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I desperately want to play a halfling character and take it seriously in this game since that was one of my go-to characters in the older Baldur's Gate games, but I am so put off by the character creator that I have to make them a joke to get any enjoyment out of it. My first character wound up being this guy, which I was very proud of for my cleverness:
George Hobbiton

As amusing as that was, I really don't want to play the joke character all that much. I want to play a real character that looks like an actual halfling. They didn't do weird crap to the people who played the hobbits in the Lord of the Rings, they just made camera angle decisions that made them look like small humans (and had a few stunt people who were small humans).

I've attempted to make female halflings and just get over the fact their weapon is embedded between their buttcheeks, but it really doesn't help when I watch the extremely awkward animations. I do not like these halflings as-is and this post essentially covers the biggest issues.

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Originally Posted by Niara
Hey folks!

Just wanted to bring up another little comparison that shows some decent options and possibilities.

This is Wren, or at least, it's one game space's version of her:

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

She's the halfling-equivalent race in this world space; they are a race of small (but fully adult) creatures that have more or less the same body proportion averages as humans, and they stand at approximately 3 feet tall, just like D&D halflings should.

Here are a few better shots of her in some better lighting:

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

And a quick more detailed front-back-side line up:

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

This is an example of good proportions for a small creature: she's definitely got human proportions, and she's definitely go the body of a mature adult of her species, undeniably so (As an aside, her bust is quite literally as small as I can make it in this game, and it's still very clearly developed and adult – in terms of strictly relative proportions, her bust is no smaller than mine).

Her proportions aren't quite the same as a regular humans; she's actually a little stockier than you'd expect on a human, and the extremities of her limbs are more solid in relation the rest of her body – only slightly, but tangibly so compared to human scale. Also, yes, her head Is slightly larger in relative terms to the rest of her body compared to a human...

However, with these proportional differences, as minor as they are, the model looks good; it looks like a healthy, mature creature that suites its own body and makes sense, and it doesn't create any uncanny discomfort. And she's adorable.

This is not hard; this game came out a few years ago now, and was remarked at the time for its character creator, which, incidentally – and this is for Larian! - Can be used to its full extent completely without the use of sliders! (sliders are an option, but there are multiple control methods that can achieve the same results, so you can use it completely slider free if you want.)

So let's do a quick side-by-side of how these characters look in their own game spaces:

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

On the left we have a figure that is 3 feet tall, has naturalised proportions for her size that are mostly human-adjacent – slightly larger head ratio (but still smaller than the human's head), slightly more solid lime extremities, but all subtle shifts to help the model look more natural, normal and healthy. There's no danger of her looking like or being mistaken for a human child with these size proportions – she's just a different type of creature.

On the right, a 4 - 4½ foot figure with exactly human-sized dimensions in some places, ridiculously tapered dimensions in others, and a literally-larger head than the human she's standing next to, which all come together to make a figure that doe not look healthy or natural in her own body at all, and is either badly deformed, or else is just a human exhibiting a form of dwarfism. It's not comfortable or satisfying at all.

Please, please, I'm asking anyone who still has the stamina and energy - please submit reports to Larian on the topic (Feedback form is Here) and ask them to fix this; the halfling models need to be fixed, they simply must be.


This is a really good thread you make a lot of really great points.

But this game will be banned or censored if the reference suggestion you're going with here went ahead.

All the point you make about BG3s halflings are good, but this other game, that looks far far to close to a human child for the themes BG3 will put it in.

Last edited by lamaros; 20/07/22 02:00 PM.
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Originally Posted by lamaros
This is a really good thread you make a lot of really great points.

But this game will be banned or censored if the reference suggestion you're going with here went ahead.

All the point you make about BG3s halflings are good, but this other game, that looks far far to close to a human child for the themes BG3 will put it in.
Try imagining the other game's halfling without the anime face...the face looks very childlike and is probably coloring your (it definitely colored my) age guess for the character.

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This thread has a lot of well-argued replies from people with very different points of view, haha. I'll add my own 2 cents since I've always liked shorty races (even though I prefer gnomes over halflings, for their racials). smile

My opinion is that body model choices come down to romance and censorship, not realism, ease of modeling, one DnD edition over the other, etc. What we can probably push for are the poses and animations.

