Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Gaddes]

Has anyone seen screenshots of FFXIV Mobile? Just released in China recently but some are managing to access it regardless. It looks like a middle ground between EW and DT, like the character graphics update we never had. Maybe I am being too optimistic based on the little I have seen though. Also it currently only has ARR races so I can't look at anything Au Ra-related.

The biggest insult will be if the lip shapes in Mobile end up looking more like what we actually wanted compared to what we were cursed with in DT and have been begging for ever since the start of this expansion...

[Daralii]

The biggest insult will be if the lip shapes in Mobile end up looking more like what we actually wanted compared to what we were cursed with in DT and have been begging for ever since the start of this expansion...

The fact that the CN and JP versions of the announcement site have a passage about how they went about faithfully recreating the original models(that is strangely absent from the EN version) makes me think that Lightspeed did a better job than CS3.

[Gaddes]

Has anyone seen screenshots of FFXIV Mobile? Just released in China recently but some are managing to access it regardless. It looks like a middle ground between EW and DT, like the character graphics update we never had. Maybe I am being too optimistic based on the little I have seen though. Also it currently only has ARR races so I can't look at anything Au Ra-related.

The biggest insult will be if the lip shapes in Mobile end up looking more like what we actually wanted compared to what we were cursed with in DT and have been begging for ever since the start of this expansion...

Well, I had to see for myself and... well... now I almost wish I hadn't.
Here's the comparison, with me copying the same settings for ALL versions of my character to each. I think objectively the mobile game did a BETTER job of sprucing up the original elements. The eyebrows and scars are definitely more like the original than DT. The eyes, while a little different, have more of the leaner shape of the original than the wide DT ones.
And to add insult to injury, the lips are DEFINITELY based off of the original ones, with more volume in the upper lip and without the awful generic tapered-ends and giant lower lip shape of DT. (I couldn't see where to remove the glossiness on the lips, but the shape alone should be obvious here)



link to larger full-res image

And on top of that, the haircut looks better and fuller in the mobile version!?
C'mon devs, wtf is happening here... the mobile folks can make a closer version, why can't CB3??

[SchwarzwaelderTorte]

Wow, even the little UV warp on the scar (the edge that doesn't go in a straight line) is identical. I thought "ok, this has to mean that they're using the exact same models as 6.X with better textures" but no, the chin on mobile has more polygons (it might even have more polygons than the 7.X one...).
(Glossiness aside, the normal map on the lips looks off, though, not sure what happened there.)

Has anybody else still been really, really bummed out with the limbal ring changes for Au Ra?

I'm just gonna re-link to what is basically an extensive debug report I wrote on the Japanese forums on that matter.

[Gaddes]

Wow, even the little UV warp on the scar (the edge that doesn't go in a straight line) is identical. I thought "ok, this has to mean that they're using the exact same models as 6.X with better textures" but no, the chin on mobile has more polygons (it might even have more polygons than the 7.X one...).
(Glossiness aside, the normal map on the lips looks off, though, not sure what happened there.)

Yeah admittedly there's something a little weird going on with the outline of the upper lip in Mobile, it's a little smudgey/asymmetrical, but the key is that the mouth curve (in red below) is an almost identical match with the OG mouth, as opposed to the DT one that's really just a simple flat shape.
The Mobile guys definitely based their work off of pre-DT faces, while the DT guys... I dunno what they were doing. And you're right, the chin for Mobile is much smoother than the main game's.