Guild Wars 2

It’s not a bug at all, the armor is shiny.

Shiny armors reflect the environment map. So if the environment has a blue sky, it will shine blue. If it has a red sky, it will shine red, etc. Even a blue-ish moon will make it look a bit colder in contrast to other warmer colors in the environment.

Aww thank you StinVec. I am so glad to hear it’s appreciated. I enjoy being direct and doing what I can. Lately I’ve been peeking into the bug forum to see whassup. It’ll be a slow feed, but looking into what is feasible to fix.

Looks like a past fix in one bleed area affected another. I put the shoe back on the dye channel it was shipped with. Also cleaned up some of the other bleeds. Won’t be in the next release, should show up in the release after that one. :}

Meanwhile, thank you again for all your help with bugs. It’s really a big aid and is appreciated. ;}

Thank you Vick for the screenshots. And Thank you StinVec for the continued diligence! I’ll take a look into it and see whassup.

Could you post which weight class, race and gender you are playing? A screenshot would also be helpful. I’ll look into it.

Ah, yeah. You fell prey to one of my puns. It’s Co(bolt) …as in a bolt of cobalt, i.e. electric blue.

You’d be surprised how many times I had to check that the spelling got through that way to the game. :} I’m not sure localization was fond of me by release, either. Hehhe.

It’s a bug and should be fixed soon as we can get it in. It had nothing to do with the armor changes. Your original eye colors will return!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/My-eyes-are-now-solid-black-after-patch/first#post3123442

Hm. Odd.

I’ll take a look at the boots.

Lily, could you screenshot what you’re talking about on your armors for me? That may or may not be a texture bug. It may be a tangent viewpoint thingy (that’s the technical term, sure. ;}). If it is, nothing to be done about it. If it is texture, I’ll get to it when I fix the sets.

I originally started typing up a big post about explanations and reasons and theories, but I think that they’d get in the way of the point I’m trying to make, so I’ll keep it as concise as I can.

What is:
Glow mask areas remove the shiny effect beneath them in the current system.

The armor glow and skin glow are two different systems. The only control currently possible is through the armor dye of that area.

What will be:
Textures: I’ll get the textures to work like they used to. By this, I mean they can go back to darker and have their gradients as much as I can while keeping the glow.

Dye Masks: I will get them to behave more like the old shapes, but you’ll still see some tweaks because of the glow. I see a couple folks mentioning dye masks being removed. This was unintentional and I’ll look into it.

Glow Shape: I can minimize some of the glow layer shape in the texture so it doesn’t affect the broadness of specular as much. You’ll get most of your shiny leaves back.

What I’m working on:
The glow isn’t as rich and saturated as one would predict. This wasn’t touched and is not a part of the texture or dye files, even though the dye shape is now controllable. There may be a way to get this changed on the shader, but it would only affect cultural armor and nightmare court stuff, not any clothing.

The glow can get to be more aligned to the color. If you dye the shape blood red, it will glow like a traffic light. If you dye it dark red, it’ll glow dark red. If you dye it pink, it will glow pink. If you dye it white, it will blow out so bright. …if you dye it black or dark dark dark, it’ll barely glow if at all.

By dying it dark, you can effectively artificially “mostly turn off” the glow. This is the biggest middle ground while still giving the people who love the glow their choice as well.

Thanks everyone for your feedback on this change. I tried my best to explain this system and what I’m working on, but there are technical elements and nuances that are fairly complex to describe. Note that any changes I could make will not get into the game the next build release. But they may get into the build after that. Now back to work for me. :}

I originally started typing up a big post about explanations and reasons and theories, but I think that they’d get in the way of the point I’m trying to make, so I’ll keep it as concise as I can.

What is:
Glow mask areas remove the shiny effect beneath them in the current system.

The armor glow and skin glow are two different systems. The only control currently possible is through the armor dye of that area.

What will be:
Textures: I’ll get the textures to work like they used to. By this, I mean they can go back to darker and have their gradients as much as I can while keeping the glow.