Hear me out: I played Beyond Divinity when the game came out. Your gender could be male, female or child. Hah, ofc I had to play as a kid! My kid was chained to the Black Knight and we were a mass-murdering duo. Woohoo! So you can be a mass-murdering kid and Larian's game doesn't get censored. (Beyond Divinity is old and it could be argued that things looked far less realistic though) You can be an assholish, thieving kid (like some of the grove Tieflings - looking at you, Mol!) and Larian's game doesn't get censored. BUT because BG3 has romance (even if you don't play it), TAV can't be a kid (which is a whole other topic!) and shortie races can't look even remotely like a kid. They will have deformed proportions to make them clearly distinct from human (or humanoid children). Just to avoid censorship. That's it. The Mysterious Guest tries to flirt with you, trails its finger seductively over your shoulder, and bends down to kiss you... I don't even want to imagine the outcry if TAV looked non-adult or some online groups could spin it that way.

The most we can probably get is animations that fit these models (gnomes move decently right now, even if their arms reach their knees instead of their thighs frown ), and stances & weapons without clipping. Over the past couple of patches, a lot of the worst, meme-worthy crap has been fixed but there's still stuff left to improve.

Elves have now gotten their own separate animations. If all races get their individual animations, customized for their specific body shapes, that would go a long way towards making shorty races look good imo. Often enough weird (inhuman) proportions can be de-emphasized by cool animations (I'm thinking of what WoW has done with their different races) and the end result feels nice to look at.


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Originally Posted by Niara
The body model and its proportions are adult: they have defined and developed hips, developed breasts and fully elongated limbs comparative to their torso; juveniles do not have these features. In order to infantalise this model you have to actively ignore all of these details, or pretend you don't see them.

Sorry but the proportions are human child proportions with slightly exaggerated secondary sexual characteristics, i.e. larger hips and chest area, and slightly longer legs as per standard anime designs. Which is... even weirder to me to be presented as a desirable example here.
I have a lot of problems with BG3 halflings too, but this example is not a great one.

I think Larian did the halfling models in a way we got as to make them look okay in the romantic scenes. Anything smaller would present serious size discrepancies. The only solution I could see that would make it look better and account for all the romance stuff is reduce the head and maybe make the hands a little shorter, same for gnomes actually.

Originally Posted by Neleothesze
I played Beyond Divinity when the game came out. Your gender could be male, female or child. Hah, ofc I had to play as a kid! My kid was chained to the Black Knight and we were a mass-murdering duo. Woohoo!

Except in Beyond Divinity it mostly affected the height of your sprite, which you could barely see when you started the game because it was all pixels. I played the kid there as well, it was fun. But then again Beyond Divinity was released in 2002, games were less censored back then.

But we're not even talking about playing as a kid, we're talking about full-fledged adult races that just happen to be really short, and that also need to be accounted for to have some rather explicit scenes with full-fledged adult NPCs.

Last edited by Arideya; 20/07/22 08:52 PM.

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I'd argue it's not height, it's proportions

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It's both though, and really the only way we're going to get a Halfling figure that isn't easily mistaken for a child is to hold pretty strictly to the 1:2 ratio, or go even smaller.

The average height of a human child is already 36 inches by age 3. Many are at that height before they can even navigate stairs properly. So making Halflings shorter than that with regular adult-Human proportions would go long way towards making it clear that they're Halflings and not Human youths. This wasn't a problem when Halflings were all goofy big foots like the Hobbit cartoons, but now that D&D has gone for something rather less cartoonish in the overall look for the Halfling, we need more to establish the new visual conventions. Right now all the Halflings look like Dwarves to me, not Halflings. 1:2 or smaller based on the Human proportions would work well in my view for the Halfling. Just with some Halfling fashion, some ear or hair flare to help set them apart.

Importantly the Halfling skulls should remain proportional with the rest of their body, and not be larger in relative terms - not even slightly larger, as that is the hallmark of a child in cartooning and will cause the confusion they should be trying to avoid. Having huge eyes and the like as well will only compound that impression even further.

