Benchmark and your face - Dont judge by the character creator alone

[Hyperia]

As the title suggests, the Character Creator in the Benchmark has lighting that does not properly reflect the new look of your character from my experience. Please run the full Benchmark before making a final decision on your character.

When I first saw my character, I was like... oh no... this isn't right. What I found is the problem is the lighting and once I got into the open world to see my character, I was pleasantly surprised and felt much better.

So don't panic if you don't look just right, see how you look during the Benchmark and I hope you will be pleasantly surprised as I was in the end.

[Naple]

The lighting options are so basic and outdated. We need a much better way to customize lighting to properly evaluate the new graphics. For starters, add a gpose with customizable lighting.

[Riusvell]

I ran my Viera through the Benchmark, he lacks the same vibes as the ones I got in Endwalker. It's not just the character creator, sadly.

[glitteringcosmos]

I checked the benchmark too. Same issue as in the character creator. No change in lighting is going to change the fact that the saturation and geometry have changed fundamentally.

[GoatOfWar]

My character doesn't look like my character anymore, and that's not because of lighting.
The eyes, nose and lips are shaped differently altogether.

[Wasselin]

They took away my eyebrows on male Midlander! No amount of lighting can fix that.

[Azhyk]

My miqo'te's eyes are so wrong unless he's emoting (and even sometimes it's not right!) in the full benchmark, so yes, I am judging it by the whole and I'm disappointed immeasurably.

[MiaBlaze-Cari]

They took my fangs, made my clan marks almost disappear and my overall facial expression is basically "dead inside". Lighting can't fix that.

[RulerKelso]

Looks like the benchmark areas already uses dawntrail lighting, and character creation retained "old" lighting we currently have ingame.
New skin textures were probably created with the new lighting in mind and devs forgot update lighting in character creation.

That means that our characters will have the same terrible look in all old areas with old lighting (as seen in different background previews in creation) and look much better in new dawntrail maps unless they update lighting in all old areas.

It is just my own hypothesis so Im not sayin it is exactly like this
Would be best if devs write an official pronouncement regarding this character rework fiacso, at least to appease all that displeased players.

[HawkeScream]

The "check the benchmark" sentiment is driving me a little nuts. I've made a lot of characters, I have a lot of alts. Character Creator is not perfect, the lighting is not the best compared to in-game, but I still *like* what my characters look like when I make them and see them there. They, outside of some color adjustments sometimes, look the same in game as they do in Character Creator and I know what I'm getting when I make one. I *like* how my characters look, currently, if I pull up their settings right now. I do not, at all, like how they look in the benchmark, in character creator OR the cutscenes, because the things I don't like, and I assume for the majority of those who are extremely unhappy, are STILL THERE in the cutscenes.

I know you're trying to help, and hopefully it does for a couple people, but I've seen this come up a few times here and on Twitter and Reddit, and it's frustrating when no amount of cutscene lighting or motion is going to fix the things they've changed.