7.0 Graphic Update - Elezen feedback

[Liamont]

Post here your elezen before and after!

Edit: Compiled a list of all the feedback, organized into groups with links to examples. Links can be found starting from here.

Overall
- Faces are too rounded and smooth, and have lost definition of chins and cheekbones. Wrinkles have also been smoothed out too much.
- Facial expressions and 'feeling' of many characters have changed significantly due to these changes in features.

Hair
- Hair colour has been washed out and becauase of this, some original colours are unable to be replicated now. Some hair colours have also been strangely darkened.
- Hair has lost its shine, looks more flat.
- Some hairstyles are no longer 'fitted' to the face, causing clipping issues.
- Some hairstyles are completely broken, or have strange shadows.
- Strange lighter-toned highlights that look like tinsel visible on some hairstyles, especially with darker hair.

Eyebrows
- Some eyebrow shapes changed, either in shape or thickness, which makes the 'feeling' of a character massively different. Some of the new eyebrows make the character look more aggressive or angry rather than gentle, friendly, kind, solemn, or thoughtful. Others have weird smudges underneath them.
- Some eyebrows look faded.

Eyes
- Duskwight drawn using Wildwood face textures, giving them dark eye circles that they didn't have before.
- Wildwood dark eyecircles decreased.
- Lack of eye highlights and/or eyes now having pupils that are too dark at the top is causing a dead look in the eyes. It also makes the eyes look half close and lidded, which impacts the character's neutral expression significantly.
- Eyelashes are longer and thicker, changing the visible shape of eyes and also contributing to the dead eye look by covering any highlights that may be there. Eyelashes also seem to pop in and out of existence depending on distance of camera to the face.
- Texture issues in eyelid region (very visible during blink).
- Some eyes have changed shape.

Lips
- Some lips have been turned up at the corners creating a 'smiling' effect that wasn't there before. Others had corners of the lips faded away, changing the expression.
- Some lips have completely changed shape.
- Lips have a harsh line now, are less blended.
- Flat colour of the lips it makes the lips look painted on rather than full, like before. Lips lost their shine. Also 'light' lipstick doesn't exist anymore.
- However some are happy with lipstick colour coming through better.
- Some lips have an odd stripe of light added above or below them, creating a 'milk moustache' effect.
- Female elezen's mouth animations seems to be broken, with the bottom lip curving upward unnaturally in emotes.

Noses and Ears
- Some noses have been made straighter, narrower, less pointy, or otherwise had their shape changed drastically (bridge bump removed etc). Others have become rounded and softer.
- Ear 3 seems to be smaller than before.
- Ears are too different. Some are fatter and rounder. Strange crease at the back of ears.
- Translucent ears do not match the colour of the skin, staying a bright peach/pink no matter what. They seem to be only tuned for lighter, warmer skin tones.

Skin
- However, for skin tones that match (lighter, warmer skin tones), overall most seem to enjoy the translucent ears.
- Skin looks strangely shiny, like wax. This is especially noticeable in darker skin tones, with some lighting situations making the skin appear as if wet or glossy.
- Skin tone has changed significantly for some characters with no way to update it to match the original, especially for duskwight.
- Skin looks oddly mottled.
- Skin is now unnaturally one-toned and more lacking in natural hue variation of living skin, e.g. eyelids are no longer pinker.

Makeup/Facepaint/Scars
- Light makeup is barely noticeable now, and dark makeup is too heavy. Eyeshadow behaves differently
- Facepaint seems to look low res or washed out. Female duskwight facepaint, especially when darkened, show a strange visual bug.
- Lack of details on scars make them look more like a dark line painted on rather than a scar.
- Eyebrow paint no longer sits on the eyebrows.

Other
- Earclasps shape and colour has changed drastically.
- Beards are less thick and have obvious mesh holes where they are not even touching the face.
- Dirty texture on female elezen starting clothes, and left thumb mysteriously blackened. Racial starter gear low rez.

[Liamont]

I'll start:



I'm admittedly not happy at all with the eyebrow changes. And how the mouth looks with the new lighting. It looks like a tiny smile now instead of a serious face.





Why did the eyebrows change so much? Now all the options ONLY have a taper at the end, I specifically picked the eyebrows that I did when I started because it was straight.





Edit: Added a gif


Made a gif of my character to see the differences, the one with the face selection at the top is the new.