If anything the ratio for Halfling models compared to Human models should be pushed even more extreme in the shorty direction. In other words having a Halfling model that is totally proportional compared to a Human or Half-Elf, but even shorter than the 3 ft tall height suggested many times in this thread - say closer to 24 inches rather than 36 inches (thigh high or even knee high, rather than waist high, when standing next to a normal Human). Then it would be impossible to confuse a Halfling with a kid.

This is also an instance where I would ere on the side of giving the Halflings body types that are very obviously sexually mature adults, with very adult anatomy and facial morphology - again to avoid any confusion with an adolescent Human. There are things they can do to make that clear, and to be particularly careful, by really making sure the Halflings all look more like 25-year-olds rather than 15-year-olds, if that makes sense. I'd avoid anime as a stylistic choice for the facial morphology, because it drifts pretty far in the other direction.

Larian's choice to make this game so sexually explicit does present some problems, but rather than worrying about whether our Halflings can properly bang Minthara in full HD, I'd rather they just had a shorty cut-away or fade to black for anything that doesn't work. I mean do we really need to see it? It'd also be just as easy to have a sexy Halfling or Goblin NPC at the Camp Party, who gives Halfling PCs a chance to get their rocks off, without causing people to have a heart attack if it's ever posted as a meme or whatever. They should just steer clear of anything even remotely questionable with that, and when in doubt, just cut away.

Right now the Halflings all look whack attack in my view. I don't want to play any of those models as a PC, and since there are no shorty companions, it just relegates the race to NPCs as far as I'm concerned, which is a shame.

Last edited by Black_Elk; 20/07/22 11:06 PM.
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@black_elk have you played nwn2, you can't tell me a halfling there actual size ( 3 foot) looks anything like a kid, at all.

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Yeah, I think I've played pretty much every crpg set in the Forgotten Realms. I remember the Neverwinter Nights Gold Box in 1991. The one that had the Clyde Caldwell illustration on the cover. It featured a hooded halfling sporting double daggers and showing off his fuzzy foot on the rock lol. They flipped the image for the SSI game, centered on the babe with the sword, but he's definitely there in the lower left. They used the same painting for the cover of the AD&D 2nd ed "Rogues Gallery." That guy was basically the quintessential 2e Halfling.

The post 3e Halfings like the Halflings from NWN2 that you mentioned are what I think many here would prefer. I'd be happy with that. Still I think they can go quite tiny and it'd work fine. I don't think they should be any taller than 3 ft at the most, with normal proportions and ditch the bobble head.

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Not too long ago I was witness to some absolutely fucking awful discussions on the internet where a group of people really tried to argue that short people under five and half feet were "child-coded" regardless of their actual age, and that if you were in any way attracted to a short person then you were a pedophile. And I'm getting some of the same vibes from some of the posts here.

Fix the damn Halfling proportions Larian. Make their ratios more similar to adult humans. With the mature faces and the honking great titties on the women there is no chance they could ever possibly resemble a human child, and anyone who tries to argue that clearly doesn't know what a human child looks like.

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Originally Posted by mrfuji3
Originally Posted by lamaros
This is a really good thread you make a lot of really great points.

But this game will be banned or censored if the reference suggestion you're going with here went ahead.

All the point you make about BG3s halflings are good, but this other game, that looks far far to close to a human child for the themes BG3 will put it in.
Try imagining the other game's halfling without the anime face...the face looks very childlike and is probably coloring your (it definitely colored my) age guess for the character.

I can't agree. The face is contributing, but it's still bad without it.

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I don't even want to imagine the outcry if TAV looked non-adult or some online groups could spin it that way.

The fact that they are a short race and will stand at or less than half the average height of a human is more than enough for those groups to cry outrage and screech paedophilia with torches and pitchforks in hand. They are not the groups that anyone should be concerning themselves with listening to, because they are, in fact, discriminatory and harmful. The simple fact that they are short will be enough for people from those groups to scream about the models being 'child-like' regardless of whether they are or not. We have seen representatives from that group of people in this thread before, and I've politely asked mods to remove them because they are not constructive.

