New 7.1 hairstyle looks nothing like the winning hairstyle from the 2023 contest

[quidama]

I'm also posting here to voice my discontent. From what I've seen, a lot of people are upset because the original concept art makes it obvious, at least to western audiences, that it's supposed to be a black hairstyle with locks and non-flat textured hair. I can see that the development team tried to emulate this by upping the polygon count and I think that's good but there are three mistakes that I believe can easily be fixed to make the hairstyle look a bit closer to the design and better in general:

A) Change the highlights to be more of a gradient. The current highlights look nothing like the original concept art. There are several hairstyles already in the game that demonstrate that gradient highlights are possible. The Moenbryda hairstyle, for example. You could get a similar effect, or combine the two, by also making some few streaks of hair have a narrower or wider gradient. This has been done before with the Y'shtola haircut, for example.

B) Change the shape and appearance of the hairline. I know the artist didn't really specify what the hairline should look like but I think it could benefit from being less round and from having baby hairs.

C) Make new textures for afro-textured / kinky hair. Currently the only textured we have are for straight/flat hair, braids and the afro. None of them really work for what the artist was going for and I think the game as a whole can benefit in the long run from simply making a new type of hair texture for these kinds of hairstyles.

Besides these solutions, I think there are other points the team can improve upon that require more work like the re-meshing of the model. The parting in the hairstyle is currently too long, too centered and too visible. I don't think the hairstyle is voluminous enough. I don't think it's layered enough though I suspect bump mapping might help with that.

I really do hope that the team takes aside some time to fix some of these issues. It is currently extremely hard, and for some races even impossible, to make a good-looking black character.
I remember the Sims 4 team at Maxis has had similar issues in the past and they've teamed up with black creators, businesses and organizations to help with this issue. I'm not getting my hopes up but I hope Square Enix will do the same.

[TheCat]

IMO I've never agreed with the developer's philosophy of locking hairstyles as prestige items, specially in cases such as this. The final product isn't ideal, but even if it was, having to deal with RNG grind hell just to be able to have curls feels rather unfair.

Agree. Once they do manage to add proper curly hair it should be made default for everyone.

[Feetism]

1st post btw

All i want to know is if Viera will ever get this hairstyle. I dress in very Japanese style glams. The Shishu gozen kimono being my favourite and tail clipping is outrageous on it, but the bun part of the Kanzashi only looks good with some hair, ESPECIALLY the hime cut. I just really want it on Viera, they're tall and pretty with white skin akin to Geisha. They added the princess curls for Viera which has a similar silhouette at least so i hope to god Viera will finally get the hime cut. For god sake, MALE ROEGADYN HAVE IT!

[Rokke]

friend and I had gil to burn

new hair is Bad™ both in that it's nothing like the winning design but also that its legit terrible on its own merits lmao

[ronibosch]

Thanks for the screenshots! Yeah, it looks greasy. I might buy it down the road for completionist's sake, but even that's debatable. What a letdown.

[Roda]

What's going on with the hairline peeking between the part on the forehead???
The hair looks loose and heavy enough that it wouldn't be able to support a cowlick like that.

[Rokke]

Thanks for the screenshots! Yeah, it looks greasy. I might buy it down the road for completionist's sake, but even that's debatable. What a letdown.

Yeah the shading on it is so flat that it does ending up looking like a grease ball

What's going on with the hairline peeking between the part on the forehead???
The hair looks loose and heavy enough that it wouldn't be able to support a cowlick like that.

The hairline makes it look like the hair is falling off our heads more than growing out of them. Its very strange cause if you dropped the hair lower on the head (no visible hairline) it'd work a lot better, like, it'd still have the shading issues but would possibly work in darker colors (with less drastic highlights than my viera)

[Kanehon]

I also wanted to add screenshots of very old highlander hairstyles that showcase sufficient curls in-game, provided by PudDraws on Bluesky.



