Dawntrail Graphical Update - Au Ra Feedback

[Ryu_Makkuro]

also this is me personally, but i feel like they've sucked a lot of the red undertones out of the skintones, it feels horrific in the chara creator

I am 99% sure this is due to the subsurface scattering being implemented, which relies on the lighting to provide that "red undertone" to the skin. However since the character creator seems to have really bad lighting, the subsurface scattering can't do its job properly, and thus lacking in those red undertones. Considering that in the benchmark itself it looks much better, I'd say this is indeed the case.

Bring out the usual meme excuses of "spaghetti code", "indie dev team", etc. xD

[Solais]

I feel I must say something too, registered just for this, because I can't keep silent about this, they absolutely murdered my character!

Original



Benchmark



Originally my character looked curious and intelligent, like "ooh, what is that shiny thing!", but in the benchmark she's all dull and gloomy looking, like "I guess Meteion was right, life sucks and I'm out of coffee", it is not my character!
Also, I know a lot of people has been praising it, but I absolutely dislike the new Raen scales! The Xaela ones look good, but the Raen ones, especially around the neck look like as if they grew under the skin like some sort of skin disease, the original ones have a more natural color at the edges that gives the scales the feel that they grew out of the skin, part of it, they protrude. It's almost feels like as if they by accident flipped the normal map of the scale texture. And I really don't like how it's more white/grey colored, the white highlights look way over done, the more bronze/gold feel of the scales are gone. Why can't we choose the color of the scales anyways? Why only two presets?

[Yukimin]

Lip changes are so bad.

[GoatOfWar]

Lip changes are so bad.

Agreed, all lips are ugly now.

[MediocreIndigo]

My one complaint is that I wish my character's mouth had a more similar shape to what it had before. It looks too narrow now.

[lisaa]

My one complaint is that I wish my character's mouth had a more similar shape to what it had before. It looks too narrow now.

I have a similar character and I agree, it seems like the mouth is more narrow horizontally.

And lip color is too flat, like others have said.

The hair, skin and scales are a nice improvement, especially in daylight.

[Fuyume]

Top is the game as it is, bottom two of course are the benchmarks. This doesn't look like my character at all, her face is too round, her mouth is too pouty, and why on earth did they give her dimples? She's supposed to be tough, she's a reaper and a dark knight, and I designed her accordingly back in HW cause I knew I wanted her to look like a tougher character than I could achieve with the other face shapes. Now I showed the new her to my husband and he said she looks like she's holding air in her cheeks constantly. :| And I tried all the other mouths and jaws and nothing makes it better, just bigger or smaller but still overly round, puffy, and with pouty lips and dimples.

[crystallineAbyss]

Agreed, all lips are ugly now.

idek what you mean, the lips are fine + I'm glad they finally gave us some larger lip options. finally, i no longer look like im holding a frog in my mouth.

[Enyo-Chan]

I feel my main issue with the scales for Au Ra are the pixly bits in the face and that the scale over the nose bridge looks like it has lost pieces/clips into the skin.
A smaller issue is that the red highlights for Xaela horns have become almost... nonexistent. While on Raen horns the black highlights look a lot better.

Overall issue I see with many races is the skin texture looking rather cakey, especially on pale skin tones as well as flat lips in terms of shading.

Nitpicky issue is that while I love the glow of the limbal rings, it feels like they are bigger than what they used to be- but I could get used to that!

[Lendros]

I like a lot of the changes to M Au Ra! I'm a face 1 player, and the restructure of the mouth looks awesome. I like the new scale textures and glossier specularity. My only real complaints are, as others have stated, the intensity of the pore textures, and the current state of the eyes.

The pores are really visible and jarring on pale skin tones.



Below are 7.0 Benchmark (left) and 6.0 Benchmark (right). The limbal rings now emit light, which is cool, but they're currently very thick. In combination with a larger pupil, the eye color itself get lost. The increased shading and depth on the iris looks very nice without the limbal ring, but makes the eye color indistinguishable with it.



I made a quick paintover with a smaller iris and thinner limbal ring, as well as a bigger and brighter catchlight for comparison. It may not be accurate to the lighting, but the older eyes looked much more alive with a more cartoonish approach to this.



That said, I think this is on the right track! Attempting to make the lighting flattering for all skin types is a monumental challenge and one that deserves praise for making the effort to tackle.