What’s up guys, Rogue-9 here and some of the recent elite skins in Rainbow Six Siege
managed to catch my eye a little.
The Ela elite was the first one that stood out to me because… well look at them!
There is no way these are the same people!
New Ela’s legs are much shorter and she looks as if she has been inhaling doughnuts
at a rate of one per hour for the past month…
But Ela’s elite is not the only one that doesn’t quite seem to match her default
character and the much more important questions that then occurred to me was: Do the different
body sizes possibly affect the hitboxes of the characters?
Surely that can’t be a thing but I decided to double check anyway and in this video,
I’ll be discussing all of my findings so let’s get to it!
The first thing to do is to identify all of the elites that are different from the default
skins in terms of the volume of the operator’s character models.
For many of the operators from the past, there are no real issues, even if the elites actually
wear quite considerably different clothing compared to the default appearance.
And that makes sense because they’re still supposed to be the same people, right?!
There are currently 28 elite skins sets in the game and I guess the Mozzie Twitch prime
skin is also worth throwing into the mix because why not?
So out of these 29 alternative appearances about 17 look to be pretty much the same as the defaults.
There are of course some characters that look a little bit different because of the different
stances the models have: Good examples for this are Glaz and Lesion but at the end of
the day, if the overall volume and dimensions of the 3D models are still the same, then
I am happy to count these to the group with no significant differences.
Out of the group that does have differences, there are examples where these differences
are pretty subtle.
Capitao here might look an awful lot taller but I think it’s pretty clear that this
is down to the relaxed stance and hairstyle he is sporting in his casual wear, versus
the somewhat more combat ready pose he adopts when in uniform.
Blackbeard is overall almost identical although I get the feeling that his face, shoulders
and arms look slightly slimmer in the Guerrilla version.
Obviously traipsing around the hot, sweaty jungle, acting as a walking mosquito buffet,
has taken a bit of a toll on Mr. Beard’s gains.
Smoke appears to have the same general body type when switching into his elite skin except
for those god awful pants that hang much lower than his regular trousers.
I guess you could call it a “style” but when your job requires a lot of running around,
crouch spamming and quick peeking, I would personally say that this is probably not the
best type of clothing to wear.
And wait… are… are those trousers shiny?!
What does that even mean, like… are they meant to be made of some kind of rubber or
shiny leather material.
Who in their right mind would wear rubber track suit bottoms?
I don’t even want to know what kind of swamp that man is carrying around with him.
Moving on!
Hibana…
emh…
ok…
well, as I was saying:
Hiban…
Fine: Japanese police lady, also retains her overall character volume; she stays the same
height and width but without her hood up, her head is larger!
Don’t ask me how or why but look, if we overlay the two character models, you can
see that with her hood up, the woman is deadass missing the top of her head… ok that’s
one that we’re definitely earmarking for testing later on because if the head hitbox
also grows with the new model, you would actually be giving yourself a disadvantage by running
the Onkochishin elite.
Bandit is another interesting character because the reduction in upper body clothing makes
him look somewhat slimmer and at the same time, his legs look much shorter, especially
when viewed from behind.
Mozzie is not an elite skin and so it makes sense that his body is exactly the same as
the default model, except with different colours.
The new headgear is interesting though because it is definitely a very different shape from
Mozzie’s usual motorbike helmet.
Let’s check that one later as well!
And almost all of the remaining elite skins can be summarised under one general heading:
pay to THICC.
Ash’s new Tomb Raider elite set, Caveira, Ela, Mira and Sledge all become significantly
heftier when switching clothes.
For some, this makes complete sense and still looks very natural; Sledge is the best example here.
Yes, his character model becomes undeniably thicker but that is because he’s wearing
a whole bunch of clothing.
It still looks like Sledge but now weather proofed.
Nevertheless, let’s set him aside as well for a closer look at his hitboxes later on.
For the female operators in this group, the morphing body shapes are a little harder to explain.
Mira and Caveira feel as if they take off a bunch of their equipment and then their
bodies expand to make up for the loss in volume.
I mean look at Mira especially!
She loses the body armour on her torso, shoulders and legs… and not only does her body puff
out to compensate for the lack of armour but she actually swells up a little beyond that!
It’s cases like these where we basically reach a point where the underlying person
is just no longer the same and besides Mira, Ash and especially Ela are extreme examples
of where the elite skin is just straight up a different person with the same face grafted on.
For the Ash elite set, you can kind of understand why this was done.
The appearance is after all supposed to resemble Lara Croft, although in fairness, I feel like
the likeness somewhat missed the mark.
