Updated benchmark

[CecMiller]

Will post this on the JPN side later.

My own concerns:

Thank you for the Benchmark changes.

Unfortunately, it seems that there are still existing issues in the design of Au Ra. It seems Au Ra changes were largely ignored.

1. The pupils are too big/dilated. They were small originally. This changes the look of the character. Please change this back or add an option for the pupils to be big or small.

2. The colours of the umbral ring are more darked and cannot be easily replaced. My character was directly imported, and the colour is significantly darker. This colour can no longer be replicated as there are not many colours for blue. This blue was important as it represented the colour we’ve seen come up in the story multiple times with significant story relevance.

3. The lips are no longer upturned at the corners. This makes the characters expression change from slightly happy to neutral or expressionless.

There are more issues, but I feel these are most pressing for my own Au Ra.

Before and after Slider: https://imgsli.com/MjY5Mzcx



For #2:

[VerdeLuck]

They didn't change anything that people were complaining about with the Male Viera redesign. "Listening to feedback" lol!
They just tweaked the lighting and gave the devs favorite races a tune up and called it a day.

[Kuro_Matsu]

This is amazing. Your character used to have a serious look, and now she's smiling, while the characters I made who used to smile have been given a serious look now...
What's the logic behind this? They said they didn't want to change characters, but they have gone out of their way to unnecessarily change them for no reason.

I'm having the same issue with the change of mouth corners. I was hoping it was a lighting issue, but it's just a change of model. This is for Female Au Ra face#1. She no longer has the small smile on her lips and just looks like she's staring into the void.

Also, I actually liked the skin on the 1.0 version of the benchmark compared to the update. Though in direct lighting the update looks better. The eye highlight is now always bright and doesn't change in lower lighting, which is odd since it did in the old benchmark.

[Supersnow845]

I'm having the same issue with the change of mouth corners. I was hoping it was a lighting issue, but it's just a change of model. This is for Female Au Ra face#1. She no longer has the small smile on her lips and just looks like she's staring into the void.

Also, I actually liked the skin on the 1.0 version of the benchmark compared to the update. Though in direct lighting the update looks better. The eye highlight is now always bright and doesn't change in lower lighting, which is odd since it did in the old benchmark.

Which is hilarious because if you look at my last post my miqote did exactly the opposite and I prefer him with the stoic look

[Siy]

Bearable as long as I don't glance towards a light source! This is the result of turning a few degrees. Why is she so tired?!

By the way, I notice the hair is only high res and wirey when zoomed in all the way. When zoomed in a little, only the hair closest to the camera is high res. Is there a graphics option for this?

There's also an alpha transparency issue with hair overlapping hair in sunlight as you can slightly see above her forehead in the second image. In motion this looks much worse, but I haven't played with settings to figure out what's doing it.

[SpiritMuse]

Looking at all there pictures I am noticing a fairly consistent trend among the lip alterations. Which is, Cupid's Bow are regularly narrowed, and especially on female characters, in some cases entire mouths are narrower and so appear smaller and "more cute".

Here is an example of my own character, current game above and new benchmark below, where I have traced the shape and highlighted where the highest points are. It is a drastically different lip shape.

[ilustralun]

The lighting is a clear improvement to the first benchmark - someone not familiar with my character wouldn't notice anything different at all, especially from a distance.

This benchmark does show however that the current eye shape has been slightly changed so that the thickness of the upper eyelid is now thinner while the outer edges became noticeably thicker like a raccoon eyeliner makeup style. I'm not sure why it seems that the geometry was inverted as such, but the devs clearly put a lot of work into the changes and my character looks better overall: her lips were changed to reflect their current look and her teeth are not cursed anymore. I'll take it!

(Still, it would be nice to have the upper eyelid/outer edge thicknesses reflect their current look too though!)

[PintyMcEars]

I am happy with the changes for the most part, and I'm glad they fixed the weird rigging for female elezen mouths. However, I am still unhappy about the forced default smiling expression. Before, the lip shape for female elezen face 4 curved downward, giving her a more neutral face.

However, in the benchmark, the lip shape has remained changed so that it curves upward in a constant smile. I have seen other screenshots from other races with the same issue; the resting default face should be more neutral in general, so I hope they change this.

Honestly I prefer it. Always felt my elezen had "resting bitch face" lol, so I am glad to see her smile. That said I get it will be different for everyone. Cant please everyone, alas

[ANem]

I know my character won’t be 1 to 1

I’m pointing out changes that don’t need to have been made. Why does my lips have to be turned up like that, that’s not a change that has to be made considering other races got the opposite change where their soft smile was changed to the current stoic look I have.

I’m fine with a lot of the changes and the updated lighting is good I’m just providing feedback on changes that I don’t think needed to happen. I’m providing feedback, isn’t that the point of the forum so to speak

I’m not going to quit over this, I’m calmly providing feedback for changes I noticed in the benchmark as yoshi p asked us to do

Agreed with everything said. The changes to the lips make my WoL look incredibly creepy. That perpetual smile just doesn't feel right, and for a moment I thought I was looking to a Face 1 character. It changes the vibe of Face 4 completely, and there isn't even a lip option without it either!

That aside, I could swear my hairstyle has dropped in resolution again. I can't test it because i don't have the previous benchmark but it has a lot of pixelation everywhere:



EDIT:

Also, what wrong with the eyes and eyebrows? The eyebrows are thinner and pushed further apart from the eyes now. The overall shape for both is slightly different and not in a good way. And because of the default stance for male miqo'te you rarely if ever get highlights in the eyes in the benchmark.

[SugaryMiraa]

They actually fixed the hairstyle I used, which no longer has that weird spaghetti look it had before, and also added back the colour, so I am quite happy with this!
But I noticed that the shadow resolution has been changed for the character editor, which sometimes can result in overly sharp shadows being cast from the hair and nose. (The shadows remain soft and blurry in the actual benchmark on the same settings)

Old benchmark on the left, new one on the right.