I always use the regular portraits on first play through's or so but to spice things up a bit I tend to change things for later play through's. I frequently change NPC portraits to friends/family or of people I'm fans of. I altered the NPC's in Dragon's Age and Dragon's Age 2 as well, which was obviously much more complicated.
@Fredjo Thanks for your Imoen picture. It is what I've put in place for both the first and second games.
For the first game, I've replaced Jaheira with her BG2 portrait. Viconia as well, but now I need to get that darker version of Viconia. For the second game, I've replaced Edwin with his BG1 portrait. Aerie has been replaced with a cropped version of Aerie as done by NixxiCal on deviantART:
I'm happy you like my purple Imoen!
And your Aerie is the kind of girl some guys kill themselves for, only if she'd have stayed quiet though...which is something she's incapable of .
Here's the Imoen portrait I've PS'd for anyone interested
Unfortumnately, I have never gotten custom NPC portraits to work. When I tried it, instead of showing the new portrait the portrait of the NPC was gone altogether,
I've got a question about the portrait pack @Erinne posted. I've been using it a while, and my brother really liked it but I can't figure out how to add it on his machine, windows 8 steam version. It was a simple cut and paste job for me on my beamdog win 7 version.
I created the portraits file in documents like normal, but they dont show up in-game. I then added a portraits file with the files in... Hmm... I think I just figured out what I did wrong. Never mind.
Edit : yep I was being dumb. Writing this post helped me visualize what I was doing wrong
Unfortumnately, I have never gotten custom NPC portraits to work. When I tried it, instead of showing the new portrait the portrait of the NPC was gone altogether,
This site should help. http://portraits.chosenofmystra.net/npc_portrait_change.html The custom portraits for NPCS goes in the override directory of the games folder, but it may take them from the portrait directory too from your documents folder, not for sure on that.
Hm? In my game he discovered that Safana was just using him to get to me, and that he'd been having relations with a lycanthrope. Then I killed them all before they reached him and he went to Athkatla to bed women and get drunk (and presumably pick wolf fur out of his teeth) rather than join my party.
Jerk.
Anyways, I sometimes do, sometimes don't. In a way, I've been seeing the same characters for a decade, so I'm kind of attached to them, but every now and then I like to switch it up trying to find other pictures that fit their character, voice, or don't have birds nests in their hair.
Coran - It's not so much his fate as the fact that the whole quest was so... stupid. And out of character. In my opinion. Which I guess means it's not fact. But I digress... he was awesome in BG1 and BG2 kind ruined it with the ridiculous cameo thrown into a random area. Though I don't think I'd have been satisfied with anything less than a joinable version and full quest line, so don't mind me.
@Eudaemonium ...I actually failed to see you over there. OTL I will have to look.
@Fredjo Yes, very good. Edwin's BG1 portrait is the ONLY Edwin portrait. The other one doesn't exist.
@Nixxi Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but do you use DAZ renders as a starting point? I ask because I sometimes use that program for pose and anatomy reference, but also for the occasional fully rendered image of a character for fun. I can't ever find decent fantasy attire for the life of me, though. It's all your typical half-naked fantasy babe type nonsense. *flops*
@nano I'm gonna get shot by someone for saying this I'm sure, but I find that lycanthropy in D&D is actually pretty much stupid 9 times out of 10. Then again, it's a hard field to do well.
@nano: How was it out of character? Coran becomes infatuated with Safana in BG1, which explains why they're working together; the trap is her idea, which is exactly the sort of thing she'd do.
@shawne Coran likes Safana, that's true, but beyond that the quest was just... ugh. By the time you come out of the Underdark you can slaughter wolfweres in your sleep. It's one of the most pathetic assassination attempts in the game and the only danger it presents is to Coran. Safana's supposed to be clever and besides she doesn't really strike me as the type to become an assassin, since she gets by with her charm and looks instead. It'd more like her to try and seduce Charname and then run off with his gear or call in some bounty hunters while he's naked and alone. Siding with evil wolfweres is the kind of thing you do as a last resort, if you're desperate and have nowhere else to turn. Hard to believe that with Safana's charms she couldn't find a lonely mage or similar in the city.
@nano: I rather thought that was precisely what Safana did - she doesn't get her hands dirty so much as try to get the wolfweres to do the job for her. And to be fair, she would have no way of knowing that you just clawed your way out of the Underdark and are therefore loaded for bear...
@shawne Well, the Underdark thing aside it'd be a rather poor attempt even if wolfweres presented a threat. She claims that she's been kidnapped by werewolves to lure the party in. That's like revealing your entire hand. It means anyone who comes to rescue her is going to be armed, buffed, equipped with anti-wolfwere gear, and ready for a fight. If a party does show up, it's because they're confident they can rescue her and aren't scared of wolfweres.
Not only that but once you arrive she reveals she's switched sides. The party thinks the wolfweres have a hostage but as soon as she says that you no longer have to worry about protecting her. Even if she wasn't betrayed there's no way the plan would have worked.