As others say - this latest example has elements to it that were not the focus - the face design and structure is pretty bad, but overall the model is pretty acceptable, far more than BG3. A small experiment just to show:
[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

This is absolutely and very clearly not the body of a juvenile, in any way. It's developed, mature - it doesn't have 'exaggerated' sexual traits, it's got adult sexual traits - albeit for a petite person, but like I said - her breasts are no smaller than mine, and her hips have, if anything, slightly more definition than mine. This is very obviously not a child, and with the height accounted for, not even a human - and within the art style of that game, the character comes out looking pretty good. I'm not going to talk about the game in any other sense because it doesn't handle the character/race well - the writers for npcs cannot decide whether they are writing child characters or adults, and they flip-flop all over the place in really glaring ways, and a lot of the cosmetics available are fetishised - it's not a shining example of good treatment, at all (and the community isn't much better, since the class is treated as a joke class and called loli bait by a certain section of the community, who rabidly vilify anyone who plays them - again, not the kind of people that anyone should listen to). I looked at it recently and found the model cute and fun to run around doing quests with, and looking for cute costumes/outfits do dress up in, though, and it gave me none of the dissonance and dissatisfaction that BG3 gives me, so I wanted to do a comparison of just the model itself, nothing more.

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I think Larian did the halfling models in a way we got as to make them look okay in the romantic scenes. Anything smaller would present serious size discrepancies.

I did a study on how to sensitively do the choreography for intimate scenes with small characters, a little while back - the moderation staff felt it was necessary to remove the image references from the thread because I used a 3d modelling program that illustrate the essay as I went, but folks can message for the unedited copy of the paper if they're interested in having the visual references for reading along - it helps a lot. I'd very much recommend you taking a look at the thread though, if the concept of choreography with small characters is something that you recognise as a concern. The thread itself is here: Focused Examination: Intimate Choreography with Small-sized Characters. It focuses primarily on M/F intimate pairings and the difficulties presents, as well as how to overcome them - there was originally going to be a follow up thread that focused on the other surrounding intimate acts we might see, as well as f/f pairing choreography (I'm not qualified to write as confidently about m/m pairings, but I did consult some people on the matter; you can't just use your m/f pairing choreography for it, which Larian's earliest scenes neatly demonstrated...), but I can't do it without visual references, and I'm still waiting to hear back form Larian about what I can and cannot post on the matter, so it may never come to fruition.

For those saying that medium sized creatures can have full intimate scenes, but short characters should get a fade out instead: NO. That, precisely that, is a part of the problem - that is people actively infantalising small people and taking away their adulthood and adult rights. Do not stand for it. Small race adults have as much right to be represented as anyone else; they are adults and should be treated as such.

==

One last thing I'll say - While I agree with Black Elk from a biological point of view, that their heads should match proportion without being any larger, there is a bit of visual dissonance that this causes when it's done entirely faithfully in a video game - it might be more appropriate in many ways, but it generally doesn't look great, in the long run - it's to do with the necessary level of clustered detail and the impression that leaves on our eye alongside the rest of the model. I'm happy to accept a compromise here where the head is *slightly* larger than expected, just to dispel that visual dissonance, but it only needs to be slight - very much not the BG3 standard. The screenshots I put up for LoTRO are actually some pretty good proportions in that regard... that's a game that worked very hard to make its halflings look comfortable in their bodies and visually nice; no-one, at all, thinks of them or sees them as childlike there.

((P.S.: I can't actually do a comparison on male models for this game, because Shai are a race/class combo, and male PC Shai don't exist... something about male Shai being much rarer/less populous and far less prone to adventuring lifestyles... it's another point where the game is not a great role model, though points for inverting the norm on that trope, I guess))

Last edited by Niara; 21/07/22 06:18 AM.
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Girls can be sexually mature from 8 year old, doesn't mean they're adults. "This is very obviously not a child" is not really a supportable statement.

There's no safe way around this with a body shape that looks human and is that size.

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If you're just going to keep on infantalising mature adults and denying them acknowledgement of their adulthood, because you are mapping something onto them which they are not - if that's your stance and opinion, you can certainly hold it - but it's not relevant or productive to this thread. It's actually harmful, and it's not welcome here.

==

Enough; this train of discussion is going off the rails in a way we've been striving to avoid in this thread - we're talking about making the models look better; which is to say, to make the models look like healthy, natural, mature creatures that are comfortable in their own bodies. BG3 halflings do not look like this right now, and it creates a notable dissonance of experience. Other games avoid this dissonance in various other ways, usually by making models that are far more satisfying to appreciate as whole and complete, natural, healthy creatures, in and of their own.

