Human Females. This was originally going to be a rant, but

Pervis wrote:

Hmm who knows. We'll have to wait until August 6th and 5pm to find out (FanFaire EQ2 Art & Animation panel... Wow, Fan Faire is less than 2 weeks away!)

ttobey wrote:

OH? now you've got me all excited...
Somebody film that and show it to those of us who can't attend! =)
Back to subject at hand though, all the races in both models would benefit from some tweaks, particularly to the extent the sliders alter the faces. Would it be possible to change how much the sliders change the look? That and smoothing the skin texture a little (not necessarily to the porceline doll look of the SOGA unless it's on a slider) on the original models would be good.
Adding more hairstlyes to both models would make many people happen. We've seen some of the SOGA hair styles added for human males already and a couple of new hairstyles for standard gnome females (maybe others too but I know I saw new ones for the gnomes). Also adding options for earrings/makeup/tattoos/facial features (like freckles, moles scars) on more races. I know that would go a long way for me. Some races/sexes really have some crazy hairstlyes which you see people use on occassion but it's mostly the same ones (male dark elves and human females come to mind here).

uene@Crushbone wrote:

Cynith@Antonia Bayle wrote:

This is how I designed Ouka back when I started this game in 2004. Believe it or not, but this is exactly how I want her to look. Humans in this game are Human. They're not Caucasian, Indian, Japanese, Aboriginee, African, or Spanish. They're Human. They look the way this game designed them to look. I must have spent a good hour designing her face alone when the game started.

I agree the eye shadow thing is a little off, but I think my character actually looks very pretty. I don't see any claims of Down Syndrome or tiredness unlike with how I see many other human females. I worked with the customization enough to avoid that as best as I could. I don't think her lips are too thick or thin, or too wide or narrow. That human in the first picture in this topic had lips extended way too wide to fit the face. Maybe her chin could protrude out a little more, but I think she looks great.
I guess I'm an exception to the rule. I agree that most female humans who are just generically created as an NPC usually doesn't have the best looking features, but those are NPC's left to the creation of a computer. The same applies to every other race in their own right.


Illiam@Antonia Bayle wrote:

You need to turn up your graphics.

I think people will really enjoy seeing hair textures, new hairstyles, and either additional facial options or a small revamp of faces especially humanid non bestial races such as humans.

Cusashorn wrote:

Okay I won't disagree with you Ouka isn't bad, but Humans always look fuzzier than the other races, to make my point this is a high resolution shot of Huene, (I apologize the lighting isn't closer to yours) You'd be hard pressed to get a human to look this crisp and clear. Perhaps it's in my head, but they just always seem to me like the textures on Humans are lower.

I don't have any problem with the poly's the textures are the issue. take 1k off all poly's and give the textures a boost, and not just on humans but all models and I'll be happy. WoW may not suit many peoples taste in graphics, but they do a great job of making low poly's look good. And SoE has it in them to do the same.
Also whoever designed the Tumpy Gi, give them a raise, if they're a volunteer, hire them.

Cusashorn wrote:

And there in lies part of the problem. If you don't do it JUST so with human females they just look wrong. Back when they upped our original char count from 4 to...whatver they raised it too, the first thing I did was make my human female berserker. I fiddled and fiddled with the settings until I got a face I liked enough.
As an alt addict, I've spent much time making characters of various races and there is no race that I've had as much trouble making look how I want as human females.
One problem is the facial skin, particularly how it looks in the character creator. Compare it to other races and it just looks weird. As I stated in an earlier post it looks like someone went nuts with a blur tool. It doesn't look really bad in game, but it does look really odd in the character creator and that's as far as some people go when they are creating characters, if it looks bad there they don't bother taking it into game, they just pick another race they like the look of better (or has what they consider better racial traits).
I like my human females. I definatly don't see how people compare them with Down's Syndrome other than they look a bit...off particularly in certain lighting and in character creation and if you don't set the features 'just so'. Even though I like the way I made them look, they certainly wouldn't be beyond any need for change. The lips look like they could seriously use some chap stick. The other races don't seem to suffer from dry, chapped lips, why should my human? The skin detail also looks off. No other races have the same blured look to their skin.

Cusashorn wrote:

She is nice compared to a lot of humans I've seen, but the issue in the third picture 3/4ths view (also visible in the first) is what gets me. It's the chin/jaw area. Part of it is the way the shadows fall, but no matter how I look at it, she appears to have a double chin. As the side view shows, it's not the chin bumping out to a large degree... and even if it was, that's not how it would look, anyway.
Looking at the first picture, the left lower half of the face (fully shadowed) looks nicer then the right half of the face, in which I have no idea what the shadows are doing: people do often have a bright spot on the chin, but just- not like that. Unlike the shadows on the other part of the face, they aren't curved: they're jagged. Put that together with the last pic, where you can see that random bump on our left (her right) at the jaw level. While there are people in the world who do have a 'bump' there, it's just a bit too high to be the jaw bone but much too low to be the curve of the cheeks.
That bump right there is I think what poople are talking about when they refer to as the models having down's syndrom (which I think is vaguely offensive and not really helpful, which I'm sure will make the anti-PC crowd want to eat me). If the model was more fat, a bump like there might exist- but she doesn't seem fat, she seems muscled. It almost looks like if her chin was lower, the bump could work- it would be more curved, less triangler, or if the cheeks were pulled in, etc etc. But that doesn't work. That bump is still there. It's also slightly visible on other races, but I argue that the human females and the barbarian females got by far the worst of it.
I think the face from the upper lip up is fine- some people may not like the shape of the upper lip, and the eyeshadow could use the work, but there is nothing wrong with it. It's the lower lip down, both in shape and in shadows.

