Legends / Character Textures need Updating.
Hello Forum,
I would like to start off by saying that I am a student Games Artist, currently studying at University and a huge fan of Apex Legends so far!
But in my time playing I have taken notice to some issues with how the Legends / Characters look in-game which include some texture errors which I have found and feel could be addressed.
Note that I have looked through my findings with all levels of graphics settings in which the result has been the same, though I currently play with max settings applied and will use that in my example images.
The main issues I have found are for characters; Lifeline, Bloodhound, and Wraith. The pictures I have added separately as this forum isn't letting me insert them within the text?
Starting with Lifeline.
- Mostly noticeable when choosing the character in the select stage of the game, Lifeline has areas where her skin texture has been accidentally painted over onto her clothing.
- The maps used to add skin pores to Lifeline are scaled a bit too high, making them look abnormal on her body and giving her skin an unappealing bumpy/ripple effect, which is inconsistent throughout the character if comparing to her face or chest area.
- I’m not sure whether this effect is lighting or skin colour showing through but it outlines areas of her clothing in a way which also shows how low res that area is as it doesn’t blend together well.
- Not really an issue but just a personal opinion, I find her eyes to be tilted inwards to an inhuman level. Looking at a number of examples for eyes in real life, I’ve not found any which have been naturally this tilted. You could say this is the art style but to me, it looks like the eyes have been made in a way which has replaced the need to form the correct eye shape which gives the look of being tilted, by just actually tilting them.
Secondly, Bloodhound.
- The use of a grainy texture map has been used to show that the clothing is obviously some sort of material, but as with Lifelines skin, the scaling of the texture is a bit too large, ruining the intended effect. This effect is also inconsistent through the characters clothing even on the jacket it's been used on.
- I can see that this is meant to be a separate layer of clothing from the jacket, but this shows the inconsistency of the material detail placement even more.
- The effect looks even worse when looking at the character during the legend select stage of the game.
Lastly, Wraith.
This isn’t a technical issue, and could also be considered another opinion but here we go.
Wraith is meant to be this ghostly figure, I get that, but compared to how she has been shown in promotion art as well as the trailer I feel her in-game model looks like it’s been completely drained of detail to a point that even on max graphics, she looks how you would expect a character to look after turning the graphics to minimum.
Next to the other characters, right now she doesn’t fit in with the art style that was intended.
Conclusion
The only Legend / Character out of the current roster which I feel consistently fits within the art style that was intended from design would be Bangalore.
Her body and facial shape/features match the art style that was represented in the promotion art perfectly, something which I feel needs to be reworked for the other Legends as right now for mostly the mentioned Legends; Lifeline, Bloodhound, and Wraith, it feels as if they didn’t get enough polish before implementation.
The normal map details mentioned such as Lifelines skin pores, and Bloodhounds clothing detail looks like an unrefined/unedited smart material out of substance painter which has been dragged onto areas of the characters UV shells at random.
I appreciate the hard work and effort put into developing the game, and to you (hopefully) Apex game devs reading, I’m sure these issues are something which could be easily fixed with an extra pass over to make sure that every character keeps a level of consistency with each other and within the given art style.
Thank you for reading.
