Thread: 7.0 Graphic Update - Elezen feedback

Originally Posted by Velaneth

Here's my WoL. On the left is the benchmark, on the right is live. I've tried to match lighting/position as best as possible.




Look how dead and lifeless his eyes look. He's in direct sun - There should be plenty of light reflecting in his eyes, but there's basically none. The catchlights on male elezen in particular, and really everyone, need to be turned WAY up. Dynamic is a great idea! But even in indirect light you still get light bouncing into your eye and reflecting. Make it more the size it was before and keep it from getting eaten by the new eyelashes and sure.

It's crazy how much of a difference the light dot in the eyes makes

Originally Posted by GodModule

It's crazy how much of a difference the light dot in the eyes makes

Agreed! They need to crank up that new dynamic sparkle a lot.

Originally Posted by Trager24

It's amazing to me how stark the difference is in my case. The face has lost all definition and become super flat. I'm very displeased.



Top is old, backlit then frontlit. Bottom is new, same order.

Duskwight face 3
Hair colour: Row 2 Col 4

With the shadows being toned down in the new version it really looks like a different character (to me at least).

I am reposting your screenshots as I see this same problem across the board and yours highlight them very well. The faces have lost angles - cheekbones, jawlines have been smoothed out resulting in a more generic look. (Rounder jaws and less angular faces are currently achievable in character customization, but these changes impose a less defined face on all the models.) Also contrast of light and dark on the faces seems reduced, creating an over-exposed look. For me this is no upgrade. The faces don't all look bad to me, but they do look far less customized.

Originally Posted by decomposer

This is something I've been grappling with over the last few days. Are we really meant to think that hooked noses, strong profiles, smaller almond eyes, and full lips were "mistakes?" If so, I'm not sure why they let people build characters with those mistakes for ten years. A lot of people held onto those features as the only crumbs that allowed us to make ethnically diverse characters.

These customizations have been available to us for years and I am disappointed to see them "smoothed out". Some of us have chosen them on purpose - as did the artists who created Haurchefant for example. I am personally very fond of the Haurchefant hooked nose. The update has drastically altered his profile. I am going to miss cheekbones, noses, and angular jaws and all the other details we currently enjoy.

I'm using Duskwight face 4, eyebrow 2 and mouth 4 for my elezen.

I'm very disappointed with the changes they made. My cool, solemn, proud girl became soft, kind, neighbourhood big sister.

Other than many things people already mentioned in the posts above, here are my main concerns:
1. The shape of the eyebrow. I love the defined pointed turn in the eyebrow 2. It gives so much sharpness and coolness to my character. The new one looks too flat, and making her loses her personality.

2. The slight tilt up of the mouth corners. This makes her look like she's half smiling. It makes her loses the solemn and proud characteristics that scream Elezen. If you cover her ears, I would believe this is a new Hyur model.



3. The brow bone shape change. You see a clear line coming down from forehead, high at the brow bone, indent on the eye, then follow the cheek bone to the chin. This adds so much depth to the face. However, the new model has barely any change. This cause the face to look so flat.



These are all more than the lighting issue that YoshiP mentioned in the benchmark update post. Hope they can fix the model before the release of Dawntrail.

Originally Posted by Trager24

It's amazing to me how stark the difference is in my case. The face has lost all definition and become super flat. I'm very displeased.



Top is old, backlit then frontlit. Bottom is new, same order.

Duskwight face 3
Hair colour: Row 2 Col 4

With the shadows being toned down in the new version it really looks like a different character (to me at least).

The freckles (or pores, idk) seem more pronounced than they used to be.
Eyebrows might have changes a little, I'm not sure.
The eyelashes have been removed/reduced significantly from the upper lid
The tattoo suggests that the iris size has been made smaller? That or the tattoo has become thicker.
The inner ear shapes have changed entirely. this one doesn't bother me, just something I noticed.

The bottom looks like the tops daughter

Adding to this with my partner’s face 1 elezen male since she doesn’t have a PC. I made him in the benchmark today and the biggest problem is a face paint issue I haven’t seen mentioned. He uses the eyebrow paint to achieve a heavy caterpillar eyebrows look, but now the face paint doesn’t sit on the eyebrows.

Hello, I'm posting here in behalf of Nozomi Kei of the Balmung server, Crystal DC, NA. This is my first time posting here so apologies for some errors. This is also going to be a bit of a long feedback

Part 1 of feedback:

"I'm going to try to cover everything I can find wrong and pray that at least the biggest issues are addressed, otherwise I may have to retire the character I've played for almost a decade. I will be talking primarily about face 2 male Duskwight Elezen, as that is what I play. Some of these issues might be present in all Melezen faces or isolated to face 2, but I wouldn't know unless one of you here has talked about it.