The curls here are mostly achieved with a flat 3D model (were you to turn these hairstyles at the right angle in game, you'd see the curly strands 'disappear', because it's basically got the 3D shape of a piece of paper) and well-articulated normal texture. Several straight-haired styles in the game have lots of these features too, and much of the fluffiness of some shorter hairstyles is achieved through that same "flat 3D model with detailed normal" method. The bulk of the hair would be, without its textures, just a weird hair-shaped blob, and the normal would again add the curls and depth. Again, this is how all the hair is designed already: look at any model and you'll notice that, aside from some strands and such, the bulk of the hair is one 3D hunk, and it's the textures that make it appear more like a full head of hair.

Ultimately, making a faithful translation of the original entry winner's hairstyle would be completely within their ability, and the fact they thus chose not to is upsetting. I won't speculate on their reasoning, but I will say this: We do not need more hairstyles that can realistically be worn by straight-haired or vaguely wavy-haired people. We have tons of those, and those people can MORE than afford to be left out of a few hairstyles that black and brown people would be able to realistically and EASILY wear. The fact is, making a straight-haired or wavy-haired WoL is easy in this game, we have tons of options for this. What we DON'T have are almost ANY options for curly or textured hair, and that makes it really hard for anyone to make a WoL who is black, brown, or even just someone with very curly hair. Instead, these people have to compromise with hairstyles ill-suited to their visions, and that's unfortunately a reality in SO many games that pride themselves on letting the player design their very own character.

Thank you for providing the screenshots, and your description. I've been bringing up the female highlander hair but it's even better having the actual visuals

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

[...]new hair is Bad™ both in that it's nothing like the winning design but also that its legit terrible on its own merits lmao

Damn they're Shinji Matou'd lmao.

[SchwarzwaelderTorte]

I do have a graphical questions!
I’ve seen in other games sometimes sliders to make hair seem more curly by simply making the wave smaller. Could they have done something similar to give the appearance of curls?
Like, the texture would not be the same, but would it be a better cheat to make something similar while adding those planes of loose stands here and there to give it an appearance of fluffy?

The way this is done is through a shader that distorts how the original texture is displayed (something like the Wave filter in Photoshop, kinda), but this is more of an extra customization feature than anything. You can draw the curls as you want them to be in the original texture and get a much better result texture-wise.
In my very personal opinion, the feature you're talking about is very all flash no substance, "hey look you can make your hair wavy!!!" but it looks like hair crimping more than anything, or like, yeah, straight hair passed through a Wave filter... which it is...

I think the challenge of this hairstyle is that there is no reference for this type of hair within FFXIV's art style yet, so it's difficult to find a balance between showing the right amount of volume, with the right curls, while working within the technical constraints of an MMO and their existing shaders.
If you take a look at games like the Sims 4, the way they design hair is like one big blob that is being "sculpted" into curls, which works for them because all their hairstyles kinda follow that direction, and the character design is also very, uh... "sculpture-like" for lack of a better word.
But FFXIV's art style is more the signature FF style that is between anime and semi-real (but very much based on Japanese/East Asian faces and hair), and so most hairstyles are designed as simple volumes of straight or wavy hair with spiky hair strands because that's what... anime hair has always looked like. Even when you look at anime in general, they haven't really nailed down how to depict curly hair yet without going straight for the afro (yes there are exceptions), unless they go for a very stylized art direction.

Probably the best way to render this kind of hair would be something like Campo Santo's In the Valley of Gods which is a combination of a blob to give volume and a lot of hair strands on top to give it texture, but yeah, because of the technical constraints of an MMO, I'm not sure how doable this is.
(do note that in that blog post, the curls are directly drawn into the texture, so this also answers your question)
The hairstyle they use also has bigger "rolls" of hair which makes it easier to split into separate volumes compared to what you've designed, which is more uh... consistent in its volume, so it's a little more difficult to simplify the shape.
The sections you drew in your entry are definitely helpful to understand the overall volume and would probably help with a high polygon sculpt, but yeah for MMO hair I don't know what would be the best way to go about it...

That being said, I'm very curious to see what the wireframe and setup of curly hair looks like in Guild Wars 2, because I think their approach would probably be the closest to what would look good in FFXIV.