Dawntrail Graphical Update - Au Ra Feedback

[RushBee]

Atleast with the face 2 female Au Ra, they've replaced the lips entirely which drastically changes how our characters look. The assets themselves are fine in terms of quality but it looks like a completely new face which according to Yoshi P isn't what was the aim of improving character graphics. Either let us use the old character models or change the new models to look more faithful to the originals albeit in higher resolution.

[Turethir]

Atleast with the face 2 female Au Ra, they've replaced the lips entirely which drastically changes how our characters look. The assets themselves are fine in terms of quality but it looks like a completely new face which according to Yoshi P isn't what was the aim of improving character graphics. Either let us use the old character models or change the new models to look more faithful to the originals albeit in higher resolution.

PLEASE... it looks so bad! The mouth is completely different. I also dislike the loss of light in the eyes, but the mouth is the biggest thing and was such a charm point of this face. It needs to be fixed!

[NistoBesto]

I really hope if they fix the issues with the eyeshadow they make them toggleable.
As it stands im very impressed with the changes to my face 3 in Dawntrail (at least with male Raen AuRa) and im questioning if this will turn into a huge game of tug of war where the devs humbly go with changing things to peoples requests only for them to turn around and read posts saying that what they changed runined something someone else really liked in the current benchmark. Idk i do hope this all turns out great for everyone but im sceptical

[yoyonoya]

I posted this in the general before/after thread but I'll post here as well since it's specific to Au Ra.



I'm so devastated with how my girl looks. Her previous resting expression looked mildly pleased, but now because of changes to the shadows it looks like her entire face has been pulled taut? She looks like she hasn't slept in weeks. The top/bottom eyeliner in the Other Features section used to be an opaque color that gave the impression of a larger lined eye, but now it blends into the skin and makes it look like raccoon eyeshadow instead.

I've tried editing so many things in the character creator but there's no way to make her look like she did before... I really hope they fix this.

[GoatOfWar]

I posted this in the general before/after thread but I'll post here as well since it's specific to Au Ra.



I'm so devastated with how my girl looks. Her previous resting expression looked mildly pleased, but now because of changes to the shadows it looks like her entire face has been pulled taut? She looks like she hasn't slept in weeks. The top/bottom eyeliner in the Other Features section used to be an opaque color that gave the impression of a larger lined eye, but now it blends into the skin and makes it look like raccoon eyeshadow instead.

I've tried editing so many things in the character creator but there's no way to make her look like she did before... I really hope they fix this.

Your new Au ra looks baked.
Whatever she smoked this morning, i want to have too.

[yoyonoya]

Your new Au ra looks baked.
Whatever she smoked this morning, i want to have too.

That was exactly my thought when I first saw her too :')))
I just want her to look normal!

[GoatOfWar]

That was exactly my thought when I first saw her too :')))
I just want her to look normal!

If it makes you feel any better, my character looks completely different too and i hate it.
The eyes, mouth and nose got completely changed and it doesn't look like my character anymore.

https://imgur.com/a/6gAKOP7

She's become unrecognisable.
Not sure if i want to play the game if i can't even play as the character i always played as.

[Ryu_Makkuro]

If it makes you feel any better, my character looks completely different too and i hate it.
The eyes, mouth and nose got completely changed and it doesn't look like my character anymore.

https://imgur.com/a/6gAKOP7

She's become unrecognisable.
Not sure if i want to play the game if i can't even play as the character i always played as.

I find the new one better personally, but as with my own issue, this shouldn't replace the existing one, it should be added as a new face preset. No one should lose the one they liked and right now, it seems like nearly every fem Au Ra is in that situation, we no longer have what we liked about our characters.

[yoyonoya]

I came back to this after trying a lot of suggestions I've seen posted around (comparing using the exact same lighting/angle, waiting until the sunlight was hitting strongest, making sure the gamma levels matched my live game) to see if I was more happy with the model, but doing so only made me more sure that the changes to my character are an absolute downgrade.



Using the the exact same facial angle, I did a before/after gif comparison (gif link). You can actively see her aging in real time.

I tried to analyze what feels so off about the changes. Here's the conclusion I came to:



These things might seem minor on their own, but it changes her overall impression immensely.

And even though she looks better in the benchmark than the character creator, she doesn't look good, especially compared to other races. I think the lack of deep shadows on the faces makes Au Ra in particular look incredibly flat. Just look at this comparison with my male Miqo'te and you can tell that other races aren't having the same issues. My girl looks like a plastic barbie doll in comparison because there's hardly any dark shadows on her nostrils/lips. Her features are getting completely lost on her face.



I feel like something in between the current model and the benchmark model while adding back in some deeper shadows + the base eyeshine would be a massive improvement.



Anyways sorry for the tl;dr but I've seen folks doing these comparisons for the other faces but no one had done one for face 3 yet that encapsulated my woes. The dev team has done really great work with the other races (and I'm super happy with the upgrades for my Lalafell & Miqo'te!) Even if it's not exactly what I want I hope the dev team is able to make at least some changes to preserve the essence of our Au Ra characters.