First, an issue several others have mentioned: Face 2 Duskwight suddenly having the textures of a Wildwood; eyebags being especially noticable and unwanted. I chose my character to be Duskwight specifically because I didn't want the eyebags.



Actually something seems off with all of the textures on face 2 Duskwight? My previously powder-smooth, even-toned skin now has a mottled, almost artifacted appearance, same with the skin on the lips which have both mottling and oddly darkened edges on the lower lip especially. The eyelid textures seem to have just straight up been placed wrong, with part of the weights snagging a section of the eyebrow down and leaving a notch during blinks. The eyebrows also look like maaaybe they were misplaced and that's why they're thicker for some of us, because they're being stretched over a different area than intended that is bigger than their previous real estate."

Part 2 of feedback:



"The obvious texture stretching aside, the new eyelid has removed my faint eyeliner, and changed the gently pink lid to the same jaundiced beige as areas like the forehead. Eyelids are naturally pinker in real life because of the thin skin amd abundant blood vessels. This ties into the larger observation I've made about the changes to face skin textures for 7.0, which is that their color now looks unnaturally one-toned and even more lacking in the natural hue variation of living skin than the current faces.

A note on the eyebrows and lips that is more of a suspicion than confirmed, but I'm starting to feel like these features have just been outright homogenized? Perhaps in order to make applying morphs easier? Several people have made mention of their brows being straightened out and/or thickened. The elderly faced gentleman on page 12 posted by Cio had his magnificent, shapely brows reduced to mundanity. A lot of unique lip shapes are being changed in a consistent direction. The 'standard' shape is a strong cupid's bow on top with very pointed peaks, color wrapping around the corners of the mouth, a wide and shallowly curved underside to the bottom lip, and less fullness overall. Some are seeing their gently rounded peaks made pointy, others are seeing skinny-in-width bottom lips widened, folks with broad upper lips are being thinned. My little lift in the center underside of my bottom lip was flattened

My lips are also now weirdly dark by default, and trying to colorcorrect the unattractive mauvish beige leaves me looking like I'm wearing heavy lipstick. I think part of this is the change in how lips handle lighting, and part is the bad texture that was swapped in, plus the harsher edges to the liplines where previously there was a gentle, natural transition.



At first I thought I was imagining it before I imported my current settings, but now I am sure when I say my cute and small triangular ears whose shape added to the sharpness of my face have been made bigger and rounder. I made the smallest, most Tolkien elf ears I could because I wanted them to be subtle and elegant. This reshaping has added to the myriad changes that mean my character no longer looks like the same person."

Part 3 of feedback:

"While I can see changes to my beloved hook nose I will concede that at least in profile the shape is nearly identical. Like others observed there has generally been a lessening of the details that made the nose unique. Raised ridge, bigger septum, nostril shortening.



I'm going to try to list things out, starring the things that I think are issues that especially need to be changed/fixed because they are errors rather than just somewhat expected (if unwanted) differences caused by increased poly count and modelling changes.

☆☆• Face 2 Duskwight face textures have been swapped for Wildwood textures?

☆• Lips have been reshaped

☆• Eyebrows have been thickened

• Ears have been made bigger and more rounded in the middle and lobe regions

☆• Lips are darker by default which causes issues with lipstick

• The edges of lips have a hard edge instead of the previous gentle transition

☆• The bizarre 'milk mustache' above the upper lip

• My chin has been made bigger and more round in profile

• My lower lip has been plumped.

☆• Mottled skin textures, especially on my cheeks

• Very flat lip lighting/sheen

☆• Elongated dark smudges about 2cm long on either side of my mouth?

☆☆• Texture issues in eyelid region (very visible during blink animation)

• Harsher, darker eyelashes (not thicker from above though??)

• Lack of eyeshine and dark upper iris making my lids appear lower and changing my default expression

• Angular facial geometry in cheeks seems smoothed which changes the harsher look of the race (possibly just the faulty benchmark lighting)

• Hair lighting has changed; seems more matte, less hue variation between lit and shadowed areas

___

Changes I've seen in other players:

• Face skintone now seems very one-note and unalive

• Waxiness

• Harsher eye makeup that appears too dark or stark

• Removal of texture detail that was unique to individual faces, especially in eye regions

• Moon Miqo fangs drastically shortened"