Outdated Character Model

[Derpy Melvy.2158]

With the coming EoD expansion, will ANet finally decided to update their character model? The character models looks subpar if you compared it to other MMORPG. This issue is much more obvious on big characters like norn and charr models where their shoulders can be seen as jagged and pointy instead of smooth.

[ShadowCatz.8437]

2 hours ago, Tagashi Chiro.3172 said:

With the coming EoD expansion, will ANet finally decided to update their character model? The character models looks subpar if you compared it to other MMORPG. This issue is much more obvious on big characters like norn and charr models where their shoulders can be seen as jagged and pointy instead of smooth.

What are your display resolution? Is it 4K or more, then it is most likely one reason why things like that will happen. The higher resolution, the more details you will be able to see which include more edges on characters when they go above a certain point as those have been designed with different common resolution in mind and to keep work load and need for storage space reasonable depending on hardware configuration.

[Derpy Melvy.2158]

On 9/19/2021 at 2:08 PM, ShadowCatz.8437 said:

What are your display resolution? Is it 4K or more, then it is most likely one reason why things like that will happen. The higher resolution, the more details you will be able to see which include more edges on characters when they go above a certain point as those have been designed with different common resolution in mind and to keep work load and need for storage space reasonable depending on hardware configuration.

4K? I only have 1920X1080, 1680x1050 all those only. Don't have 4K. Sorry, I am not good with this kind of stuff

 

[Zeep.3725]

I somewhat agree here I feel that the models are somewhat low poly not like the worst but makes me wonder with the new dx11 stuff wherever we see new stuff for the existing races even higher texture quality could be cool.

[Hedonismbot.3697]

Would also welcome it if we can somehow get rid of "floating shoulder" phenomenom. scaling of armour on character models is so awkward at times, it really makes some skins on some races unusable imo.

[tetrodoxin.2134]

I don't think the models themselves are the issue, its more a combination of outdated textures (low resolution on a lot of objects) and the lack of proper, modern shaders and shadowcasting that makes this game look worse than it probably could look.

One of the first things you'll notice switching to a game like FF14 is how crisp all the shadows look - and that adds a lot of visual quality. If you look closer though, I would say that the polycount of FF14 playermodels is equal to, if not lower than GW2.

Really hope DX11 is brining some much needed visual upgrades, eventually.

[AdelaisAer.4109]

ANet did say (feel free to correct me) that once they iron DX11 out and it gets out of beta, they can have more freedom to make upgrades to the game visually and aurally, as well as add more QoL updates. So that would include, potentially, better textures and whatnot.

[Zeep.3725]

11 hours ago, tetrodoxin.2134 said:

I don't think the models themselves are the issue, its more a combination of outdated textures (low resolution on a lot of objects) and the lack of proper, modern shaders and shadowcasting that makes this game look worse than it probably could look.

One of the first things you'll notice switching to a game like FF14 is how crisp all the shadows look - and that adds a lot of visual quality. If you look closer though, I would say that the polycount of FF14 playermodels is equal to, if not lower than GW2.

Really hope DX11 is brining some much needed visual upgrades, eventually.

That's a good point I didn't think about the mix of low textures stuff and shadows like your dead on about ffxiv with the crispy shadows makes me wonder how gw2 would look with similar features. Either way an upgrade is needed as others have stated here likely to happen. I guess the question is when right?

[Demeth.5816]

A refresh would be more than welcome indeed

More options too

[Marikus.1875]

Player models definitely need more SSAO or whatever it's called.

 

They just need more dynamic shadows to add some much needed depth to armor etc. 

[notebene.3190]

Changes like this never work out well, but whatever will be will be.

[Kazeshini.8210]

It's fine where we are at it's roughly 8-16k tris, the output for rendering since it's in an old + in-house game engine outsourcing things here and there from 3rd party game engine plugins. If they do add a new updated character model it could break the whole spine rigging joints for this specific character models.

For textures I'm not too sure with anet art pipeline they might be stuck in the old bottlenecked diffuse glossiness specular textures comparing to other modern AAA qualities they cranked out with their texture to lean towards Base Color (Diffuse texture no longer necessary having to bake lighting into texture), Metallic, roughness they could go up the bar and add displacement textures which is mostly used a lot for cinematography renders in film, recently added to gaming pipeline for high quality game dev.

IIRC anet ships out character armors grayscale and uses dyes as their diffuse color for character armors. I don't think changing render nodes such as sub-scattering Ambient Occlusion would be the cheap thing making armors with absurd amount of Fresnel like mist armor+ legendary armors have or a slap of mystic infusion or making changes like anti-aliasing but upgrading towards DX11 is a good direction they are heading in terms of expanding their rendering QoL.

They would need to update their character armor assets before HoT (splitting mesh UV even further for more QoL dying parts of the armor then baking them for texturing) They could just bake and re-export textures with powerful texturing software like Mari or substance painter.

The other thing they also need to update is their old dyes as well, a lot of these dyes especially the old ones may not have have a good either or and glossiness  specular map or the value between 0-1 to distinguish if I want this specific dye to represent if the armor is made out of metal/plastic or something flat like leather/matte. 

[Doggie.3184]

Character models aren't that bad other than Norn and Charr. Seeing Artwork of Norn, especially males like Braham, is rather depressing cuz they don't look anything like that in-game and just look oddly proportioned and chubby. Charr just need an option for an upright spine like the GW1 Shaman. I swear they planned that before game release and scrapped it or something. Either way I wish it was a thing.

What really needs work is the way armor is scaled (or simply not scaled at all properly) to different races and body types and cloth physics added to everything.

Could always use new hair and faces though and my dream for cool unique sylvari animations instead of recycled humanz.

[Marikus.1875]

I put this on another thread about character models but sharing it here. I think shadows go a long way in enhancing how they look. Here's an example of how much the character model appears to be improve with the implementation of RTX in WoW. Yes, the model itself was improved over the vanilla version 17 years ago, but this is a comparison of current vs current. 

Shadows give an otherwise mostly flat looking model depth and character (no pun).

 

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/xPVr1KHWD7Q/maxresdefault.jpg