New Benchmark (June): Au Ra Feedback

[Roda]

I noticed this seam on this au ra / elezen shared hairstyle when you zoom out (both races suffer from this issue)



It appears to be tied to the weird LoD problem hairstyles have been having. :x

[Evermomo]

Back again to do a paintover for the eyes & mouth.

Granted, in a more cartoony style the viewer has a greater opportunity to project their imagination onto things, so it's likely my ideal doesn't match others' or the developers. But I wanted to try and demonstrate what effect the changes would have in the updated look.

[Berkilak]

I hope the racoon eyeliner issue is addressed.

[Morravn]

Reposting what I posted in the main feedback forum here to increase the chances of the devs seeing it! Sorry this is a bit late.

First off, I wanted to thank the devs for all the feedback they've incorporated so far. My character looks so much more like herself in the new benchmark!

(Face 4, eyes 4, eyebrows 3, nose 1, mouth 2)



That being said, I do think it's still worth mentioning that there remain some significant differences in her that don't stay true to her original design. The biggest issue is the size of the lips. Overall, the lips are still too big. The lower lip remains weirdly thickened, giving her mouth a distinctly different shape:



As I hope can be seen, this feature stands out explicitly when the characters are compared side by side. Compared to the original (left), the lips of the benchmark character (right) look swollen:



I have to reiterate that I'm so thankful for the improvements that have been made. However, this still feels like a 'dollified' version of my character. The sharpness of the original face remains lost (largely because of the relaxation of her eyebrows in combination with the puffy lips), so it still feels like botox has been forced on her, even if she's not been subjected to as much botox as in benchmark 1. The determined mood of the original face isn't there, which I am going to miss if this is the end result.

[Egggi]

I don't think it'll be in Dawntrail though, even with enough of us putting in our concerns.

I'm getting increasingly sick of voicing our feedback and concerns as a community and having SE's prevailing work ethic push us into having to settle for "Yeah guess we'll see in two years if we get heard! ". Like oh job identity they won't do anything about until 8.0 because I suppose SE as a company can only ever address 1-2 issues at a time. Y'know, because the next expac needs a selling point that'll get people who aren't usually 'tuned in' to sing SE's praises I guess! This time it's graphics "improvements" no one asked for and have a net negative outcome on some of our characters and battle mechanics, yippie...

[Irishfae]

I'm getting increasingly sick of voicing our feedback and concerns as a community and having SE's prevailing work ethic push us into having to settle for "Yeah guess we'll see in two years if we get heard! ". Like oh job identity they won't do anything about until 8.0 because I suppose SE as a company can only ever address 1-2 issues at a time. Y'know, because the next expac needs a selling point that'll get people who aren't usually 'tuned in' to sing SE's praises I guess! This time it's graphics "improvements" no one asked for and have a net negative outcome on some of our characters and battle mechanics, yippie...

I'm hoping this will get covered in the live letter, but there was an article (who knows how accurate) that is saying 7.2 and not 8.0 for changes.

Bah, nothing during the LL and he addressed the article

[Tarath]

Also if you actually paid attention to your character, you would know au ra have always had eyebags (face 3 being really shown) and you can see it clearly in certain lighting.
Funny fact, it was actually gone in the first benchmark but since people wanted their characters to look closer to the 6.58, the devs redraw the maps like the 6.58 and now you have your eyebags back and now you(and others) don't like it. This should tell you that a lot of things do not translate well from the old model to the new model with the better lighting, shadows, higher polygons and sub surface scattering something to think about.
You guys asked for this, so lay in the bed you asked for. Enjoy your more noticeable eyebags.

Despite them saying they've left the thread, I'm taking the bait to show that this is completely false and dismisses the previous given feedback.
The reason people are critiquing the eyebags in the benchmark is because they're actual changes to the face sculpt. There's now an indent for the lower eyelid, making it much more pronounced compared to the current version where they are practically nonexistent. It has nothing to do with texture maps.

I'm guessing the intention behind the change is to have the eyelids more defined and to even the gap when they're closed, but it's definitely taken a bit too far.

However I want to take this opportunity to highlight the weight painting of the eyelid rig on a face type where it is more subtle, compared to male Au Ra face 2 seen earlier in this thread.

Including a gif again as it's more noticeable in motion.


This is probably happening to the majority of the faces, and albeit it being subtle, I can't "unsee" it now that I'm aware of it.
The reason I'm bringing this up again is to highlight that different face types are affected by this, and because I worry this will also impact other facial expression involving eyelids.

[Plushy]

Despite them saying they've left the thread, I'm taking the bait to show that this is completely false and dismisses the previous given feedback.
The reason people are critiquing the eyebags in the benchmark is because they're actual changes to the face sculpt. There's now an indent for the lower eyelid, making it much more pronounced compared to the current version where they are practically nonexistent. It has nothing to do with texture maps.

I didn't want to reply to this thread again but I want to make it clear when I was talking about the eye bags I wasn't talking about whatever you just highlighted. That looks like a bug/mistake and you should probably submitted it as such rather than posting it in a feedback thread since that's obviously not intentional.(Because I have to be clear. I'm saying post in bug forums for better visibility and pretty much confirmation that the mods seen so it it goes into accepted bugs and at that point we know it'll be fixed.)
What I was talking about when I said eye bags I was referring to the lines under the eyes(that makes it look like youre sleepy). Every au ra had it and the reason you barely noticed it is because the shadows and lighting were bad. Trying going to the inn or pretty much anywhere were it has harsh lighting or when there is a mix of sunlight and shadows(like rival wings or thanalan) you'll see it. Its more noticeable in dawntrail because the skin textures and shadows and lightning are better, if you still have the old benchmark you will notice they're gone but they're back again because they redid the normal maps to match the 6.58 normal maps.

