Dawntrail character graphics update - opinions, requests and discussion megathread

[Evermomo]

Adding to the choir that I hope that the pupil slider in the update demo can also make the pupils smaller, + that we might get a pupil color setting for femroe, who used to have jeweled/light-colored pupils. That's the one thing that still kind of stings about the graphical update, f au ra eyes and femroe eyes became more like hyur eyes.

[LuciaMirain]

Im happy with the skincolourchange. I have always wanted moonmiqo skin on my sunmiqo and now I will be able to achieve it. I am also happy with the being able to use several facepaintings at the same time (I think I saw that was a thing at least) and the makeup? I mean....Idk I will see.
But yeah, my viera will never recover from what they did to her, that much is clear.

[RedLolly]

I can't freaking wait to give my Midlander the silver undertone Moonkeepers and Duskwights can access.

[Shistar]

I can't freaking wait to give my Midlander the silver undertone Moonkeepers and Duskwights can access.

Same here!

[DRKoftheAzure]

I'm still waiting for the butt slider to be released...

[CidHeiral]

Just going to copy/paste this post from last November since none of it has been fixed.

1. Highlander Lips

I've been complaining about the lip issue on female highlander face 1 since the beta. To reiterate:

- The bottom lip has a very stark line running straight through the middle of the lip, separating it into a much darker half and a much lighter half. It looks very strange and unnatural, like you have three lips.
- There's a prominent inverted white triangle on the upper lip either not present or very very light in the original.
- The lips overall have various splotchy white parts that make them look almost infected, an odd interpretation of the low res highlights from the original.

This is still an issue.



I didn't want to bring up the mobile version in my previous post because I dislike that version for a different set of reasons and wouldn't want it either, but what is noteworthy is that the mobile version lacks the issues outlined above.



- The bottom lip isn't strangely separated into two starkly contrasting zones.
- The weird white triangle on the upper lip is gone.
- The lips aren't covered in random white lines.

I am quite perplexed as to why on multiple different patches the devs took the time to erase small differences in eye makeup on face 1 (both of which were better than the original IMO) to get them closer to the pre-DT look, but they won't correct this massive and incredibly bizarre departure from the old textures.

To reiterate what they should look similar to in FFXIV from my previous post:

Interestingly, in certain lighting sometimes the lips look a lot better as I've shown below (everything on the right side is from 7.0). When the light is just right it blends the colors together and everything looks much closer to how it should (except the persistent upper lip triangle which shows how much more prominent it is now). If the lips looked like the below image all the time I'd have no complaints.



Devs, please blend out the details of the lips to match the example above and the original model. If at least the bottom lip gets fixed I can live with the rest of it.

2. Shadows

Speaking of lighting, shadows are still broken since my bug report on the issue was accepted a year ago. In a recent patch there was a note about the engine taking multiples light sources into account to improve shadows but as far as I can tell that hasn't actually improved anything.

Shadows are still very broken.







That last one is from an MSQ cutscene. Very distracting when you're trying to be immersed in the story.

And side note, the gifs above are another good example of how specific lighting sometimes blends the mangled lip shading together to make them look much better. Please just do that to the texture itself.

Side note:
Please greatly increase the shadow rendering distance inside housing. Currently if a light source isn't directly in your face it doesn't properly account for the geometry around it.

This is still an issue. Lights inside housing do not take their surrounding environment into account when casting shadows unless they're right next to you. Look at all the shadows popping in and out with every step in this small room.



Please greatly extend the render distance for lighting and shadows inside houses (and out in the world too IMO but that's a different issue). You should be able to stand at one end of a large house interior and see the correct shadows on the other side. Right now you practically have to be standing on top of light sources for things to look how they should.

[Doopliss]

We're up to 7.5 now and male Duskwight face 3 still has the incorrect clan texture, and female Dunesfolk face 4 still has outright bugged facial feature options. I can't be bothered to repost my (again, "planned to address") bug report that I made well over a year ago at this point, but as it stands right now I don't even trust them to fix these oversights with the character creation update.

[paopugummi]

It's probably minor and I didn't find a specific thread for "Character Creator Requests" but I wish the black tips for male miqo'te ears could be added to the Scars/Face Markings section instead of based on the hairstyle you pick. (Also add them for Fem Miqo too!)

[Jaltaer]

I am trying to be optimistic about the changes they mentioned in the keynote, but it's hard considering I still don't enjoy looking at my character the way I used to. I have a friend who also plays femra that used to be very happy about the fact that they could log in hour 1 of a patch and play but now they wait for 3rd-party plugins to come back just so their face doesn't look so horrible in cutscenes... but maybe with the alleged customization updates, we will be freed from the horrible tiny pinched mouths.


TBH, the main thing that makes me cautiously optimistic is the fact that the next expac seems like it's going to have a pretty heavy focus on Au Ra characters - so maybe the devs will actually take a look at what they did to the race finally and hopefully address or alleviate some of the complaints I've seen. I am still convinced the reason Au Ra got such a short end of the stick in the update is because there are no Au Ra in Tural or Alexandria, so players are not going to be looking at characters from the race very often unless they're playing as one. (aside from the fake one we just got, but that's a completely custom face so irrelevant).

[Sarantserel]

I think they might have changed the Limbal rings on Au Ra again:

This picture was during 7.4


And this is from today:


They'd given Limbal rings a glow and soft bluriness and now it's back to being a very distinct circle with the glow being much less noticeable.
Kinda disappointed because I had gotten used to the previous look and really liked the glow