Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Avatar/Equipment Clipping: Will it ever be fixed?

I know I'm not the only one with this pet peeve, but when I see stuff like ears clipping through hats, hair clipping through ears, weapons clipping through my character's thighs etc. that's all still pretty annoying. Tiefling tails clipping through capes is my current perpetual woe, but it's a broader issue. You know what I mean right?

Some of this stuff is not what I would consider polish at this point. Or I don't know, if there's a dent in your fender, no amount of polish or chrome is going to disguise that really. It needs to go to collision repair hehe. Like if I can still see it going on in Character creation during the literal first screen on offer, or with the default class equipment and gear provided there, that's pretty rough. When a Quarterstaff clips through my ass or my lower back, that's almost as painful as it looks. It really undermines the stellar work put into the rest of the character modelling and animation when that sort of stuff goes down.

Certain weapons/armor combos just don't appear to fit the model, even when using the standard defaults in Char creation. Seems problematic to me, especially since a lot of these clips are happening on the backend, and that's our standard view for like 90% of the game. I feel like BG3 is a bit of a cautionary tale when it comes to wearing weapons on the back. If I have to click the "U" key constantly to make sure a longsword isn't going to be impaling me the second I stop jogging, that's probably some kind of argument right there for 'no weapons on the back' as a governing design philosophy. What greater testament do we need to justify scabbards and belts and weapons worn on the side?

I half expect this stuff for the shorties or the dragonborn or the super buff body types that came later on in the development, but like even for the more common humans and elves, body type 1-2, standard issue? I'm still seeing a lot of the same stuff that was irking me in EA. It really deserves the finer toothed comb over by now. I worry that they've already moved their art team onto other projects since there's no expansion in the offing, and so we'll just be stuck with all these clips. Or I guess until unpaid model modders can go in and fix them for us, but that seems like a tall order to put on mods. For priorities I would think starting with character creation and the standard defaults there might make sense, just to ensure that at least all that stuff is clip free. For first impressions, there should really be no race/class/head combo I can choose that will show clipping on that first series of screens, but I'm still seeing quite a few there.

Also, I don't know if it's DLSS or what, but the face textures in cutscenes have been slow loading for several patches now. It's not a clip per se, but leaves a similarly sour taste whenever it happens, which for me is the first second of every single cutscene dialog. That also needs some work, again cause we see it right away and all the time. Again, it would be different if this stuff was only once in a blue moon, or only for the craziest spikiest looking sets of whatever in Act III, but we're talking regular longswords here and the default kit we're meant to start out with. If patch 7 is the swansong, then all those ducks in a row? Fingers crossed that they still got somebody on it, but I don't know.

Which clips are your favorites?

I'd like to see some work put in on the Mantle myself. Off all the capes it's the only one that has like a whole campaign built around it. I wish it looked like the Cloak of Cunning Brume, the Cloak of Displacement, or the Cloak of Elemental Absorption. There's like half a dozen different cloak models, but they picked the one that hangs low and always clips. Probably the only reason I want transmog is to have a workaround lol. I think the Invisible Cloaks mod has like 50 thousand downloads on Nexus. Might be telling us something hehe.

Ok ok, not to be too salty about this one hehe, I just think it should get a final pass before the curtain falls. That's my hope!

I don't think clipping will be fixed in the video gaming industry as a whole for a long while yet.

Clipping is far too common for my liking overall (Hair is usually the worst offender. Typically because longer hair clips though cloaks and collars... But in BG3 various hairstyles just clip though ears or even the FACE of a character. All of which is ironic given how much more effort has been put into hair physics in recent years so hair is less likely to be a static object that will clip through everything)

What irks me the most is that often the worst clipping happens in games where you have no control over proportions. Like, one could imagine some freakish monstrosity made in Elden Ring's character creator might have some clipping issues... But in a game like BG3 everything is static. You select a preset head that goes on a preset body and have a bunch of preset items... So you get preset clipping?

I really wish developers would put more effort into making things not clip than trying to fry my GPU with excess amounts of graphical fidelity options... Especially since personally, even if I did have a hyper strong beef PC that could run everything at 4k max settings, it'll still look like total ass when every character model is covered in disgusting clipping issues...

P.S. Scabbards please. Seriously, it's 2024 and we're still doing the "Weapons just magically float 1ft away from my back because reasons" garbage. Oh, with a bit of "Lets pull a longbow out of my rear end because that makes sense" icing on the cake...

I guess I feel a little spoiled with Witcher 3 where, yes, all of Geralt's weapons are visibly carried by him. His swords have their own scabbards, which are attached to his back with straps. No magical floaty weapons. No pulling a weapon out of thin air because a model only shows a single equipped weapon at a time. Just nice, sensible attachments and sleek animations to utilize them (I.e. Good enough where you don't notice how impossible it would actually be to utilize a regular scabbard that is on your back - A back scabbard would need to be more like Shadiversity's "Shabbard" which is semi-open in order to function correctly, especially for larger weapons. Shad's one he made is for a longsword, a 2 handed length blade)

Just curious, I didn't play the Witcher, but does the Wircher PC have the same choice of weapons, one handed, two handed as a BG3 PC ?

Not quite. As Geralt is a Witcher, he only has 3 weapons available. A steel longsword, a silver longsword and a crossbow (The crossbow is not a typical Witcher weapon, but is added for gameplay purposes for that particular game)

However, I get you're trying to make a point about weapon diversity preventing proper weapon attachments. Though I'll pre-emptively counter that by saying that proper attachments can easily be made for each weapon type (And in many cases, can be reused for multiple weapon types, so long as the actual scabbard or other weapon holding system (Such as a loop for an axe/mace haft to slot into or a hook for a bow to hang from) mates with the attachment straps)

Even easier is if you separate attachments and armour so you don't have to worry about different armours requiring their own designs for each weapon type. You then simply design armour around these separate attachment systems (I.e. If you have a scabbard on your belt for a 1 handed sword, armour will incorporate this belt into their designs)

Larian : FU, 1 weapon take it or leave it.

I spent half a playthrough looking for just the right helmet
I was irritated by my dwarf's muttonchops poking through the cheekguards.