Dye Masks: I will get them to behave more like the old shapes, but you’ll still see some tweaks because of the glow. I see a couple folks mentioning dye masks being removed. This was unintentional and I’ll look into it.

Glow Shape: I can minimize some of the glow layer shape in the texture so it doesn’t affect the broadness of specular as much. You’ll get most of your shiny leaves back.

What I’m working on:
The glow isn’t as rich and saturated as one would predict. This wasn’t touched and is not a part of the texture or dye files, even though the dye shape is now controllable. There may be a way to get this changed on the shader, but it would only affect cultural armor and nightmare court stuff, not any clothing.

The glow can get to be more aligned to the color. If you dye the shape blood red, it will glow like a traffic light. If you dye it dark red, it’ll glow dark red. If you dye it pink, it will glow pink. If you dye it white, it will blow out so bright. …if you dye it black or dark dark dark, it’ll barely glow if at all.

By dying it dark, you can effectively artificially “mostly turn off” the glow. This is the biggest middle ground while still giving the people who love the glow their choice as well.

Thanks everyone for your feedback on this change. I tried my best to explain this system and what I’m working on, but there are technical elements and nuances that are fairly complex to describe. Note that any changes I could make will not get into the game the next build release. But they may get into the build after that. Now back to work for me. :}

This issue is unrelated to the armor update. I will make sure the proper folk are aware of this to see it get fixed.

(FYI, it happened on my character, too!)

Hi everyone,

Well it looks like my release notes weren’t added to explain this, so I’ll try to allay the confusion. Yes, some of the cultural armor has gone through some major updates. Folks have been vehemently requesting that the cultural armors glow, and they have been confused at the old glows that were there. This confusion was because a lot of the dye-to-skin blends on stems would glow the skin color, but not their chosen glow color.

In updating the armors, this comes with particular considerations. The armor glows are not on the same system as the body glow, so they will only glow the color of the area dyed. Armor glow also does not play well with alpha, so I have to avoid any alpha edges. The problem with this is most of those areas that look good glowing are also some of the areas that blend to skin. Armor glow also negates specularity.

So. What this means for you is, to add your glow, I reworked the dye channels to give you the largest choice and control possible over the glow. The areas that glow are now selectable for you. Some of the textures are also better balanced to give you more consistent results… you won’t have to guess what color you need to find to make the red feel red, for example. It will just work.

This currently affects Medium Tier 2 (legs will be re-addressed for better glow and dye alignment, sorry about that, it got past me) and Tier 3, Light Tier 1 (female only), and Light Tier 3. The other weights and tiers will be assessed for a similar pass to give glow or upgrade glow results when possible.

I’ve been hearing your cries to get more glow on the sylvari and am doing my best to give you more control over your character customization.

Hi everyone,

Well it looks like my release notes weren’t added to explain this, so I’ll try to allay the confusion. Yes, some of the cultural armor has gone through some major updates. Folks have been vehemently requesting that the cultural armors glow, and they have been confused at the old glows that were there. This confusion was because a lot of the dye-to-skin blends on stems would glow the skin color, but not their chosen glow color.

In updating the armors, this comes with particular considerations. The armor glows are not on the same system as the body glow, so they will only glow the color of the area dyed. Armor glow also does not play well with alpha, so I have to avoid any alpha edges. The problem with this is most of those areas that look good glowing are also some of the areas that blend to skin. Armor glow also negates specularity.

So. What this means for you is, to add your glow, I reworked the dye channels to give you the largest choice and control possible over the glow. The areas that glow are now selectable for you. Some of the textures are also better balanced to give you more consistent results… you won’t have to guess what color you need to find to make the red feel red, for example. It will just work.

This currently affects Medium Tier 2 (legs will be re-addressed for better glow and dye alignment, sorry about that, it got past me) and Tier 3, Light Tier 1 (female only), and Light Tier 3. The other weights and tiers will be assessed for a similar pass to give glow or upgrade glow results when possible.

