[Character Graphics Update]: Second Benchmark Worries

[Absurdity]

This... makes a lot of sense, actually. If I'm not mistaken, this is how clothing is already handled. They don't make a separate mesh for each race, they make two or three for different body types (midlander, lalafell, sometimes highlander) and then use shape keys to tailor them to each race's specific proportions.

Makes me wonder at the possibility of face sliders if/when the character creator receives an overhaul.

For the body and clothes they're not even using shapekeys as far as I know, female hyur, miqo'te, roegadyn, au ra, viera and elezen all just use the midlander body with different bone scaling applied.

Shapekeys morph the model itself but they need to be done for every individual model since they have different amounts of polygons and vertices and shapekeys tend to break when the amount of them changes. This is why the face shapes don't look quite the same as they did before, they needed to remake the shapekeys for the new updated head models.

Bone scaling on the other hand manipulates the skeleton underneath, it is more limited in what it can do (while still looking acceptable) but applies to all models rigged to said bones. It's how they make most races look different without having to create 17 different versions of the same armor, with bone scaling they only need to make a unique model for male roegadyn, female midlander, male midlander, male highlander (for some reason) and lalafell.

As for the sliders, in 3D modeling programs the shapekeys are already a slider. Now I have no idea how the game handles those specifically, but my assumption is that it picks a fixed point on those sliders to use as the 4-5 customization options for every part of the face.