New Benchmark (June): Au Ra Feedback

[Glyphs]

I wanted to make a thread for Au Ra discussion in the new benchmark, seperate to the old thread, so it's easier to break down! You can see the old thread here, lots of good discussion there.

My main issues with the first benchmark, outside of general lighting/seam issues/etc. that most races encountered, were these:
- Mouth: shapes were changed, and the shading on lips had a much harsher line on the "None" lip colour option
- Eyes: At least in my experience for Female Face 1, the eye shapes were very different in a way that seemed to be an intentional stylistic choice, as opposed to simply a case of lighting. The iris was smaller, but the pupil much larger. The upper lid "eyeliner" option is also far less pronounced, which makes the eye shape itself also look a lot different. It vastly changes my WoL's overall look.

Good news is that the mouth issue seems fixed in the new benchmark, at least for Face 1! I was relieved to see it on the list of points mentioned in the Lodestone update. Likewise, new lighting also helps overall. Thumbs up from me.

On the other side, the eyes have the same issues as before. I realise the majority of updates to this benchmark were lighting-based, as opposed to stylistic changes. Comparisons:



The lighting looks good on the colour, but there is still the same issues of:
- A smaller iris, but larger pupil. The iris does not reach the bottom of the eye's waterline any more, which I think is the biggest difference. The shading means the pupil stands out more vs. before, when it was slightly more blended into the colour of the iris.
- The upper eyelid is far less dark and defined. I would even say that it looks less defined in the updated benchmark. I have the "eyeliner" option in Other Features turned on, but it makes very little difference vs. having it turned off. I believe darkening this option to make it comparable with the current game's version would help a lot!

This is the case across all eye shapes, at least on Female Face 1, so picking another one isn't an easy fix.



Things definitely are a lot better! And I know I sound fussy with these details, but I still wanted to highlight areas that I feel a little disappointed over, since Yoshida and the developers said they'd still be listening and that it was an ongoing process. I'm really appreciative of how much they are listening.

Please do share your own comparisons, things you are happy or sad about! I'm really interested to see how Au Ra have been updated, since they had some of the more polarising changes (both Female and Male, Raen and Xaela) in the initial benchmark.

[Asteri]

o/ Already posted in the Face 2 thread that existed since the first Benchmark, but cross-posting!

Face 2 returning to raise concerns that I had in the first iteration of the Benchmark:

• Lips are still affected, the shape is different and more compact, with the dimples not as prominent and the lip shine still mostly non-existent. This actually looks much better in movement but is still a concern for the idle poses. It feels like my character has a permanent "duck face" and no amount of Fantasia can help since it was already the thin/wide option out of the four available ones.
• Eyebrows have a hard dark gray line for white hair colors, they used to be softer looking.
• Scales look too flat against the skin, as if they're just a sheet covering the skin rather than scales growing over the skin. They're still very ivory and "dirty" looking because of the color choices, I miss my off-white cream scales. :< I wish they had simply given us scale color options instead of outright changing the colors.
• Minor, but the top eyelashes only point downwards now, where they used to having a small flick upwards on the outer end.

I will say the catchlights now look a LOT better and help fight the dead-eye look of the first Benchmark, I'm really happy with how my character looks in the actual benchmark when it comes to the eyes specifically! The lighting helps a ton to make my character look much better than in the first benchmark too but my worries remain that the shapes have been altered and no amount of lighting was gonna help. :')

Slider version: https://imgsli.com/MjY5Mzcw



Previous Benchmark V1.0 post:

SNIP

[Alice9]

The update is definitely notably better for face 4 F Au Ra. Unfortunately I still feel it is lacking attention to some of the more prominent and consistent feedback given which is a shame.

It definitely feels like a significant chunk of identity is still lost in my opinion. The face still is significantly rounder and dulled out which loses the sharpness that me and my friends have come to love, it was a big reason of why I picked face 4 to begin with. The eyes and lips are different shapes now and the chin still looks very strange. All of it kind of results in a stare that looks kind of unnatural and "frightened" almost, as if you caught my character by surprise in the way the lip is pouted and the eyes are widened- like I ate something sour by surprise. This is a large difference versus a pretty tough and sharp look from before, and a major style change that I'm personally not a big fan of at all.

Overall I'm definitely glad that it is better than before (however that bar was quite low considering how wildly different face 4 looked in the previous benchmark), but considering their lack of attention to some of the points I saw repeated a lot throughout this whole time, I can't help but feel disappointed.

[AvaloniaFallen]

Current vs benchmark 1.0 vs benchmark 1.1
1.1 is much better than 1.0; she no longer looks high and her nose is back to being basically the same as current. However, I think the mouth is still too different from how it used to be, and that her eyes being less angular + the larger pupils make her look much different from how she currently looks.

[Merunari]

Face 4 here also coming in with continued disappointment.

