Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Hatsuoki]

Since the lips haven't been fixed this patch, I'll post the Male Midlander Face 6 Lip 3 comparison again. The slightly pursed lips had so much personality.

[TheVegetable]

Since the lips haven't been fixed this patch, I'll post the Male Midlander Face 6 Lip 3 comparison again. The slightly pursed lips had so much personality.

Seems they realy hate pursed lips. I'm too lazy to make a gif but that's part of the same thing I've been complaining about for male miqo face 1. Also I see derplander face 6 also has an oversized lower lip for absolutely no reason.

[Perella]

Maybe I've only just noticed this in 7.2 and it was present in 7.1, but while I was doing my Splendorous Fishing Relic I noticed my ears have some light bleeding through my ears (or what ever it's called), but the light doesn't bleed through my ears entirely and it looks so depressingly silly. I don't like this at all, I can't unsee it, and deciding to check one of the Viera I play in the same lighting... I know that Crystarium midday in fair skies is pretty intense for lighting, but this just doesn't look good at all even in normal lighting. After fishing in Il Mheg for 2 hours, I've been staring at this for a while and loathe it.

[Hatsuoki]

Seems they realy hate pursed lips. I'm too lazy to make a gif but that's part of the same thing I've been complaining about for male miqo face 1. Also I see derplander face 6 also has an oversized lower lip for absolutely no reason.

Is the derplander you're referring to the male midlander? If so, to clarify, the darker image is the older, pursed lips. The older one has the larger lower lip except in the corners.

[Araxes]

They also STILL haven't fixed this:



Certain Au Ra Hairstyles "break" when near multiple light sources.

[Lunaru_F]

Since the lips haven't been fixed this patch, I'll post the Male Midlander Face 6 Lip 3 comparison again. The slightly pursed lips had so much personality.

One of the key points they said they’d fix was the lips that were raised and lowered but it seems like they forgot that point, and it’s obvious everyone hates the way they currently look…

[lunartears]

Adding onto the lip discussion (though this is more of an oversight on my part): I came to the conclusion today that the majority of my problems with the mouth changes are due to the colour change rather than the shape change (though this does not mean the shape change hasn't affected me).

I was thinking about the lip gloss conversation from a few months ago and decided to go through the colours in the CC to see how other colours appear because on my character the lip gloss is practically non-existent post-EW graphics, I noticed (as many already know) darker colours do get a resemblance of gloss but it's significantly toned down. I was able to more clearly see the changes for Face 1's mouth (Mouth type 1) using a darker tone as well, which I should've done way sooner but because I'm so used to the way my character was borderline lip-less in EW I kind of just... forgot.

Anyway, a similar problem with the mouth corners as seen on other player model faces here is present here as well: the corners are widened out and the lips have been vertically flattened (this is what causes the duck lips).

Lip Colour: Black (Dark option) / Lip Colour: White (Light option)



In regards to my character settings in particular, like I said before a key part of my problem arises from how the lip colour is handled in DT. I specifically designed my character in mind to have significantly reduced lip colour, I suppose much like how an anime character would look, a fixation on the mouth line (so, not realistic). Now when comparing against the dark lipstick, the upper lip on my character became pronounced in DT whereas before it wasn't nearly as present in most environments (see photos below).



I don't know what the resolution to this could be, maybe allowing the lip colour to have a density slider or a menu of selectable options could do the trick (as my lips have gone from matching my skin tone to a pale pink) and allowing the option for a more intense lip gloss effect like in EW could probably help as well (I liked this effect).

In regards to all faces/options, the mouth line shadow(?) (or lack thereof) being reduced is still another large contender for why the appearance is so off. I think this is what could be causing the centre "M" shape to look reduced on my lips, some other character examples are fundamental sculpt changes.

Addendum:

[eohippus]

I think there's been some slight improvements in how skin itself looks (at least on my face 5 male midlander) but again, no changes have been made to the lips. like everyone else, his lost some of the original shape and fullness, which is a shame. They were my second favorite part of his face. Another thing is that the "line" of his mouth used to extend out past his lips, and now that's gone. I used to think that might be a general feature of the graphics update, but emet retained his lip shape pretty astoundingly well post graphics update, so I feel like it should be doable for player characters too lol.

[SchwarzwaelderTorte]

I don't know what the resolution to this could be, maybe allowing the lip colour to have a density slider or a menu of selectable options could do the trick (as my lips have gone from matching my skin tone to a pale pink) and allowing the option for a more intense lip gloss effect like in EW could probably help as well (I liked this effect).

In regards to all faces/options, the mouth line shadow(?) (or lack thereof) being reduced is still another large contender for why the appearance is so off. I think this is what could be causing the centre "M" shape to look reduced on my lips, some other character examples are fundamental sculpt changes.

Yeah I've been struggling with that too, the contrast between the skin color (and its rendering method) of my character and the lip color is a lot stronger than it used to be, and under certain lighting conditions it makes her look kinda sickly (I'm assuming it's because as usual they're using Meteor to test all their stuff so what works for his skin tone won't work for paler and darker characters, like this wonderful example of the Dawntrail opening cutscene). I'm still able to go one shade paler for the lips, but it's still not the right shade, and obviously it just reminds me of how frustratingly limited the character creator is. And I miss the gloss too...

As for the mouth line, I completely agree with this, and it took me a while to realize that it played a bigger role in the character appearance than I thought, especially since I use the thickest lip option on Au ra F1, and without that shadow she just looks like she's been stung by a bee lol.
Some people have also reported that when the mouth is open in a portrait, under a certain angle you can see a faint line of where the texture of the lip ridges ends and where I assume the lip shadow would start, and it really adds to the strangeness.
But I don't really know how to bring it up because it's obviously a "hand-written lie" on the same level as the eye highlights, and if it was restored as it is it would probably look strange with how everything is rendered now... It could be baked directly into the texture (tons of makeup techniques use a similar effect to give more volume to the lips, I'm pretty sure that's why Aymeric's lips look intact post update), but then it might look weird under other lighting conditions, so I don't know.

Months ago I made a quick edit of a random screenshot I saw on Twitter to see how things would change if I roughly added the missing mouth line to the lips:


And yeah idk, to me it feels like an integral part of the appearance that had been missing. But I really doubt they have any intention to restore that extra mouth line, because of realism suddenly being important or whatever.

[Hatsuoki]

I agree that having that shadow (and gloss) helps with the illusion and although I know it was mentioned earlier, I want to stress for any devs looking at this that for my example in particular, the shape is actually different (look for the line where the color ends on the lower lip corners).