Dawntrail Graphical Update - Au Ra Feedback

[LamiaR]

First time posting in the community, please forgive me if English isn't good. I was really looking forward to it, but the result was very disappointing.
The essence of my Xaela Au Ra male1 has completely disappeared, it doesn't look anything like the character I originally loved.
I hope SE can allow players to freely choose between the new changes or maintain the original settings...

[rchmides]

I decided to leave feedback because I felt it was necessary, even though it will be more positive. And for the most part, I'm very happy with the graphics update for my character. I got a case where, roughly speaking, the overall impression of her appearance has not changed at all, but in the details has become better. I like how the lips look now, how the eyes are more alive, and the limbal rings are now really round and well inserted into the iris. And love how the white hair doesn't blend in the light. I also think the skin colour has become slightly paler (with the same colour), something I was dreaming of and a bit jealous of Raen Au Ra lol.

A few notes I found on my character that are worth fixing: the mini-horns that are on a few of the default hairstyles are still blurry; the horns are now not touching the scales, which looks weird if the hairstyle doesn't cover those areas; the horns clip with this hairstyle; and also, at the back, where the connection line between the head and torso is located, the difference between the updated lower part of the scales and the old blurred upper part is very noticeable.

Also, after looking at a bunch of examples from other people and looking at my own, I think the open environments in the editor (The Black Shroud, La Noscea, and Thanalan) have some weird lighting and don't fully convey how the character will look in game (comparing to the example from the benchmark itself).

Even though I'm happy with my character, I still notice quite noticeable changes in face 1 Au Ra on others, such as on my wife's character. And she generally like the update as well as me, but there are some concerns: type 1 eyebrows are now slightly curved upwards, so the character looks more innocent-looking; the new small iris are now even smaller than they were, making a distinct gap between the iris and the lower border of the eye visible, and type 3 eyelashes point downwards instead of straight up. Examples are respectively:

Although I can't say anything but general impressions about the other face presets, but as a female Au Ra enjoyer with a lot of friends with different face presets, I really like the new face 2 and face 3, but I can really see that face 4 needs improvement and understand the strong dissatisfaction.

I'm still grateful to the development team for the work they've done on the overall graphics update, and I hope they listen to the feedback and can address important player concerns. Also, I apologise that the text turned out to be so long...

[CecMiller]

Even though I'm happy with my character, I still notice quite noticeable changes in face 1 Au Ra on others, such as on my wife's character. And she generally like the update as well as me, but there are some concerns: type 1 eyebrows are now slightly curved upwards, so the character looks more innocent-looking; the new small iris are now even smaller than they were, making a distinct gap between the iris and the lower border of the eye visible, and type 3 eyelashes point downwards instead of straight up. Examples are respectively:

I really dislike the lack of the eye glint present in these photos too.

I also think the pupils are way larger than before (2/3x the size previously). I'm hoping this becomes an option rather than a forced feature. The pupil being so large makes the eyes look more dead because of the lack of the eye glint too.

But yeah pretty evident the iris is smaller and the pupil is larger which I don't think many expected in a graphics update? I feel like those are stylistic changes rather than a direct graphics update.

[Gember]

snip.

I was wondering when someone will talk about the racial hair where we have extra horns showing in some of them. I don't have pictures, but both male and female Au Ra race hair that show horns are not graphically updated... yet.

[Kyu-Kyu]

I'm happy with my character overall, I still recognize her and the changes aren't too drastic. I do feel like the scales could be blended in a little bit better though, there's a clear outline and it's quite distracting. There's barely any shine in the eyes but it looks fine during the benchmark so it's probably just the bad lighting in character creation.
Seems like they've removed the lip gloss though, which I'll hope they'll revert because I'm really not into the matte look.



From the side, chin doesn't seem as pointy as before. Also easier how the eyes are more rounded, which idk how to feel about it yet, I liked how bored she looked.

[Roda]

I know there's a lot to criticize about these new faces, but on a positive note, shout out to whatever dev decided we needed backlight/subsurface scattering on the horns!

(spinning gif warning)

[EliaStormblade]

Some pretty good notes there, to be honest. Especially on some easy to miss things, like the way the horns and scales no longer connect. Definitely something that needs a fix. And yeah, the character creation lighting is all kinds of horrid.

I know there's a lot to criticize about these new faces, but on a positive note, shout out to whatever dev decided we needed backlight/subsurface scattering on the horns!

(spinning gif warning)

Wow, that's pretty cool. I hadn't even noticed that. I knew they did that for Elezen ears, but not Au Ra scales.

Ok, I -think- I'm going insane. Was doing some fine tuning, when I noticed that in the La Noscea and Thanalan backgrounds my character resembled the og look. Then I turned her around to have light shine on her face... and it looks completely different?? I know I have prosopagnosia (face recognition disorder), but it is still weird that the change of lighting would cause the face to look completely different, which wasn't the case with the old lighting, imo. Explains why the usually very bright cutscenes of the benchmark also made her look "wrong".

Nope! You're absolutely not going insane. This is the biggest marked change between current live characters and benchmark/Dawntrail characters. The shaders/materials of the skin are made to respond to light more like it would in real life, so that means that depending on the lighting angle, intensity and quality, the results are gonna be considerably different. If there's no light anywhere near their face, they also won't have that shine in the eyes. Or at least not with that familiar intensity. It's definitely a change, but it's also kind of inevitable with these updates, because old skins just didn't really do much more other than evenly light up (or darken) where light fell or didn't fall.

(Also, the character creation lighting is pretty poor. Not sure why, but what they did with it is not working out for them. I feel like the environments are all the old pre-Dawntrail stuff, and therefore also provide cheaper and lower quality lighting.... which doesn't really play nice with these new models.)

[Xygran]

Noticed some issues with scales and tail for female Xaela.
The tail appears to be a diffirent colour/shade than the scales.
In addition to scales appearing more "flat" than the old ones I also noticed that they seem to have been poorly cut from the old texture; some of the thinner extended parts seem to have become thin malformed lines.

Left side is endwalker benchmark and right side is dawntrail benchmark. (angle bit different due to weird lighting issues)

[Fuyume]

I have been informed that my former comparison pic was too different in lighting to see the differences properly, so here's with recreating my benchmark CC image in the live game as closely as possible (same angle, background, position, etc). She just looks so...tuned down. So much softer, less angular, and why did they add dimples to the corners of the mouth (and the dimples are there whatever mouth I choose)?

[execlinca]

Just another comment on the horns not attaching to the scales issue:



It's definitely an issue, specifically a face 1 issue. Face 2 seems not to have ever had scales beneath the horns (a shame in my opinion, but not a benchmark change) and face 3 and 4 are fine. This one feels like another quality control one to me.

The neck texture is also true:



Looks like it's happening on the neck seam and makes it more visible. I feel like they must have just forgotten to swap the texture out though...

I've mostly made peace, but these are quality control issues. Especially hope the scales near the horn get fixed.