This is neither the classic Tomb Raider appearance nor the reboot; it’s somewhere half way
in between… almost like a half-hearted attempt at cosplay.
But that issue aside, at least there is a reason for changing the character somewhat.
For Ela, there is no reason whatsoever that I see for completely reconfiguring the overall structure.
I don’t know how the in-game models for the elite sets are normally created but in
this case, it feels like they just went ahead and 3D scanned in a completely different person
and built the new model from scratch, rather than using the existing character model as a basis.
Why?
I guess no one will ever know…
Finally, last but not least, before we take a closer look at some of the hitboxes, there
is one case that goes in the opposite direction of this odd trend to make operators thicker
and that is Twitch.
Like many of the other operators, she loses a bunch of gear and armour but unlike the
others, this also correctly results in a smaller overall character frame.
The only thing that doesn’t quite make sense for Twitch is, when we observe her from the
side, we can see that her legs somehow become longer.
This is definitely not just a case of different trousers or shoes, right?
Sure, her old timey boots have a bit of a heal on them but it would not make that much of a difference.
But there it is: most of the elites stay very similar to the default skin, quite a number
of them are “pay to THICC” and one is pay to slim.
Personally, I would prefer it if the elite skins remained the same people but in different
clothes and to be fair, that applies to most of the sets that have been added to the game
so far, with only a few examples that feel a bit jarring.
Now the final question is, do these differences in character volume affect hitboxes at all
(because if they did, that would be pretty bad!).
The first step to answering this question is to have a more accurate comparison of the
different character models than simply going by the in-game menu.
The different stances that many operators adopt there is a confounding variable that
can make precise comparison challenging and so what I did in addition to the initial analysis
was to find a spot in the kitchen of the Bank map, where I was able to always get into the
exact same position with two players and thereby record different skins in pretty much the same positions.
The result of these tests is that we can clearly confirm that there are differences in certain
character models when comparing the default shape with the elite shape.
For instance: Ash has a wider waist and bottom and no gear or armour over her chest & stomach.
Somewhat surprisingly, even though the Tomb Raider elite looks much heftier than regular
Ash at first glance, the differences once you have the in-game comparison are far less
obvious for most other body parts (apart for the waist area).
Another good example here is Sledge.
He is also far more similar than I had initially assumed with the key difference again being
around the waist where his elite has an extended Jacket that makes him much wider.
For Mozzie and Hibana, our initial assumptions are confirmed; the head sizes are slightly different.
Testing the hitboxes in Rainbow Six is a little finicky but the best way I find is to use
either Montagne or Clash with extended shields and then use the point of aim dot to palpate
the border of the teammates character model and whenever the dot turns green, you have
basically found the edge of the hitbox.
As you may well already know, hitboxes in Rainbow Six Siege do not include clothing
and gear items, but instead focus on the underlying person and so what we should expect here is
that where the character models are different (areas with more or less clothing, armour
or gear) we should still see the same hitbox.
With that in mind, I did a lot of touching of these characters around their edges,
(mmmmhhh)
with a specific focus around the areas we identified earlier and there were a few general
things I noticed.
Firstly, the hitboxes are not always fully accurate.
For instance, as you can see here, Ash’s hitbox extends outside of her body around
her wrists & forearms and also around her knees.
It’s only a few centimetres and you will almost never notice these minor issues while
playing but if we are going to be comparing hitboxes, these details are worth noting.
Another thing I noticed is that the rumours around Ash’s missing head hitbox appear to be true.
As you can see here, the front part of her forehead appears to be missing and now…
I’m not someone who will criticise other players for their choice of operators but
it does kind of feel as if Ubisoft is making a bit of a judgement on the stereotypical
Ash mains here .
Finally, many of the operators I checked were missing their arse-hitbox.
Why is that a thing?
I have not the foggiest idea, but there it is.
And after all of that the most important part of this discussion, from a competitive point
of view can really be summarised in one sentence.
After the three tiers of analysis I applied (checking the menu, comparing characters in-game
and touching them to check their hitboxes) the conclusion is that even though there are
undeniable differences between some of the default and elite models, it’s good news
everyone: as far as I can tell, there is no difference in hitboxes.
Some elites might be thicker than the default skins and very rarely, you might actually
come across one that is a bit thinner but the underlying hitbox that will register your
shots will always remain the same and thank goodness for that.
So, no horrific, grain……
no horrific game breaking discovery this time but I hope you
found the video to nonetheless be somewhat interesting and entertaining.
Many thanks for watching, I hope you enjoyed the video and I will see you in the next episode!