Rigged Wiki:News/PES2021 Aesthetics
PES2021 initial DLC
Because aesthetics for PES2019 don't quite work well on PES2021 (see below), and no official tournament has happened on PES2021 yet, a DLC pack for PES2021 has been created that can be used as a base when testing tactics or making aesthetics for the 2021 4chan World Cup. This pack contains the aesthetics of the 2021 4chan Spring Friendlies, a number of bugfixes big and small, and the AI Patch that will be used for the World Cup.
It is recommended everyone use this for all PES2021 work until the proper World Cup DLC is released. Get it here.
PES2021 aesthetics changes
PES2021 changed a bunch of aesthetics-related technical details that has making aesthetics work difficult. While none of the issues are really major problems, the minor changes end up affecting almost all teams to some degree. Most of these issues have been worked out.
Saturated lighting
PES2021 uses some really harsh lighting effects that oversaturates and over-illuminates all aesthetics in most conditions, producing results such as this here.
This has been fixed in the initial DLC pack. So make sure you test with the DLC pack installed, or you'll end up overcompensating for this effect.
Removed bones
Some skeleton bones that used to work in PES2019 no longer work in PES2021. If your models have any vertices painted to these bones, in-match your player will look like it has unpainted vertices, and in edit mode your player will look like it broke both their elbows. Models ported from PES2017 and earlier are often affected. Known affected bones are dsk_upperarm_long_l and dsk_upperarm_long_r; replacing that weight with dsk_upperarm_l and dsk_upperarm_r should fix the issue.
Normal maps
PES2021 uses a new, different file format for normal maps, AKA textures assigned to the NormalMap_Tex_NRM slot. If your model uses a normal map that is part of PES itself, it will probably work fine; but if you ship your own normal map that worked in PES2019, your model will both look very dark, and have very visible polygons. PES2021 no longer use the alpha channel for normal map, but instead use the Red channel. So to make a proper normal map for PES2021, you will have to replace Red channel from Alpha channel and make Alpha channel to 1.00 (no longer transparent). The latest version of the blender plugin has functionality for setting up that normal map (and other sensible shaders settings) automatically; earlier versions of the blender plugin had a bug there that broke things, so update if you haven't already.
Vertex normals
For any models that aren't constant-shaded, PES2021 is much less forgiving than PES2019 if your vertex normals are not set correctly. If your model shows visible polygon boundaries, or just reacts strangely to lighting, odds are your normals are subtly broken, in a way that PES2019 let you get away with, but PES2021 does not. Refer to this tutorial on how to fix this.
Kit configs
PES2021 uses slightly different kit config files than PES2019. The Name Y setting, which controls the vertical location of the back player name, now ranges from 0 to 39 instead of 0 to 16. If your player name text is in a strange position, you want to fix this. You will need a kit config editor program that is compatible with PES2021 to deal with this; a shitty but workable one can be found at the Tools page.
Collars
A bunch of collar models changed between PES2019 and PES2021, which leads to a number of players clipping their necks that didn't before. Adjust collar models in your kit configs if this applies to /yourteam/.
Stadiums
Something that has not been worked out properly yet is how to get stadiums working on PES2021. At the moment, some stadiums work fine, some work with glitches, and some don't show up in the list at all. Work on this is ongoing, and being tracked here. Help in figuring it out is welcome.