Also about the face sculpt, its the same. Just more added facial bones compared to the old model (lips, eyes, cheeks, teeth and tongue).
If you don't believe me, take the model out benchmark and look at it in blender. Its the same sculpt, only thing that changed is there is more bones which could effect some things.
Now when it comes to weight paint. I didn't look and compare both models weight paint but if I had to guess its probably the new bone, that's making the eyebrow freak out a tad when blinking, which hopefully will be fixed by release or future patch.

Screw it, I'll also take the bait.



The face sculpt is not the same.
It's extremely obvious in Tarath's pictures (nice find!), but I'm looking at a tweet comparing the mesh of a M'iqote M face between 6.58 and the 1.0 benchmark in Blender that I bookmarked back then, and there are unquestionable changes in the 3D modeling. It's not just "we added more polygons", the topology of the whole face has changed, and the eye and eyebrow shapes are completely different and straying very far from their original design.
The only parts that haven't changed at all and only got more polygons are the ears, the neck, and the top of the head (which is great to make accurate comparisons).
Obviously, for ToS reasons, I'm not going to share those images.

I'm sure Plushy will have to say something about that, but then again I don't think it's smart to publicly announce on the official forums that you know the exact names of rig bones either.

Also rig bones and 3D meshes are two separate things, one has no consequence on the making of the other. They could have kept the old rig set and combined it with the new 3D model, they only decided to add more bones to allow for more animation opportunities in the future.

even after proving I seen whats under the hood you still trying to convince yourself its different? and your only proof is you seen some picture (which doesn't explain anything just by looking at it and you probably just saw the smoother model compared to the older model which has way less polygons) I'm not going to explain further as pretty pointless as you seem pretty set (also lol........adding more polygons is the same as adjusting the topology. Its one in the same...adding and curving in more polygons means you adjust the topology.....Not going to assume anything about your knowledge of 3d but the fact you don't know this makes me wonder why you're trying to talk to me about 3D models).
You'll only understand once you seen the models yourself. I sadly can't post pictures to make you understand for obvious reasons sooo..... Have a good one as I already said I will leave this thread so I'll just quote retweet instead because don't wanna bump further.
(Just for clarification, the eye brows are not part of the face sculpt. They're a texture -meaning its not a material- and the eye shape IS the same, about the only thing I can say is actually different is the eyelash mesh.)
I just wanted to clear a misunderstanding up.

(Also not sure why you're bring up bones and 3d mesh, also the two do actually greatly affect one another, not during creation but when in actual motion. Bones can distort 3d models/meshes depending how it was weight painted. Which is why we're seeing that weird thing with the eyebrows.)

Unrelated but since I noticed your main complaint was about the eye color and my S/O also uses the same eye color as you I decided to do some testing about why the colors are a bit different and I might be wrong but with the new lighting and how the game renders lighting I believe whats happening is the eye is basically taking in the surrounding light and changing the color, so basically this on top of why higher texture for the eyes (iris) and the subsurface scattering(yes this changes the lighting of certain parts)...so as you suggested the only way to fix this is the expand the color palette which I doubt they'll do anytime soon since that's been requested before so we can get true red and true blue for hair colors and they just never did it. So unfortunately I don't think we're going to get that crystal blue back since things are rendered different now unless they decide to expand the color range of what we currently have. (Btw again I could be wrong its just when I looked in blender the colors are as they were.)

[SchwarzwaelderTorte]

Screw it, I'll also take the bait.

Also about the face sculpt, its the same. Just more added facial bones compared to the old model (lips, eyes, cheeks, teeth and tongue).
If you don't believe me, take the model out benchmark and look at it in blender. Its the same sculpt, only thing that changed is there is more bones which could effect some things.

The face sculpt is not the same.
It's extremely obvious in Tarath's pictures (nice find!), but I'm looking at a tweet comparing the mesh of a M'iqote M face between 6.58 and the 1.0 benchmark in Blender that I bookmarked back then, and there are unquestionable changes in the 3D modeling. It's not just "we added more polygons", the topology of the whole face has changed, and the eye and eyebrow shapes are completely different and straying very far from their original design.
The only parts that haven't changed at all and only got more polygons are the ears, the neck, and the top of the head (which is great to make accurate comparisons).
Obviously, for ToS reasons, I'm not going to share those images.

I'm sure Plushy will have to say something about that, but then again I don't think it's smart to publicly announce on the official forums that you know the exact names of rig bones either.

Also rig bones and 3D meshes are two separate things, one has no consequence on the making of the other. They could have kept the old rig set and combined it with the new 3D model, they only decided to add more bones to allow for more animation opportunities in the future.

[antylamon]

Bugs and oversights are included in feedback by definition, unintentional things are not exempt from it, that’s a strange complaint to make as if they don’t belong here. I really don’t understand this opposition to any not-outright-positive comments (especially the most neutral in wording and/or offering detailed explanations). Pointing stuff out helps both the devs and the players
The devs specifically asked for detailed feedback, and it will be up to them and only them to decide which comments are useful/constructive, and which are not