Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Araxes]

That has nothing to do with shaders at all, it's compression artifacts because the resolution of those textures is tiny. I wish people would at least not speak so confidently about things they don't understand.

I was lied to then. My bad for trusting a Friends word i guess. I changed my Statement. The fact that some skins look like they have rashes all over the skin persists though.

[Eluvyel]

I guess i was lied to then. My bad for trusting a Friends word i guess. I changed my Statement. The fact that some skins look like they have rashes all over the skin persists though.

Oh yeah, it's awful. We're in full agreement there.

[TheVegetable]

Calling low res shitty skin textures better is wild

Texture resolution and artistic quality are two very different but similarly important thing- frankly, I'd say the latter is the more important of the two. There's also just all the technical stuff behind it with the shaders and stuff. Even if the new texture is higher in resolution, the loss in artistic quality can outweigh it.

[wirebones]

Admittedly I'm having trouble noticing model/texture changes on my characters, however +1 for being frustrated about the 'bugged' eyelids and how different expressions/adventurer portraits look.

[Khryseis_Astra]

Sorry for rant:
I think I would actually be happy if they fixed the mouths. Then I could ignore the ugly, lumpy eyelashes, the thinning eyebrows and the weird shadows on the nose that has completely removed any semblance of previous shape on my viera. The mouth is the worst though, the nose I could handle in gpose and try and direct the light in a way that it gives the correct shadows. But the mouth is so awful and plump that the only expression that works is /ponder. My character used to /beam but that is unusable now due to the weird banana shape that happens.

They shouldve just said that they were doing a graphical update and that some characters would probably change alot but here is a free fantasia and then just left it at that. The problem from the start has been that they said that we would put in work to make our characters not change too much and then that fell through so hard.

This. Neither of my Hyurs saw any changes, and the mouths are the worst part across the board. I’m not sure if this is the last “fix” they have planned or not, but I’m tired of waiting. My Midlander is going to be a Miqo, and the Highlander is going to be an Elezen. I’m just giving up at this point. At least they didn’t mess up my Lala!

[glitteringcosmos]

They added catchlights to some eyes but not all of them for some reason. The male miqo'te comparisons a few pages back shows plenty of options that still look like they'd be at home on a corpse.

please for the love of the twelve can they give this treatment to the male miqo'te ;AAAAA; i tried to bite the bullet and change the eye shape on my character to one of the two options that don't look like a walking corpse but it just doesn't look like him anymore.

[Keumjo]

They're just never going to touch the mouths, are they?

I really truly massively hate the changes to the mouths.

[Aniya_Estlihn]

For the most part, I could live with the graphics update if all they fixed were the mouths+expressions but it seems to be the only thing that they haven't worked on/made progress on. I just want to know that it's something that's coming.

Picture added for the people who thinks we're being picky about the graphics update:

Regarding the ponder emote, I hadn't spoken up about how anything looks on the female au ra face 2 because the midlander was butchered so much worse but if possible, I would like the emote to be adjusted to be closer to the old "ponder". It used to also look like a cute pout but now the eyes are comically enlarged. I understand it's supposed to look like an eyebrow is raised/one eye is squinted but it just looks completely unserious. There's a clear difference in impression between the two as well. The old one looks introspective while the new one looks like she's not comprehending.

Use it outside of gpose to get a proper look.

Here's how it looks for me on face one:


Anything that requires face or eye tracking in gpose, portraits, or when targeting other characters is fundamentally broken right now and you will not see the emote in its proper implementation. Your second shot is clearly in gpose or with you facing the camera, which we know has issues as of this patch as eyelids are broken and will not move the way they are supposed to; almost like the bones are improperly rigged or having no parenting with other facial bones. When you use it untargeted your eyes will look to the left everytime and it actually looks more annoyed now than contemplative or curious like it used to be in the past. So still broken, but the issue you're referring to is specifically due to camera tracking for the eyes/eyelids being busted.

The eyes are only comically large because the eyelids for all associated emotes are broken.
Taunt is utterly horrifying when you enable facial tracking and move the camera.

This is taunt:

These are, supposed to be, simper:

As you can see, the eyelids aren't following the eyes like they used to unless a character isn't targeted onto or forced to look directly at anything. Its a pretty big, far reaching glitch and I would encourage everyone to go into the bug reports forum and upvote the heck out of the player that already reported this as it has fundamentally changed how every character looks when emoting and cannot at all be intentional, nor is it really good for us when comparing things from this patch to those previously as the face is literally broken in a way it wasn't, and has never been, before, altering most expressions and emotes.

Personally, I've been fine with the graphics update for the most part; as I've made apparent many times in here, but this really upset me.
Emotes have been fine for years, the faces properly rigged, sure the shape changed and altered the look slightly, but to literally break the eyelids and eye tracking?

That's just crazy to me and I question how that even happened between patches.

[LuciaMirain]

So I decided today to properly look at my viera in the daylight and compare with the picture I took the other day and.....
They actually changed alot of the things I was annoyed with. It isn't perfect, but it is getting there.
Before graphical update:

After Graphical update:

After this weeks patch


The lips still lack the cupids bow, but I can see that have made some changes, mostly on how the shadows fall but also on the shape of the mouth. It isn't as stretched out anymore. The nose seems to have gotten a highlight to make it appear more narrow. The eyelashes are still bad but I can cover them with viera eyeliner. Her eyes also don't feel as vacant as before. All in all: it isnt perfect but I feel like she might actually be playable now.

[HawkeScream]

Random thought. Seen screenies of updated Aymeric and Emet and curious how they both got upgrades and didn't get changed at all, like those two are PERFECTLY upgraded with zero changes, look fantastic and still look exactly like themselves, and a perfect example of what everyone was expecting with the character updates, but that same care wasn't put into the player characters.