7.0 Graphics update to SKIN

[MsQi]

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I did

/10char

[DiaDeem]

Skin looks way better in every example they've shown. Skin both reflects and refracts light, and every new example has shown this. Dark skin characters particularly look leagues better than they ever have.

The Auri limbal rings and the Viera nose thing I feel are more actual racial traits that I hope have been addressed, but that has nothing to do with skin quality.
As Ruin pointed out, the "oily" Lala is just part of their wet-skin showcase, which I'll tell you: I wasn't impressed by, but that's not the default skin, and I think you should amend the original post.

Meteor's skin looks fine. That's not how plastic looks. I don't like his hairline and how few polys his eyes have, but everything else looks fine.

[SannaR]

Skin looks way better in every example they've shown. Skin both reflects and refracts light, and every new example has shown this. Dark skin characters particularly look leagues better than they ever have.

The Auri limbal rings and the Viera nose thing feel more like racial traits that I hope have been addressed, but that has nothing to do with skin quality.
As Ruin pointed out, the "oily" lala is just part of their wet-skin showcase, which I'll tell you: I wasn't impressed by, but that's not the default skin, and I think you should amed the original post.

Meteor's skin looks fine. That's not how plastic looks. I don't like his hairline and how few polys his eyes have, but everything else looks fine.

I feel they're confusing the slight wrinkles on Meteor's forehead as it looking plastic. Which if so then um I have questions.

[Roda]

His skin is fine imo I think it's just a poor lighting set up. The self shadows are great and there's a bit of subsurface scattering which gives it some life. The cool white highlights, which I've been wary of in other examples, at least fit here since he's in the middle of the ocean. I love the pore bumpmap!
If anything his skin has great depth while his sclera is incredibly flat and without any ambient reflections coloring them.

But on an unrelated note are his side burns floating off his jawline?

[Darkstride]

I definitely have noticed that the skin is more plastic-like in the newer graphics. I feel like the skin looks less detailed and more like a barbie doll. And along with baked in character model shadows being lightened or removed, it gives off a very strange illuminated feeling compared to the original.

New Meteor is a great example of this

I think WoL looked great in the rest of the trailer, but this shot in particular made me raise an eyebrow. I don't think he looks plastic, but I think because the light is so bright on his forehead, it's making it look flat. The lower part of his face is better, but his lips look almost too soft, which for some reason it reminds me of Vagrant Story. I also would have preferred more defined facial hair rather than a dusting of some shade, but I have to remind myself what game I'm playing.

Overall I still think it's an improvement to the facial model, it's just this initial shot with this angle and lighting that made me look twice.

[DiaDeem]

Alright. I tried to match the shot as much as I could, then put it into a video, uploaded it to YouTube and then took the screenshot I'm posting, because we must remember we've not actually seen 7.0 graphics yet, only low res/low bit rate streams of what we're actually gonna see when we play.

CGI Trailer


Benchmark Preview


Current Game


To be frank: The comparison is bad. This is the main reason why I don't wanna jump into conclusions before the benchmark is out. I wanna make more (and more proper) comparisons once that's out, but the point here is that trying to figure out how something is gonna look based on a YouTube video that we can't compare very well to current graphics I think is a bit silly. This particularly hurts how high res the actual skin texture may be.

The CG image is just to get an idea of how light should behave, and not a direct comparison. That said, the light has actual variance on the preview. Current game doesn't know what to do. I tried to match the shadows and level of light but the current graphics can't handle contrast very well. Lighting in the game right now is horrible, and it's the other big thing (alongside with AA) that I'm looking forward to seeing in the actual game.

It's so hard for me to see people calling the new skin worse. I just don't understand it, but I guess we can see for sure tomorrow with the benchmark.

[Tsumdere]

People are nuts if they think the new skin looks worse. It looks a lot better. Not current gen graphics, but it was never going to be that. Leagues better than the completely flat skin we have now.

[Razraptre]

People are nuts if they think the new skin looks worse. It looks a lot better. Not current gen graphics, but it was never going to be that. Leagues better than the completely flat skin we have now.

Youtube compression aside, there also seems to be an issue with the upscaling tech in the benchmark. At 1440p the skin does have a vaseline like smeared look to it, but I used DLDSR to downscale from 4k and it looked leagues better. I guess at 1080p and 1440p, it's upscaling from a much lower resolution akin to Performance mode?

[Rueby]

Honestly something feels weirdly uncanny about it?

[Allegor]

I would say it looks more like rubber than plastic, if anything, but could really just be the lighting.