I’ve been hearing your cries to get more glow on the sylvari and am doing my best to give you more control over your character customization.

MidnightX.6294:

Kaukomieli.6740:

That looks pretty bad, uhh, would hate to wear an armor like that! I mean the back is clearly exposed but the glow is still obscured? Have you reported it? I know they haven’t been very quick to fix armor issues, but it never hurts. I haven’t noticed anything like that so far but will check my equipment next time I log into game.

I think you are the only one who knows what i meant with this thread here.
And no i havent reported it, because im also not sure if they would fix it.
Still, i was so glad that i earned that top after farming so hard for it…
well, its a shame to watch my sylvari when its night now

Don’t be afraid to bug these sort of issues. Sometimes they can be fixed, sometimes they’re a part of the armor’s texture and therefore isn’t the same system as the skin texture. In this particular case with the CoE armor, the skin file wasn’t pointing to the correct material. This is fixable, and will be fixed… though I can’t predict in which build it will materialize. My fix today on this doesn’t release next, so please be a bit patient but know the correction is coming. ;}

As for armors like the tier 3 cultural, that has been painted directly onto the armor and will take other means to fix. It means cutting into the armor, fixing the alpha and texture of the armor piece cut, bringing in the skin underneath it and hooking that up to work with re-weighting and checking that it doesn’t introduce new clipping …more than just a re-point. I know this because I’ve seen you guys mention the bug and have fixed it when I was in the file for different bugs.

Of course, not every armor can be adjusted for these requests (or is permitted), but where it can happen I will take a look and do my best to get to it when my schedule priorities allow. I may not always agree a fix is warranted or necessary, but I am watching and listening.

So if you see bugs like this, please list them. There are a lot of moving pieces in this game and it’s hard to have eyes everywhere. Thanks for posting!

Some folks may have picked the hair style because they loved it as is. To change it for one may change it negatively for another. So in general, it’s very difficult to get big design changes like that done once it’s out in the wild. I don’t know if adding more direct secondary skin color is possible, but I’m pretty sure structural changes are right out. ;{

I’ll just be sure keep hairline concerns in mind for the future.

Ah, now that the livestream and hair release is out, I can get more in-depth with those designs and follow up on some of the topics I’ve seen brought up here. I can’t talk about everything, of course, but I’ll do my best. For some varied responses:

To answer a persistent query: the beards aren’t something we can make mix and match for the sylvari. On the texture template, the varied ear choices take up that particular slot. So this means that any beards or whatnot have to be built with which face it’s designed. If anyone has a particular design to suggest, I’ll give it a good thinking. No promises, as I’m also restricted to the face area on the template. So a big bushy beard probably can’t happen without voodoo and mai tais.

Trehearne’s design was asked about somewhere. Yes, I did his design. (I know how poplar he is. Heh.) He’s based off of devil’s claw thorns. The shapes of those pods are pretty awesome looking (and they’re not leaf based… wanted some material variety). I wanted to make a cool brooding face that swept forward rather than back with its structures. I thought the pocks in the pods were awesome glow points. And now that I type that again, I remind myself to use more fun patterns with face glows. It’s just that it’s so satisfying to have glow coming from in between layers! An addiction, I know… ;}

Yes, I agree that a lot of leaf shapes are oval. With the fern hair and pinecone, I was trying to address some of this by introducing new shapes. Even the flower hair is really new, as we didn’t have both leaves and petal as a mixed material. I’ve been trying to ponder maple leaves, but they don’t particularly play nice as sparse shapes (you guys tend to like full designs). They prefer to be in clumps. That’s hard to do without looking like a raked pile of leaves. Still chewing on it, though.