...As for SOGA, it works for some characters, not for others. I know a lot of people like the erudite female in SOGA as she looks more 'girlish'- I personally can't stand the way the porportions die and she starts showing her underwear with the dress outfits. Likewise, I think the oni (...which looks more like a Japanese represntation then a Korean one) is neat looking, but doesn't map well to Norrath ogres (although I've been known to use it for one character as I like a hair style).
My pet issue is the female sarnak, anyway. I don't care that she doesn't have breasts- she shouldn't. Why does that mean she can't wear dresses and the female clothing, though? The Iskar gets the female clothes despite being a lizard...

Terrible crop job, but here are four shots of one of my girls.
Top two you can see the skin tone weirdness. All four show the lips.
**shots are much clearer on my computer but it still shows the problem areas**

Mikkachu wrote:

Down Syndrome has distinctive facial features (although not present in all people with the syndrome). Referring to them is in no way offensive; it just is.
But I think the triggers for that particular description are three-fold:
1) the chin - The human female's chin is very underpronounced. There's a slider for it, but something about the way it works makes it hard or impossible to get a reasonable-looking chin.
2) the shape of the face - From most angles, the human female's face is very round, almost halfling-like. There are a few angles where that is minimized, and judicious use of the cheek slider can have an effect, but head-on and from other angles, there's no avoiding it.
3) the positioning of the eyes - The eyes seem a bit too widely spaced, and it's very hard to get the tilt to a position that doesn't look odd.

In addition to that, I think there might be a slight problem with the eyes' focus, again from certain angles (Finora's screenshots highlight how the same model can look good or bad depending on conditions and viewing angles). Looking at that first shot of Ouka, it looks (to me) like she's staring rather blankly off into space, not focused on anything in front of her. (Same thing in the upper-left shot of Finora's character.) That's a marker of mental retardation in humans, and doesn't help the human female look any better.

This is not to say the human female model is all bad. At least they've got some meat on their bones (unlike the SOGA models)! But there are some very odd things going on with the head and face that don't seem to have been a problem with halflings, dwarves, or elves.

Powers &8^]

I dont agree with the Down Syndrom look.
I think these 2 male toons doesnt look like they haev downs.

Just like anything else in games the more customization you give the more ways you are basically giving the player to screw it up heh. Maybe they can pre-program some normal looking faces for people to choose if they don't want to fiddle with the sliders so much. I can see why people want their character to look right for their own satisfaction, just realize most people are barely even glancing at your characters face in game.

I really hope they aren't working on sitting, would be a huge waste of resources imo. The animator shouldn't be spending a huge hunk of time so people can do something to NOT be animated. Would rather have more cool animations so I wouldn't want to restrict myself to sitting even if I could.

Huene@Crushbone wrote:

The Tumpy Gi on females looks nice, but on makes it's very gawdy. WWF championship belts FTL.

Cusashorn wrote:

Ratonga females > all others.

Ya Tom hit on this earlier about the revamp. The producer at the time wanted it to happen but when the character team broke down the amount of man hours to make it happen, it was cancelled. To revamp the characters we would have to rebuild the players and all the armor, basically remaking the game, so no expansions and new content for a couple years.
I have done some test on my own with the textures with some easy fixes using normal maps and the human model look way better. The only downside is that the age slider would no longer work as an age slider but a muscle slider. We know they look better and are still considering putting in the changes, only downside is players who have taken the time to create a look for their character may change some.

covic wrote:

I think this can work. I dont think we need to redo the skeleton on characters at all really.
Just some minor tweaks to faces would help. As you said maybe changes to the textures.

Is it possible after the texture changes you are talking about to add in additional charcter options to make your character appear older. Be it through a new age slider or a specific olderlooking facial texture.

Yes, and couldn't the aging work the same way as the tattoos textures work? I mean you'd choose a more wrinkled skin or younger one, or even different face markings? This sounds good, I'd rather have the muscle slider than the aging one tbh.K
This game surely deserve the characters upgrade
On a side note, I was testing in photoshop, aplying the soga hair to other characters besides the human, only that makes such a difference already...

covic wrote:

Although I wish they would, and also to at least make kids(of various races-I can design them on paper if needed out of work anyway) who look like kids in the game (no offense to the Mara kids but I can't see them living in Neriak-you need more models)

I think there are weird ESRB rules when it comes to portraying children in MMO's. That's why there aren't currently children models in game.

ttobey wrote:

There are. Quellious and the Mara children are... Children. However, It's seriously taboo to show or imply violence towards that child, which is why you can't kill any of them, and you don't actually fight Quellious during the Quellious avatar encounter.

Nathan Ironforge...