Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[glitteringcosmos]

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.

It's because both of these are custom rigs to begin with, and don't need as much work because they're one-offs with a single set of features each. The ones for our characters have 4-6 options per feature (face, eye shape, eyebrow, mouth, nose, etc.) that they have to test for every single possible combination to make sure it looks right. I'm not saying this to excuse the piss-poor quality of the implementation of these "upgrades," just to say that it is unfair to compare apples to oranges in this case. That's why they're changing the rigs so that every single player option has the same UV map across the board—to cut down on the amount of work it takes to work with them. Unfortunately, as we've seen, the options for race in player characters are so diverse and unique from each other that unifying them all under the same UV map is just a recipe for disaster and they should have known better that this is how it would turn out.

ETA: if they HAD given the same amount of care to our player characters, and the results we got with Aymeric and Emet were what we got with our PCs, this would be a non-issue and people would be jumping for joy with the changes—because that is ultimately what they promised at the first fanfest in Vegas in 2023, and ultimately what they failed to deliver. They vastly overestimated the capabilities of their developers' skill and the engine itself, unfortunately.

[Glitchima]

I was testing a couple of different faces with a friend in regards to the eyelids not properly closing and... yeah. its kinda bad actually - and whats more confusing is that it seems like its a bunch of different races too, i wonder what exactly happened for this change to affect so many different races/faces? It's not *every* face across the board (which I initially thought was the case), but only some. The ones we saw affected were for example M Viera 1 and 3, but not face 2. (didn't check 4). Similar thing with M Miqo'te's as well, my character (face 3) had the same problem, but my friend reported seeing no changes on face 4. I genuinely am kind of fascinated at how this exactly happened lollll i hope this is something they fix sooner rather than later...

[Ansemaru]

Encountered a case with a relatively unpopular face on a relatively unpopular playable race that seems like it's possibly unintended- I don't know if it's a bug or an oversight or what, but.

Male Elezen Face 3 has a specific issue compared to every other Elezen face option, male or female. It's also not an issue I can see with any other playable race that isn't covered in fur, for that matter. It looks like it's just missing the portion of the texture that gives characters proper pores, specifically around the nose and cheeks. They look very shiny and blurry, almost stretched-out, and have a distinctly lower resolution impression than other options.


(Face 3 with a light skin color)


(Face 3 with a darker skin color)


(Face 2 with a light skin color)


(Face 2 with a darker skin color)

It's also more pronounced with noses that have a more angled tip- which is to say every nose other than type 1.

[HawkeScream]

It's because both of these are custom rigs to begin with, and don't need as much work because they're one-offs with a single set of features each. The ones for our characters have 4-6 options per feature (face, eye shape, eyebrow, mouth, nose, etc.) that they have to test for every single possible combination to make sure it looks right. I'm not saying this to excuse the piss-poor quality of the implementation of these "upgrades," just to say that it is unfair to compare apples to oranges in this case. That's why they're changing the rigs so that every single player option has the same UV map across the board—to cut down on the amount of work it takes to work with them. Unfortunately, as we've seen, the options for race in player characters are so diverse and unique from each other that unifying them all under the same UV map is just a recipe for disaster and they should have known better that this is how it would turn out.

ETA: if they HAD given the same amount of care to our player characters, and the results we got with Aymeric and Emet were what we got with our PCs, this would be a non-issue and people would be jumping for joy with the changes—because that is ultimately what they promised at the first fanfest in Vegas in 2023, and ultimately what they failed to deliver. They vastly overestimated the capabilities of their developers' skill and the engine itself, unfortunately.

Tysm for the explanation, that makes sense and helps me be a little less salty about it. And also helps me understand the issues/what's going on with the UV maps better too. Imagining what could have been though, ugh lmao

[Hatsuoki]

Snip

A few posts above my quoted post was me talking about the eyelid bug so I knew about it.

Unfortunately:

1 - Ponder being like this has been since 7.0, not just 7.2.

2 - The picture of your character outside of gpose also has her eyes like mine except your hair is covering the enlarged eye. To be extra clear, this isn't about the eyes looking to the side as that was normal even in 6.58. The issue is the enlarged eyes making a "raised eyebrow" expression rather than the original "deep in thought" expression.

3 - Of course I'm going to want to use it in gpose. While the picture of my au ra was with eye tracking, it also does it without eye or head tracking. In a couple of hours, I can take pictures outside of gpose without any tracking and update my post.

Edit: Here it is outside of gpose.

[noumen0nn]

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

I cannot believe this gif I made in September is still relevant. The philtrum depth has since been corrected, but the lip/lip gloss shape disparity is still exactly the same. Why??

[Gaddes]

I cannot believe this gif I made in September is still relevant. The philtrum depth has since been corrected, but the lip/lip gloss shape disparity is still exactly the same. Why??

Your gif perfectly illustrates my frustration, here's my lips:



like really look: they're not even the same lips at all! For some people, at least some portion of your lips were similar to how they were before, but maybe just a little less curvy or subdued.
But this entire mouth/lip shape was completely changed. And now there is no mouth type that comes close to looking like the more large plush lips from before. Every mouth type for my Elezen is either very vertically thin lips or small ones, and all tapered at the corners the same way.
Unlike what Yoshi-P claimed, there was clearly no effort made to retain the original style and they threw it out completely to homogenize with the other races' mouth shapes.

[DynnDiablos]

This isn't character related but graphics update relevant. Is it just me or do overall colors seem even more eye-piercingly vibrant after this patch? I have an OLED, so the game is already vibrant, but someone was wearing a red outfit next to me in Solution 9 last night and the red almost burned my retinas out it was so bright. None of my settings have changed, so definitely not on my end, but some colors and environments be poppin'.

[noumen0nn]

Your gif perfectly illustrates my frustration, here's my lips:



like really look: they're not even the same lips at all! For some people, at least some portion of your lips were similar to how they were before, but maybe just a little less curvy or subdued.
But this entire mouth/lip shape was completely changed. And now there is no mouth type that comes close to looking like the more large plush lips from before. Every mouth type for my Elezen is either very vertically thin lips or small ones, and all tapered at the corners the same way.
Unlike what Yoshi-P claimed, there was clearly no effort made to retain the original style and they threw it out completely to homogenize with the other races' mouth shapes.

Yours are even worse than mine tbh. The literal only reason I could think of for them to make a change like this is if they somehow think that the old lip shapes would look wrong somehow when rendered in more realistic detail?

But I don't want realism, I want faithfulness to the original look, which was stylized. As others were saying before, they did a stellar job with the latest round of NPC faces; the differences if any are so minor you can barely tell. Where is that level of care with our characters?

[Turethir]

Yep, the lips issue has happened with Thancred too:



These are not the same lips in the slightest

(While I appreciate that it's not the same as player characters, us Thancred fans are quite unhappy at the moment that he has not received the same good treatment as other NPCs, so forgive me if I keep bringing this up!)