one?
- Her eyes are maaaaybe a little bit smaller. This is good, they made her eyes noticeably larger than her old model which made her look too young and baby faced to me.
- The way light falls on the face seems a bit better. Less eyebags and harsh nose shadows. Not sure how much of that is 7.1 or the indoor lighting changes they did.

Cons:
- Pupil size is still WAY too big.
- Scales still look dirty.
- Eyes are still too rounded.
- Eye makeup is still much lighter than it used to be.
- Lips are still completely wrong and off-model compared to the old face. You cannot tell me this flat, deflated lips are "spec." I've seen other races and NPCs that still have something similar to her old lip shape. It is absolutely doable in the new graphics engine. PLEASE give us back the adorable :} lips instead of these flat :| lips.

I've already taken matters into my own hands and am in talks with a 3D modeler to fix face 3 myself, because I've been in the forums since the launch of the first Benchmark PLEADING the team to fix my favorite Au Ra face, I literally joined the forums just to give feedback on the benchmark because the changes were so egregiously bad, and we're still here. I broke down sobbing when 7.0 came out and I saw that was really what I had to look at now. It's clear to me that Square Enix does not care about these character models nearly as much as I and many other players do, so I guess it's up to us in the community to fix it and do their work for them.

[Taranok]

The changes on face 4 au ra are a bit more noticeable.





6.58 on left, Benchmark 1.0 on right.





7.1

Of note we can see that the lips are fixed and don't have as harsh a shadow in the corners. However, the cheek/jaw shape was massively tweaked. Cheeks are puffier, jaw is wider, the angle between cheek and jaw is substantially different than it was in 6.58. This combined with the more emotive faces makes Au Ra look substantially puffier with extremely small facial features relative to the wide faces.

While a lot was done to fix some of the glaring issues with things like the lips, the face itself is still overall ruined.

Thanks for not even addressing the biggest part of the complaints.

[Doopliss]

[Snipped for Post Length]

I do want to say that, in spite of the problem I'm having on my Xaela, I don't think it should actually return to the original state of 7.0, either. I've often thought about your massive, lovingly done posts for Au Ra limbal rings, and I'm glad to see the beautiful color in yours is back.

I do hope this is just an error with the method rendering, like you said, and they don't go back entirely. It feels like it, because I noticed in the "Character Window" that my Xaela's limbal rings are a lot closer to the color I chose for them prior to 7.0 (although not perfect, still a little too white on just one side).

For reference, here's what her limbal rings looked like in 6.58 (again this is the darkest grey option):


And here's what they look like now, in the character creation menu, even in 7.1 (RGB value there for reference):


Yet, in the "Character Creation" window, which I assume is like, the colors' default states, her limbal rings now look far lighter (and closer to the original) than they did in 7.0. Unfortunately I only have 7.1 screenshot references for the "Character Window" change.

People can hopefully see what I mean in the screenshot below. Looks decent in the character window, but super uncanny and super white, randomly, in a sunny afternoon in Ul'dah.



Meanwhile, the inn room lighting gives me like, the perfect shade sometimes, lol...


I'm typing this all out in a very unorganized, very sleep-deprived state, but I hope this kind of shows what I'm trying to get out. I just feel like this is way too inconsistent to feel...intentional. Like way more inconsistent than ever before--at least on this color. However it feels like they are at least intentionally trying to get that more consistent glow back from 6.58 and prior. I do hope they can correct things, rather than give up, and achieve a nice glow for everyone...

The expansion has been making me feel really bad for having characters with weirder color schemes. The slightest change throws off the balance so intensely...

[SchwarzwaelderTorte]

I just feel like this is way too inconsistent to feel...intentional. Like way more inconsistent than ever before--at least on this color. However it feels like they are at least intentionally trying to get that more consistent glow back from 6.58 and prior. I do hope they can correct things, rather than give up, and achieve a nice glow for everyone...

100% agreed.

I went a bit too technical with my last post, but basically I think that the problem is that they tried to go for a more "photorealistic" (and I guess more "industry standard") method of rendering, but without considering the already existing possibilities of the character creator, so in 7.0 it looked great if you went for a certain look (e.g. realistic limbal rings, or colors that blend together nicely), but for people who wanted to keep a stark contrast between the limbal ring and the iris while maintaining a bright vivid color, that was not possible anymore.
So in 7.1 they went "ah crap, we messed up, let's bump the contrast by changing this one parameter in the shader, that will make them happy"... but that one parameter threw things off for people who wanted a more realistic or muted look, and it also doesn't entirely fix the problem people like me were having either (in Yak T'el, under a spotlight, my limbal rings still disappear for some reason).
I haven't touched at shaders in a while so I can't say for sure that this is what's going on, but that's the hunch I have based on past experiences where I've encountered similar issues.
(maybe I'll open Unity one of these days and try to replicate it, it's hard to describe it in text...)

But you might be familiar with similar phenomenons if you've dabbled in character creation in other games before, like fashion games being developed with a white-skinned character by default, and only adding darker skin tones later in production, only for the existing makeup options to not work on those new skin tones because they were not designed to work together (so a black character becomes white-faced, etc).
That's the kind of lack of foresight and awareness I'm trying to describe.

But yeah, that's basically why I think exploring another method of rendering would be more beneficial for everyone in the case of limbal rings.
It's scrapping existing work and rebuilding it from scratch, which is definitely something the dev team wants to avoid, but at some point A Certain Someone Who Is Responsible For Production (and has already scrapped and remade existing work before and is world famous for it) has to understand that such decisions will be necessary if they intend to address the problems properly.
(but based on how abysmal and slow the official communication and reaction have been since the first benchmark, I'm afraid that might not be the case...)