Tag: blogtalk

Nvidia updated Ansel a bit

Finer control options maybe but more categories mixed together+already-tweaked settings set on filters that mean way more slider adjusting if you don’t want extreme changes by default. Bah. And then I saw this…

Really? Stickers? Silly faces? Is this necessary/really a thing?

But then…
*small giggle*

And then…

*large guffaw* … ok, I suppose it’s childishly funny for 10 seconds. Definitely need more to choose from however. I think there’s only 8 choices.

Chrs. clipping into each other ruins pics

Gosh darnit, Gladio getting in my way again.

Ignis has this slightly disgruntled (or constipated, or something) look and pose but Gladio is too busy sticking his arm through Iggy’s chest for me to get anything but an extreme face closeup of it which isn’t what I wanted.

Then again … I do like this one where it looks like Ignis is irritated with Gladio, so I suppose all was not lost.

Now, I don’t mean to pick on Gladio per se – if I was really into Gladio or Noctis, it’d be Ignis and Prompto I’d want to be invisible all the time instead, of course. Point is – graphic clipping in games always sucks, even if some humorous moments arise from it. 😀

Slightly younger, older Noct

…can you tell? Probably not.


I keep trying to use Avatara to make the older version of Noct. look a bit closer to his younger self. Remove the beard and the grey is the first step. Can’t do anything about the older skin texture. But they change his face so drastically in some other areas and the character editor is too limited to have a large impact on it. Some of the other changes they seem to have done include:

—nose is different shaped, especially the nostrils and tip shape (larger)
—eyes are more tapered on outer and inner corners and eyelashes are less thick which gives the older eyes a more faded and less of an “eyeliner” look.
—the eyebrows of older Noct. are bushier and don’t taper to thin lines at the outer edges. Guess there were no tweezers inside the Crystal.
—the jawline and maybe cheek area is a bit different and chin isn’t as tapered/is slightly more square
—I think older Noct’s lips are a bit wider (longer) although it’s not too obvious.

This all results in an “older” face that looks more angular and a bit longer/larger I think. So I tweak the editor slider numbers constantly. With all that effort, certain expressions and conditions can look a bit more like the younger version, but mostly it’s the no beard, tweaking nose shape and changing the eyelashes and eyebrows that make it feel different at all. I often feel like the editor sliders hardly do anything, really. Too bad Avatara/Comrades didn’t have the younger hair, it’d be easier to compare.

I don’t really care 98% of the time. But it still occasionally irks my sense of “world consistency” when they expect you to believe that a 20ish year old man would have an entirely different facial structure 10 years later. It’s not like “older Noctis” lost 50+ pounds and/or is 70 years old with an enlarged nose from alcoholism. Then again, maybe the only available drink in the Crystal was celebratory wine. Who knows. 😛

Ansel and photography musing (blogtalk)

When I’m using Ansel a lot while playing, this is what my dual monitor desktop space looks like:

Left side is the game on the 4kTV. Right side is the 1080 desktop with my main graphic editor and file manager open. This is to check screenshots in varying ways first, before moving/exiting the Ansel-camera in case I want to retry different angles/filters etc.

It occurred to me again how crazy it maybe all is, this odd hobby I’ve become fixated on. It’s a mental fixation akin to when I used to be outside with my 35mm SLR’s (and later DSLR’s) taking macros or whatever for hours, changing lenses and taking multiple photos of the same subject (bracketing, something I always did manually). If you’ve ever dabbled even semi-seriously in photography you know what I mean. Hand and knee arthritis has slowly reduced photography as a frequent hobby, and Ansel+FFXV oddly makes me feel like I’m “virtually” replicating the feeling of long photo walkabouts, only I don’t have to climb hills or carry a heavy camera bag/multiple lenses, tripods, flash units.

I could also talk a lot about the “rule of thirds” – which is more a general guide concept than a must-do rule (eg, sometimes it’s better to actually not use it) – but I’ll refrain. It is funny, however, how often I find myself loosely following the rule in game usage, without even realizing I’m doing it until later as I sift through a sessions results. Old habits never die, as they say.

But what all this does is make me wish I had an “8k” workspace. Do they make those yet? Also, I still need more Ansel games that I like. There aren’t many tho, sadly.