Other textures I’d like to play with are long grasses, curly vines, weathered leaves and more flowers. The flower hair design was changed up for the male and female versions: I know it’d be a shame if the strapping young lads were denied flowers! However, the blossom design alone really wouldn’t sit well on them. So I thought the more tarzan/rockstar bud design solved that issue… still a flower, but tailored for him. ;}

I see mentions of fruits and nuts. This is a new category of material that I’ve been pondering and haven’t quite settled with it. While the visual idea is lovely, I’ve always pictured the sylvari to be the fruits of the Pale Tree. For fruits to have fruits of their own… not sure that works just yet. It may be a matter of weighing anatomy righteousness against the fashion notion that most people won’t care and just want the cool factor. Hehehe, oh you guys! One day you’re in, the next day you’re out, eh?

Oh yes, curls. I had an old Shirley Temple design way back before the redesign. It was on my character panel for PAX a few years ago. So many possibilities with this… and the cloth physics should prove quite fun! …Or a nightmare with the collapsing polies during jumping animations. Ah, such is art.

Finally, out of curiosity… Zeefa, could you be more specific? I know you wanted a short mohawk from a previous post, but what about the new hairs didn’t work for you and what kind of hairs are more interesting to you? I can’t promise it’ll get made, but I always try to take feedback into account.

Keep up the great posts and sketches, guys! I love seeing what you guys do and it’s always a great window into some of what sylvari players want.

Heyo everyone!

Just wanted to pop by and let everyone know I am still forum lurking, like I mentioned on the livestream a bit ago. I’m glad everyone seems to like the fiddle fern hair and I am reading feedback for the flower hair. The reasons for its dye layout have all been listed above (Electro and Arrow Storm, you guys get +1 internets!).

I tried to explain this in the livestream, but I don’t think I adequately got the entire point out. By having it behave so naturally, it does take up a dye channel, so I have to be creative in coming up with ways to make the design feel full. The bringing in of secondary skintones helps with that a lot. But until you guys pointed it out, I didn’t even see the “bald” sorta thing, it just looked like a swept-back hair to me. Still does, but I get where you guys are coming from and will keep this in mind for the future.

Personally the flower hair is my favorite because of the flip and I had a lot of fun with the petals. It was my “Mary Tyler Moore” homage and if anyone was particularly astute, you’d see it was in the upper left corner of the sketches in the livestream. ;}

Oh and incidentally, because I’ve seen it mentioned—the hairs were all made new for the release. The sketches were over a year old. I wanted to enthuse that many of the things you guys had on your wishlist were the same I had on mine!

Thanks for the constructive feedback!

Hello everyone,

It sounds like we’re very much on the same page with a lot of general ideas for the sylvari. Heck, I’ve had concepts drawn up for long hair, flowers and dreads since before ship that I’d love to see. Even palm trees were on that hen scratching sheet. And more. ;}

So long as we’re talking philosophy (because as I mentioned before in the previous disclaimer, these are not promises or schedules: this is a wish list, right?), there are a couple things I though you might like discussed.

In most cases, I personally agree with minimizing the line between male and female styles. In my opinion, males can wear flowers just as much as females can wear spikes. The styles we shipped with were a combination of retrofitting earlier sylvari art direction and creating styles to flesh out the race. If when we shipped we had males and females wear the same styles, we wouldn’t be as able to create varied silhouettes. Creating variety can be more important than hair equality when you have a limited amount of time to build a full race. At ship, of course. :}

Having said that, I do think as an artist there are some styles and concepts that work better on one gender over another. Just because a male can wear a flower, it doesn’t have to be the same design as the female. I believe in tailoring to characters, not being shackled to principles for principle’s sake.

Oh, I wanted to mention that I love love LOVE all the drawings that you guys are doing and would love to see more! But just so you know: mosses, dandelion puffs and other soft forms (pine needles, too) are difficult to create when you only have access to load alpha — as are cascades of flowers or complex blossoms due to poly count. There are certain restrictions in place for creating a hair or face for the game. That’s not to say it’s impossible, however, but it may be impractical.