If we want to be productive, but you don't like any of the suggestions made so far, or any of the comparisons, then let me ask you instead: How would you change the current models so that these 3-foot halflings look like healthy, natural creatures that might exist, that look mature for their species, and that can participate in intimate sequences to the same degree as their larger-sized counterparts? What would you suggest?

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Hey, I bumped this thread because I agree with your general points.

I just think you've chosen a really poor example to re-iterate them with the other game you recently referenced. If you want to die on that hill as your opinion being correct in every single instance rather than just let people disagree with you and move on, that's your choice.

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Fair enough, and sorry if I sounded aggressive - I've had some recent issues dealing with communities full of, well, full of the kinds of folks that Piff, above, mentioned. Moving on is me asking what changes you'd suggest from the current Bg models, that, in your opinion, would achieve the desired results ^.^

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my 2 cents:
- I think the "halfling" from the other game looks better than BG3 halflings.
- I think gnomes look better than halflings in BG3.
Maybe its because gnomes are expected to be less human like than halflings???

I have problems to imagine how a good looking intimate scene between a tall person and a very small person would look like.
Especially if they try to use the same scene for the same event when one char (you + companion or other NPC) or both chars (you + dream ) could be any race or gender.

Maybe there are reasons why we hear about half elfs and half orcs, but not about half halflings or half gnomes.

Sorry, neither my english nor my anatomy knowledge is big enough to explain why I like this look more than the other.


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have problems to imagine how a good looking intimate scene between a tall person and a very small person would look like.
Especially if they try to use the same scene for the same event when one char (you + companion or other NPC) or both chars (you + dream ) could be any race or gender.

Did you ever take a peek at the thread about it, Mad? Small characters need their own choreography and considerations that have to be taken into account - they do for all scenes, but most especially so for ones that involve interacting with other character models directly as intimate scenes do - and for the vast majority of scenes you cannot simply use the same anchor points and animations as medium sized participants. The thread is a lengthy but mature discussion of what needs to be done and considered, and why, and if you're finding yourself in a "can't imagine how they would" situation, and leaning into the idea that they shouldn't because of that, then I'd highly recommend having a read of the thread (Though I'd also strongly suggest you drop me a line for the intact version of the discussion, that contains the visual refs throughout, otherwise following along is pretty difficult).

Gnomes definitely look a lot better all around than halflings - the cynical part of me says that the feedback was taken into consideration and gnomes got some attention and care as a result of it, but halflings will be left as they are - but even they have some of the big issues still.

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*shrug* this is a public forum, people are allowed to agree or disagree, especially when it comes to questions like this one.

Nobody is infantilizing anybody here, but people have different opinions on how they perceive things, which doesn’t make them any less valid. For example I draw a lot, and I look at people anatomy on the daily basis, and yes that includes children as well.
There is a trend that is very specific to Asian rpgs and mmos, they design a lot of their smaller races to look cute-sy and childlike. Which is fine, but what passes and is acceptable in an Asian mmo/rpg, might never pass in a Western game, especially not when it requires certain scenes which Larian decided to go with. Its fine to consider them adults, but its also fine to have a cognitive dissonance in your brain when looking at them.

Back on topic: I think the biggest problem with the model is the large head. Its the head's comparison to a human head, as well as large limbs are what really bothers me. So perhaps if they made the head smaller and maybe hands and palms smaller, then the model would be a little better. Or you could even shrink the model to make the head fit human size and it would already make it visually better imo.
I actually like gnome models even less than halflings, because, the size of bodily protrusions aide their arms are way too long. It looks like a conscious design choice so it’s probably there to stay.

Last edited by Arideya; 21/07/22 07:47 PM.

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The over-large hands are a common problem in video games of this nature in particular - I think it comes about because it makes having them interact with objects 'easier' (holding and gripping things made for larger characters)... It's a problem with making heroforge minis as well... the hands remain large, to fit the equipable objects, and it's annoying... I don't like it and agree that the hands should be made to match the limbs, in all cases.

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