Overall it looks like they pulled the face back upwards for the new, you can see how the lips seem to go upwards more into a smile, the eyebrows upwards, and the shadows under the brow I didn't notice as prominently until now. It looks like they congregated the brow shadows into a smaller blob at the top of the eyes rather than more towards the nose.

Also realized that they decreased the amount of eye bags, and ironically gave duskwight eyebags instead lol.

Yeah, I'm not happy with the change.

Edit2: Here's some more comparison images.
https://imgsli.com/MjU2MDgz
https://imgsli.com/MjU2MDg0
https://imgsli.com/MjU2MDg1

[Lorefiend]

This has to be a straight downgrade for me in so many aspects...

The hair colour is obviously washed out, horribly so, removing the only red option for elezen other than the wine red one.



The hair itself is also stiffer, less voluminous and has lost its shine, it just looks straight up worse in every aspect but texture... but even that is very much a more detailed texture on flat blobs, now even easier to see.


The face is shiny. Like wax. The eyes have lost their focus, the elezen gaze is important to me and that's entirely gone with these aloof eyes that also look darker.
Free nosejob as well, I didn't want one...
Not pictured, but lipstick light options don't look so light anymore either. Eyebrows have also been softened...

I know softer features were inevitable since they were going to add more polygons, but everything looks too smooth now, and what doesn't is stuff that would have benefitted. This is a huge blow for me, I don't want to change my main much and I can't even get the hair colour alone right because of how limited the palette is.




Benchmark on the left.


Even if I were to use the free fantasia to fix stuff like the eye and skin colour, I don't have the option at all for the hair, nose, eyebrows. That's a lot of the elezen charm gone for me. And on top of that, any change I use the fantasia for would be misleading anyway since the preview spots in character creation all have very different lighting.

There's around two months left before Dawntrail gets finished, there's no way they solve this. There's been feedback about overly glossy/wet skin from the very first Fanfest preview, so clearly it's locked in. I may warm up to it, but my main character looking like that killed any drive I had to also see my alts...

[Tsumdere]

I'm pretty happy with it. My character is still handsome and looks great in motion.
Have a gripe though.

They gave Duskwights dark circles?
Why? At least Duskie face 2 never had dark under-eye coloring in any lighting in any part of the game ever.



I know there are only about 10 of us, but please remove the eyebags from Duskies.

[Turtledeluxe]

I'm pretty happy with it. My character is still handsome and looks great in motion.
Have a gripe though.

They gave Duskwights dark circles?
Why? At least Duskie face 2 never had dark under-eye coloring in any lighting in any part of the game ever.



I know there are only about 10 of us, but please remove the eyebags from Duskies.

I like them better with the dark circles tbh. It looks more unique.

Maybe it should be a slider tho.

[Tsumdere]

I like them better with the dark circles tbh. It looks more unique.

Maybe it should be a slider tho.

Duskwight face 2 is the only Elezen face without dark circles (besides baby face). You can always play Wildwood for dark circles!

By adding dark circles, they have actually made them less unique and made similar to the other clan/face 1.

[Turtledeluxe]

Duskwight face 2 is the only Elezen face without dark circles (besides baby face). You can always play Wildwood for dark circles!

By adding dark circles, they have actually made them less unique and made similar to the other clan/face 1.

Idk, I feel like they always both had them. It is just that they don't show up in the old design. They look like under eye wrinkles. They do both have prominent eye circles now but i don't think they look the same at all. These are softer.

Actually idk, maybe the eyes are just bigger. I can't tell lmao. The hair does get in the way a little vs the other pics.

[Liamont]

Idk, I feel like they always both had them. It is just that they don't show up in the old design. They look like under eye wrinkles. They do both have prominent eye circles now but i don't think they look the same at all. These are softer.

Actually idk, maybe the eyes are just bigger. I can't tell lmao. The hair does get in the way a little vs the other pics.

They most definitely did not both have them. Duskwights noticeably did not have dark circles on the old design and that's also why I used Duskwight for one of my characters.

[Evergrey]

-snip-

I like the updated one, it's like you mentioned, more soft so less sharp edges, which is the perk imo.
The stare feels less intense I can agree on that.
But perhaps it's the lighting that might play a part in that, since the eye's are a bit darker and the white spot not as bright to draw focus.

The free nosejob, well, I guess everyone has to get used to some changes here and there with the update.
Some more than others I'm afraid.

[Mecia]

Need to tweak colors due to lighting changes but otherwise no complaints

Less drastic lighting difference