For the question of hairstyles pulling a lot of skin color, that’s because the first dye channel blends with the skin in order to create the ‘growing from’ look. If I use the skin tone to work with it, the hair feels more complex than just one color shade. This can change from hairstyle to hairstyle, of course. There’s a need for both. But if you have a bark body, I don’t have the channels to give you a color for leaves and a color for flowers. I have to pick one.

I’ve noticed for faces, most requests are at the end of the spectrum… folks seem to want pretty or creature, not as much in between. Interesting. Out of curiosity, why not? The race was designed to live in the in between. Any thoughts? :}

If you guys have the stamina, keep posting sketches! It’s so awesome seeing them and they are inspiring! I’d join you in drawing if I didn’t think it’d be picked up by some article and reported as an official release. ;P Ah well, I can live vicariously through all of you! Art it up, guys!

Just to clarify, the sylvari (and specifically the Pale Tree Avatar) is not directly of Egyptian culture for design as a race. Her headdress answered a good problem: how do you get the feeling of regal in a blossom shape? If I looked at more western designs, they’re typically crown rings or half-moon crescents (Queen Elizabeth style) for silhouette. While those are beautiful, I was hoping for more flower and less peakitten (<— What, seriously this gets censored? It’s a bird.) plumage.

Although, if I think more about it, Egyptian art and architecture has a lovely foundation with plant shapes and the lotus is one of my favorite flowers. However, though it’s not intended as a direct relationship for the sylvari, it does make sense. I just mention the design distinction so it doesn’t get spread into lore bits. (hehe)

As for why there were so many leafy styles at ship, that’s more of a question of schedule. Before ship, we needed to optimize whatever assets we could. Many of the more leaf styles were created from the previous race design and were retrofitted for the new concept. As a race, they are not relegated to a specific plant type. But bear in mind that whatever plants could be used need to look good with both the leaf and bark body skin types. It’s potentially awkward to get seaweed to look right on that, for example, but the concept might allow more brook and stream water plants in theory.

I’ve had many designs in my head and in sketches since even before ship, and have been keeping an eye on the forum posts since then. Players have asked for long hair, for more bark hair, for flower hair (for both genders) that mixes with leaves… I’ve even seen a comment about getting the mohawk ported on the female. There have been trends and themes, but one question makes me curious. I see a lot of folks mentioning what they’d like to see on sylvari, but that’s a different question than what they’d personally like for their own character.

Major disclaimer: no promises, no schedule, etc… But if you were daydreaming about what you personally want for your sylvari, what would it be? :} What would its presence feel like? What style? What materials?

Actually I designed the Pale Tree’s avatar loosely after the Nefertiti bust than anything, as it’s a great silhouette for Important PersonTM. The concept behind the Pale Tree Avatar was in creating a symbol between the Tree and the Fruit (sylvari). What better conduit than the Flower? :}

As for the face, it was designed to work with the hair, making the whole head one big blossom. My intentions were to create stately features (cheek and jaw structure) with big, big eyes. I didn’t even know to look for Erykah, but to tell you the truth, she really does look like her. Especially the mouth structure. Heh. Funny that.

Ayeup. Electro, Danikat and Tauril have it correct. There were a lot of considerations with technical and aesthetic requirements that needed to be met. And it wasn’t easy to figure out a middle ground between the ethereal/elf-crowd and the treant/ent followers. I’m impressed you noted those asymmetrical faces, Tauril. ;} They were nearly as far as I could push things while still trying to stay attractive on some definition. Heck, even now you’ll see camps of people saying they’re straight up ugly while others say they aren’t ugly enough. They are supposed to be a beautiful race… I did my best to stretch that line as far as I could to include more than just standard beauty features.

Zeefa.3915:

There is nothing cheap or easy way out about the sylvari design. They didn’t design them just once, they did it twice because the first design was not satisfactory.
Sylvari imo is amaizing with their looks and many options.
I find their design just perfect and I adore them.

About five times, actually. Concepts, mostly. You guys only saw two official waves.