Pictomancer's effects need some more work

[SchwarzwaelderTorte]

Digging the thread back from the dirt because we’ve had some new Pictomancer footage with 6.55 and I think the VFX are worth talking about (and I’m stuck in lancetfish jail so I have time to kill anyway).

I edited everything in gifs which will be in spoiler tags to not be too hard on the eyes (it doesn't seem to work in the preview so I hope it works when I post this lol).

Effect 1

Personally I find it very… bold to start the introduction of Pictomancer with this. It’s a slow motion effect we probably won’t often see when we play the job ourselves (except maybe under the sleep status and in gpose), but the static 3D model of paint doesn’t really look very appealing at first glance (and especially this close), it almost looks more like rubbery glue is attached to the brush. Not a very solid first impression overall (yes, it’s only a few seconds, but they do matter!)

Effect 2

(gif is at 50% speed for eye comfort, normal speed here)

Here we can see how the previous 3D model of paint is supposed to be used, and in complete contrast to the slow-motion animation from before, it works really well! It looks like a convincing brush stroke. Nothing else to say, great effect.

Effect 3

The moogle we saw in the gameplay trailer appears. The splash of paint is very satisfying, although the moogle doesn’t really look like it’s made out of paint, and the 2 red orbs and stars look like they come from another art direction that’s neither like the paint effects or the moogle, so things are stylistically clashing a bit already. Which is strange because, when you look at cartoon-ish emotes we have in the game already there is already a predominant art style (Eureka, All saints’ charm, or even the new Valentione one we’re getting soon), and with Vexed there is even a more hand-drawn-looking one (it’s quite literally a scribble). Instead the red orbs look like they come from some... random cel shaded game?

Having the moogle dripping with paint (like the spriggan in the CGI trailer, or the painter AION gif I posted earlier in this thread) would maybe make things feel more cohesive already?

Effect 4

It’s a bit hard to see what’s going on in the moogle laser at that angle, but I think overall it fits effects we’ve seen before in FFXIV. I’m mainly thinking of BLU’s Apokalypsis, and I’ve seen a lot of people comparing the gameplay trailer’s VFX with the Byakko trial and weapons (saying Byakko did it better), and ironically this laser looks a lot less like ink/paint than what we see in the Byakko trial, but I think that stylistically Byakko is a lot more dynamic and… stylized like a “shonen anime fight” for lack of a better word, which wouldn’t really fit the image of Pictomancer to begin with. The sparkles at the end are cute and a nice contrast to the more “violent” looking laser.

Effect 5

This effect looks great! Everything looks like paint, it’s stylized but it’s not clashing with the rest of the art style, the 3D model of paint on the brush is behaving as it should (which is strange, it’s not going that much faster than the first slow-mo one), and the brush stroke appearing this way feels very satisfying.

Effect 6

(gif is at 50% speed for eye comfort, normal speed here)

Also a great effect, very juicy and satisfying explosion, everything still looks like paint, aaand…

Effect 7

(gif is at 50% speed for eye comfort, normal speed here)

… what is this. Up until now everything except the spriggan looked like realistic(ish) paint, and it ends on a overly cartoon-ish splat, which completely clashes with the rest of the effect? I don’t really understand why it had to be this way. If the idea was to have a lighter background so we could still see the spriggan scribble, couldn’t a more realistic splatter have worked just as well?

Effect 8

But overall I really like this spriggan! Sure, it’s not the one made out of paint in the CGI trailer (which, in itself, is pretty funny I think, but I could see people using it as an argument for their disappointment with the gameplay VFX, so I’m not sure why the devs went with it, it’s like giving us the gun to shoot them with), but it fits the image of Pictomancer as a little drawing you make that comes to life. That spriggan alone is to me much more reflective of the job than what we saw in the gameplay trailer (the rocks, the ice, even the moogle). The flying particles around it are also a lot more in line with the VFX we have in the game so far (which, again, why does the moogle laser and its strange orbs not follow that direction?).

Effect 9

And we see the paint explosion again with added flying particles, which also works great and doesn’t clash with the overall art style, 10/10.

So yeah, overall a pretty mixed bag, some effects work great, others not so much... I hope there's still time for the people in charge of VFX to gather feedback and add another pass on them, mainly to maintain visual coherence between the overall art style of the game, what already exists in terms of VFX, and how the Pictomancer ones could fit in the middle.

[Mecia]

Even worse in slow motion. Those stereotypical splats dont fit at all and that detailed paint trail looks awful.

We already have good paint stroke effects in Byakko weapons, just take those and add some color.

[Dyvid]

I'm beyond ecstatic that the new caster is Pictomancer, but the visual FX feels... almost unfinished.

The stone and ice spells have low-resolution and extremely un-detailed textures. Like, for a split second I thought they were placeholder textures. These need more details, and/or perhaps making the textures have actual paintbrush strokes in them would go a long way in making them fit in FFXIV's aesthetic while still being their own thing.

Also, in the trailer, Krile's pictomancy had an extremely high amount of particle effects like sparkles, as well as strands of multicolor ink trailing being her brush strokes. I think adding these effects to the spells will make them look like proper magic using aether as a paint medium instead of what we have now.

Just going to agree to disagree on this one. Rather than making it photo realistic, they choose to give the spells a more watercolor like paint appearance with fits the job perfectly. It makes the spell stand out more in my opinion.

[ty_taurus]

Just going to agree to disagree on this one. Rather than making it photo realistic, they choose to give the spells a more watercolor like paint appearance with fits the job perfectly. It makes the spell stand out more in my opinion.

I wouldn't say Krile's effects from the trailer are photo-realistic in the slightest.

What I said a while back and what I think is worth repeating is that the effects are not living up to the expectation that Krile displayed in the initial reveal. Her effects felt more like magic in their effects, whereas the in-game effects feel too literal. I think the biggest offender is the moogle. In the trailer, Krile summoned a Spriggan made from aetheric paint, and that was visually clear with the creature having this very pastel color texture, leaving behind a trail of dripping aetheric paint as it floated around the sky. It felt like a creature created from paint, but the moogle summon animation is just a literal moogle model. Why doesn't the moogle have this same texture and detail to it? Additionally, Krile skipped into the scene painting long strands of aether that transformed into butterflies, something that strongly displays this concept of creativity and whimsy. But the attacks we saw were just Stone but painted and Blizzard but painted, which hardly capture the same impact that Krile had from the trailer.

The effects displayed in the teaser are not the end-all-be-all of PIC's visual effects, but at at the same time, I feel it did a poor job of selling PIC's identity because it lacks this idea of imagination and whimsy that contrasts negatively against the trailer's depiction of the same job. All teasers show a very limited display of a job's actions. All Dancer's teaser showed, for example, were it's basic combo actions and Standard Step. We didn't see the Fan Dances, the Devilment buff, or even Saber Dance. But as a teaser, it gave us an appropriate introduction to what Dancer's aesthetic was, what its identity would look like, and what to expect from its visual effects. Pictomancer's teaser is either indicating an underwhelming execution of the concept based on what the trailer established, or hasn't done a good job of selling what we have yet to see from the job. And we can say this because we're seeing a fair amount of criticism of the effects which isn't something we've seen a lot of from past teasers.