[ Graphical Update Feedback ] Examples of Darker Skinned Characters/Darker Lighting

[DynnDiablos]

Has there been any word on whether the graphical update will add HDR?

[Ayche]

The game has always been underlit, and that is always been because they have had very limited global illumination in the game.
We know that the graphical update will allow them to place more light sources in zones, so I really hope all scenes get lot more illumination in them as a result.

[RaiPhantom]

adding support
please show examples of darker-skinned characters in the next update showcase

[Zifeara]

Definitely here to support better lighting for darker skintones; it's been a problem for a long time and they have a good chance here to fix it. I hope they finally put the work in for an important QoL change!

[Ansemaru]

Strongly agreed that this has been left unaddressed for a long time and the graphical overhaul would be a perfect opportunity to improve lighting with dark-skinned characters kept in mind. It would benefit players and cutscenes with existing NPCs!

[Spiswel]

I have dark-skinned alts and lots of friends with dark-skinned characters. We are all quite curious about those upcoming 7.0 graphical changes and how they will affect tan/dark skins.

Please don't forget about them !

[Niwurr]

Will they do anything for palms? The palms of the hands and soles of the feet of anyone with mid to dark skin in real life are always lighter, a fact which is not replicated in game. Considering that they will be doing the above for the tips of elezen ears, can they fix how the palms and soles look for any darker skin in the game? It will, of course, be up to them on whether or not they change palms and soles of the non-human skin colors like red, green, blue, and grey, but it'd follow through and be really neat to see non-human skin colors get lighter palms and soles, as well!

This is also a really good point! It's strange that it's not implemented in the game honestly, because it is definitely possible with the technology currently in place. If they're aiming for a semi-realistic touch, this would be a good thing to really ground that realism.

[crystallineAbyss]

Looking through this thread, it makes me sad that we don't see much in the way of variety in skin tone and appearance in the MSQ cast. There are some really beautiful characters here.

This has honestly been something that people have been talking about for a long time. A lot of people joke around about their non-white wols being the diversity hires of the Scions, but it's exhausting - especially when you pair that with how the existing darker skinned characters are treated in the story (the answer is Not Well, seeing as there are at least 3 black men referred to as The Bull, which is based in some really racist/dehumanizing stuff). It's disheartening to think, too, that your character would never even be a consideration for a design just on the basis of not being pale (but especially not being white or east asian). It was nice seeing Thavnair, but why was it so white? All the darker npcs didn't have speaking roles and you can't even select them. The ones that do speak are white, and even Ahewann was paper white. And that's not even getting into the Twelve who - if they're supposed to be a cumulation of the faiths of all people - are all white with European features sans Nald'thal - the god of Ala Mhigo is white? The only dark ones are monsters like Zodiark. And that says something to players, especially to players of color who are frequently told that the divine is white and european but the fell is dark and suspiciously afrocentric and takes a lot of cues from tribal caricatures (see: Zodiark's mask, or the Nibirun of the Dead Ends (antagonistic in Omicron quests) and look up Ligbi horn masks). It's...a lot deeper, but the most visible issue is definitely the distribution. Because if the CC was truly random, why is everything so white when there are so many other options?

Will they do anything for palms? The palms of the hands and soles of the feet of anyone with mid to dark skin in real life are always lighter, a fact which is not replicated in game. Considering that they will be doing the above for the tips of elezen ears, can they fix how the palms and soles look for any darker skin in the game?

I'd also like to reiterate what an earlier post said: please do tests on darker skin tones, including all non-human skin tones! The 2B outfit and Gaia's outfit both faced problems with the sheer on darker skin tones and non-human skin tones when initially added.

Yes! Exactly! Like I didn't even get the Gaia set because of the disaster with the tights!! And PLEASE let us have depigmentation for our palms!!! TToTT it looks so weird without it! And also do it appropriately (which is a gradient at the edge of the depigmentation, not a harsh line/hard transition).

Also Y'shtola should get her melanin back, because her becoming white like that was behond egregious. She became important to msq, and then she was suddenly super pale? Put it back!!!

[eternalmagic]

I really, really hope this can be a bit of a wake up call for the devs that this needs fixing. I'm still looking forward to this graphics update, and I appreciate all the hard work and sheer effort going into it (the FF panel on the technical aspects was great), but honestly they should use this opportunity to make sure character lighting in general and in cutscenes is fixed. Especially seeing just how egregious some of the screenshots put into this thread have been; I am so sorry to everyone that you've had to fight the character lighting like this for so long.

Something that got brought up kind of early on in this thread was the idea that the devs can't put in artificial light sources in every cutscene, as this game isn't like a single-player AAA experience. While I agree to an extent, I can't help but think about games that are still able to pull it off, and make every character look good.

I recently started playing Baldur's Gate 3 in my downtime, and seeing characters with dark or "fantasy" skin tones like Wyll or Karlach look really nice, even in the nighttime scenes at the camp, just drives the point home. They are able to handle skin as pale as Astarion's, and they can handle Wyll and Karlach and Lae'zel in the exact same scene and they all look very good!

I know that's comparing apples to oranges a bit, since BG3 is a single player game primarily. When I was thinking over BG3's handling of varying skin tones, I figured that the devs at Larian probably do use multiple extra light sources in cutscenes to help make things look as good as they do--and I figured it might be difficult for CBU3 to handle. After all, we don't really know how these things happen behind the scenes, and it might not be feasible.

But then, I remembered that the XIV devs have used multiple light sources in cutscenes before, as far back as ARR.



This is used for dramatic effect in this instance, but what's to keep them from doing this to add some additional lighting in a cutscene? Not only that, but the devs will change the time of day in cutscenes to fit the mood!

At this point, the dev team should be able to do something to fix these issues with character lighting. It may have to be generic since it's true they can't exactly account for everything in their lighting for all possible combinations, but that's still something they can handle, surely?

As was said before:

I shouldn't have to use my graphic card's shaders, and/or Gpose, and/or a lot of post-process work on my screenshots, to see my characters at all, let alone decently lit.

Just please give us some examples to put our minds at ease...

[Ayche]

The problem comes from scenes that take place in the overworld. Standing in the middle of Ul'dah, the scene is going to use the direct light of the sun to ... light the scene. If you decide to make a zone that is just ... dark, like ultima thule, the result is what is. Direct light is very simple, and lot of old games only had direct light and the shadows calculated from direct light in their graphical make up, and usually very few direct lights. This is why you get those horror faces of XIV where you walk into a room with a single direct light set to the ceiling and you get those massive blobs of darkness hanging off character's faces.

But that is why we have indirect lighting to fix that. Well, we have many simulations and illusions of indirect lighting to fix that because it is insanely computationally heavy to simulate real light... If you put your hand in front of the sun, your eyes will not be covered in total darkness after all. And lot of techniques were always built for linear, enclosed games. If you got a window and you know in this level the sun is out and going to pour through that window, and the player will never actually get outside ... just apply lightmaps to fake the sunlight. Or you put probes into the overworld where characters near it with just inherit the color of the light probe, another way to cheat the simulation. You go into a cave? Now your whole character is baked in dark grey because it is dark inside, step into the light, baked in light yellow because it is bright there.

You want a straight forward way to simulate correct lighting situation for every possible place in a large, open map? Just adopt complete path-tracing for your light!