A significant cause of the puffy/round face impression in DT

[Noelani]

Here is a really clear example of the puffy face problem. This user goes through many of the super fine detail differences in the middle of this image, but the single factor that is contributing more than all of those is the loss of several really important shadows that were previously contouring their face and are now so diminished that they aren't doing the contouring job anymore.

In EW, the face almost always has 'edge shadowing' where, near the edges of the face's viewed dimension, contrasting tones were used. Sometimes these were bright reflections instead of shadow, but they all served the same purpose! They showed the depth of the face in the Z axis into the screen, and they functionally narrow the visual space that the facial features are arranged within.



Look at the difference in shading along the jawline here. It's prominent from the sideburns down to the chin. The shadowing around the EW chin makes it clear that the chin is in front with the jawline smoothly tapering back. The loss of the chin's edge shading in particular has done a lot to make people's faces lose visual height, even if the model is dimensionally the same, as the chin blends into the neck and becomes indistinct.



Note the significant contouring work being done by the nose shadow. It really helps bring it forward from between the eyes, giving the face as a whole a distinct depth-read with the nose in front, the face in the middle, and the jawline receding backwards into shadow.

By contrast, when those shadows are missing or so faint they can't be discriminated, the face appears flattened and widened.



Here it is shown that the size and basic proportion of the face and jawline is identical. The DT face is not actually significantly rounder, but due to improper shading it appears severely rounder.

[SturmChurro]

The old shading played a huge role in making things more distinct.

[Noelani]

The hopefully good news is that since this is a lighting-addressable thing, hopefully a fix is more within the realm of possibility as opposed to redoing facial sculpts.

[sindriiisgaming]

just adding here my own observations. in and out of light. the shadows and lights are 100% the issue

[SturmChurro]

just adding here my own observations. in and out of light. the shadows and lights are 100% the issue

Yeah, I said so in one of the other threads how huge the lighting makes a difference. It just looks so.. bland in certain light, odd.

[Noelani]

Yeah, I said so in one of the other threads how huge the lighting makes a difference. It just looks so.. bland in certain light, odd.

Hopefully this is something that can be fixed with the right shader update, fingers crossed ><