Mouth shape is the biggest issue I have. The corners are even more down-turned in the 1.1 benchmark than they were in the 1.0 benchmark, in addition to the lip line still being flattened and the upper lip shape being more curved rather than straight angles. It feels like they transplanted face 2's OLD mouth onto the new F4. It's a whole new mouth and it completely changes the face.

EW vs DT1.1 for comparison:


Eyebrows are weirdly dark now? This seems most likely to be a lighting thing, but it's super noticeable to me.

EW vs DT1.1 for comparison:



Pupils are still way too big. If you have limbal rings, it's hard to see the actual base color of the eyes.
On that note, limbals still feel much darker/not as glowy. I think it's more because they blended them into the iris rather than having solid, hard lines to make them look more "natural". I don't mind the blending, but the "unnatural" glow was specifically why I chose to have limbal rings in the first place.

The catchlights still suck, in my opinion. They're much better than the 1.0 benchmark catchlights, but they're way too small/subtle and way too sparkly. It's like there are multiple light sources pointed at the eyes, but that's not how shine on eyes works. They still almost vanish entirely in the benchmark itself, so the soulless/dead eye look is still an issue in actual gameplay outside of the character creator.

The whole face shape (jaw 1) feels a bit weird now. The chin is more round rather than pointed, the cheek bones sit higher and rounder, while also feeling like the cheeks have been hollowed out a little. The face still looks round, just... more in the chipmunk way rather than the actually round way it was before. This feels like it could be a lighting difference issue, but I'm not entirely sure, given that there are definitely minor model changes elsewhere (as noted with the lips in particular). I honestly can't tell if it's the lighting playing tricks on me or if the model was actually changed.

[Lumalina]

Overall, this is a big improvement from before. The lighting adjustments are great and really help pull out many defining features that were missing with the previous benchmark. I'm honestly very grateful, since I know this update is such a large undertaking.

After playing around with the changes, the only issue I really have is with the eyes.
The pupils being so dilated changes their look. This seems to be the case with all four face options.

This was something that was present in the previous benchmark, and was brought up by other players, so I'm curious if this is a change the team wants to stick with?

[Isurith]

Adding up my voice.
Things are better than the first bench, but the result is still disappointing. As expected, the major problems doesn't come from lights but rather design choices (or mistakes ?).
Lips are simply not the same (and the others aren't good remplacement), and pupils are bigger (why tho ? there is absolutely no reason for this).
I can live with the face being a bit rounder, even if I don't really like that.
But the mouth and pupils are really big offenders.

[Raida]

Well i was expecting too much i guess about fixing scale on Au'ra xaela male face 3

We still have the scales (and it's really visible on the face) where it's like we put a sticker on his poor face. The outline is poorly cut. Also these scales aren't anymore on the face itself but seem to fly now. Except for that, i'm really happy of the result but really these scales are making me mad since it was already said in the feedback from the previous benchmark.

First picture the pixelated outline scales :



Second picture where you can see these flying ones :

[WhiteCherry]

I can't compare to the old benchmark as I only tried the current updated one, but I need to point out the bold outline on the face scales of my Au Ra in comparison to how it looks live in-game.

Not sure if it's because of a specific graphic setting (running on high desktop), if it's just on Xaela Au Ra... I also tried asking on Twitter if other Au Ra players were noticing the same issue but haven't received feedback yet.
Wasn't really able to compare the scales on the neck/chest area, aside from the fact that there's clear changes on the design of the scales itself.



*Edit* Just saw the same issue on the post above mine, and on more posts ahead in this thread.

*Edit 2* After looking at more posts in this thread, I've noticed that the limbal rings are supposed to glow but apparently if the rings are of a darker tone they just don't glow?? During the character creation menu and all of the benchmark, the limbal rings on my character (that are dark red) just don't glow at all, and sometimes it's even hard to notice they're there in cutscenes that are darker and if we're not zoomed in. If they are supposed to glow, then the darker colors need to be fixed or just be removed? Or maybe have an option to have them glow or not.

[Joralia]

Thank you for all the hard work on the new benchmark.

I'm very happy to see improvements made to my OC. I use a Face 1 female Au Ra, which seem to have been adjusted to be very accurate. Her lips are still not quite the same, but I think I could get used to the current version with some time. I hope my sisters of the other faces will get another pass from the development team so that they can be happy, too. Especially face 4, which seems to have gotten the least adjustment between versions.

However, I do want to point out an issue I have noticed regarding Raen scales.

From afar, they look very good.



Up close, the scales on her face are still good, but the neck scales look very strange to me. They have a "pasted on" sort of vibe, like they were added in as a tattoo or with image editing software. Given that we will be seeing our OCs up close quite often in cutscenes, I think this deserves to be looked at closely by the development team.



(Since the full image is rather large, I have included the full version here as a link.)

Thank you for reading my post and good luck to my fellow Au Ra who still need adjustments on their characters. I believe in time, you will be heard!