Dawntrail Graphical Update - Au Ra Feedback

[radelgirl]

I hate how puffy my character looks. It's like she's retaining water or having an allergic reaction. Her eyes are much darker and don't have the same edge.

[Fuyume]

Obviously your opinion is what matters most since it's your toon, but she looks like the same character to me. She just looks a little happier with the update. I think she looks great, as with all the other Au'ras I've seen. I mean you're acting like she isn't cute and adorable with the current graphics lol

Roda above me said it all, if I wanted to make a cute and adorable character originally I would've used face 1 or 2. But she mains DRK, BLM, and RPR. She has a very dark storyline. She's had a lot of trauma. I made her to reflect that she is a serious, dark character, and this was as close as I could get while still being an au ra (what can I say, I like draconic and draconic-like races) and female. I don't want to have to give her a race or gender change just to be able to have her look serious and severe again, as then I'd either have to retcon everything I've ever written about her or shoehorn in yet another fantasia plotline.

[Aadrian1234]

Obviously your opinion is what matters most since it's your toon, but she looks like the same character to me. She just looks a little happier with the update. I think she looks great, as with all the other Au'ras I've seen. I mean you're acting like she isn't cute and adorable with the current graphics lol

Cute isn't the only way a character is defined. Some of us don't want cute, and the pre-existing Face 4 model gave us that.

[Boblawblah]

I hate how puffy my character looks. It's like she's retaining water or having an allergic reaction. Her eyes are much darker and don't have the same edge.

I don't even know what it is, but your current look has so much more personality!!

[Fawkes]

I hate how puffy my character looks. It's like she's retaining water or having an allergic reaction. Her eyes are much darker and don't have the same edge.

[radelgirl]

I don't even know what it is, but your current look has so much more personality!!

Thank you! I think the biggest think is the pupils. They're much bigger in the new model and i think the eyes look more vacant.

I'M CRYING

[karadazkar]

I hate how puffy my character looks. It's like she's retaining water or having an allergic reaction. Her eyes are much darker and don't have the same edge.

I also that, both for you and in general. She looks like they just took Face 1 and slapped Face 4 horns on it.

[AstiSpumante]

I realized on lunch break that part of what bugs me is how unfinished our lizards feel so I cracked open CS6 and made some quick changes and have some suggestions if any dev makes it here to page 24. I will separate them into what I would think would be quick fixes/universal (adding pixels of color/changing color opacity) versus specific resculpts.



**Quicker fixes**
1) White Freckle at 2 o'clock on the iris - Have it toggle on/off in other features like eye liner. Lets people have dead eyes if they want or toggle this on to force a little life into the eyes. The positioning would also work to hide it when squinting or doing that malevolence emote.
2) Smaller pupil - Top is marginally smaller, bottom is way smaller. This is waaay lower priority for me but helps the eyes pop since it seems like most of us lizards choose colorful eyes.
3) Reduce opacity of the lip color AND lipstick color along the lip line in the outer thirds of the mouth - It helps to reduce the weird pursing of lips look as well as how the lipstick looks like quickly applied matte liquid lipstick in the benchmark. Could tie the slight fade on the outer edges of the lipstick to the soft color only and leave bold as is for those who want a boldly defined lip color. If you google gradient lips or BJD doll lips you'll get an idea of the coloration (and again I would say only do that on the outer thirds of the lips, specifically at the lipline and very soft/not aggressive) but it really helps to make the lips look less flat without needing to QA gloss lighting.

**More involved suggestions, these are more specific to Female Aura Face 2**
4) Widen the lips themselves
5) Reintroduce the M shape to the line of the mouth - This one really helped bring a LOT of the life back into the mouth.
6) Extend the line of the mouth past the lips more - aka the dimples. Let our fish lizards have their big fish lizard mouths, please.

[SabrinaScribb1es]

I already said this in a different thread, but I also wanted to share this here. Aside from the changes to the individual facial features (lips, nose, eyes, etc.), I knew something else was bothering me about the changes to Au Ra face 2, but I couldn't quite figure it out until I added outlines to compare the shape of my Au Ra's 6.0 and 7.0 faces.



*EDIT* I realized when I was comparing the head widths between the 6.0 and 7.0 versions of my Au Ra, they were at slightly different angles/zooms which made the difference in head widths look a bit larger than it actually is, so I'm removing the photos comparing head widths and only keeping the photos comparing the difference in jaw/cheek shape.

If you look at where I have outlined the 3/4s angle of my Au Ra, you can see how the shape of her face has been changed to make the transition between her cheeks and chin smoother. The chin and the top of her cheeks no longer 'poke out' as much, because the bottom of her cheek has been filled in. This takes away from the original puffy/chubby cheek look because there's no longer a clear separation between the end of the cheek and the begining of the chin. The smoother more filled-in jawline makes her lose a lot of her original soft and round "baby-faced" look, and that's not even mentioning the change in the shape of her nose and lips.

I chose this face because it was refreshing and exciting to see a face-shape somewhat similar to my IRL face, but now it no longer has that same appeal. I feel like all 4 faces have been homogenized in both the actual head/face shape and their facial features to make them all more "generally appealing," but the uniqueness of the different faces is big part of what gave the female Au Ra their charm.

[ShinkansenByNight]

I have a F Au Ra Raen Face 4. I made a comparison image with my biggest pieces of feedback from the benchmark. Overall, I think my character took the changes pretty well, all things considered, so I'm mostly happy. I'll avoid talking about anything that might be from the lighting changes, but there are just a few things that make her look slightly off to me.



Full size image:
https://imgur.com/xuYzEWI

Main things:
1. Bottom lips have gotten fuller. Personally, I really liked the thinner lips!
2. The lower eyelids for all Eye types on Face 4 have greatly increased in thickness. I think this is the most must fix out of any of my issues - it looks incredibly strange. It looks normal from the front, but is very noticeable from the side.
3. The contours of her face around her eyes have changed. This is partly due to the increased thickness of the lower eyelids, but I think there have been other changes with her 3D model topology that are causing this. I really liked the soft curve of her face before, so I would love it if this could match the Endwalker model more.

The only other thing I'll note is that the texture of her skin has a rough, almost Perlin noise quality to it. It looks kind of like JPEG compression, but no, that's really how it looks in game. It was present before in Endwalker, but did not seem quite as bad as it is now. It would be nice if this could be smoothed out.