I guess I'm talking only about Safana here. For Coran he's supposed to be a lady killer, heart breaker, deadliest bounty hunter in the area. I don't think it really fits to make him into the helpless, lovestruck pawn.
@Nixxi Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but do you use DAZ renders as a starting point? I ask because I sometimes use that program for pose and anatomy reference, but also for the occasional fully rendered image of a character for fun. I can't ever find decent fantasy attire for the life of me, though. It's all your typical half-naked fantasy babe type nonsense. *flops*
I've used DAZ/Poser to do renders of characters for many years, with varying degrees of quality and success:
But yes, it's a constant annoyance that most fantasy clothing for female characters is barely clothing at all. There are third party programs that allow you to convert clothes from other, including male, figures. With DAZ's Genesis 1 it was possibly to do it in the program, but all with varying results (you might get some horrible scrunching around the chest area, for example).
Compared to how it was when I started years, the software has already improved considerably and you see more and more realistic looking renders all the time. I try for the opposite, and try to deliberately make it a little unreal. It's fine in still pictures at least, so long as you don't try to put too big an expression on their faces. Then they do genuinely look weird.
I shouldn't laugh considering I waste my money fiddling with this crap. But... yeah. The software is getting better every year though. You have to be selective.
@Coutelier I often will go with the more ridiculous, risque attire because that's where the quality models are. So as you'll see below my females end up with bare tummies and other stupid crap like that. The way I see it, it's still better than a chainmail bikini, and it looks better than trying to fuss with a cheap model because the only realistic stuff is all those 1.99 deals.
I prefer just doing character concepts like these:
These were all DA2 characters (yes I know some people here hate that game) but the second two are dead and forgotten. The first here, Jenae, has been converted to D&D.
Yes and no. XD I created the images about a year ago, using various models from daz3d.com and renderosity.com, plus a lot of retexturing and Photoshop touch-ups. I made a lot of the textures myself. I don't know the first thing about making actual 3D models though. It's just a hobby I putter around in when I can't be arsed to work on my drawing but I want to make images of my characters.
@SassyGoldElf I don't know a thing about how that works but they look incredible to me. Especially the faces. If you end up doing some BG stuff I'd love to see it.
What's with all the opposition to female fantasy summer-wear armour? :O
It gets warm wearing full suits of armour you know!
I'm sure it does. It's just, historically speaking, knights and samurai and other warriors tend to go into battle with their vital organs covered by something. It can be hard to take a character seriously if they're supposed to be a traveling adventurer, but they look like belly dancers.
@SassyGoldElf as I say, I think the main thing I've learned to avoid is putting too much expression on the faces; that's when you really do get to Uncanny Valley and it's not just a meme. Don't want to look again into the Book of Mass Effect Smiles...
But for that we've (invisible) magical protections (in fantasy games at least) - not to mention, that not to get hit is even the best protection aka dodge.. which agile chars can do best without the restraint of armor.
Comments
And your Aerie is the kind of girl some guys kill themselves for, only if she'd have stayed quiet though...which is something she's incapable of
Here's the Imoen portrait I've PS'd for anyone interested
@Nixxi is also one of the awesome artists on this forum, and she's done a few of the other BG girls too.
I'm sure I don't need to tell who they are!
By the way @Nixxi, I would LOVE to see your take on Neera!
I created the portraits file in documents like normal, but they dont show up in-game. I then added a portraits file with the files in... Hmm... I think I just figured out what I did wrong. Never mind.
Edit : yep I was being dumb. Writing this post helped me visualize what I was doing wrong
http://portraits.chosenofmystra.net/npc_portrait_change.html
The custom portraits for NPCS goes in the override directory of the games folder, but it may take them from the portrait directory too from your documents folder, not for sure on that.
Jerk.
Anyways, I sometimes do, sometimes don't. In a way, I've been seeing the same characters for a decade, so I'm kind of attached to them, but every now and then I like to switch it up trying to find other pictures that fit their character, voice, or don't have birds nests in their hair.
@Fredjo Yes, very good. Edwin's BG1 portrait is the ONLY Edwin portrait. The other one doesn't exist.
@Nixxi Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but do you use DAZ renders as a starting point? I ask because I sometimes use that program for pose and anatomy reference, but also for the occasional fully rendered image of a character for fun. I can't ever find decent fantasy attire for the life of me, though. It's all your typical half-naked fantasy babe type nonsense. *flops*
@nano I'm gonna get shot by someone for saying this I'm sure, but I find that lycanthropy in D&D is actually pretty much stupid 9 times out of 10. Then again, it's a hard field to do well.
Not only that but once you arrive she reveals she's switched sides. The party thinks the wolfweres have a hostage but as soon as she says that you no longer have to worry about protecting her. Even if she wasn't betrayed there's no way the plan would have worked.
I guess I'm talking only about Safana here. For Coran he's supposed to be a lady killer, heart breaker, deadliest bounty hunter in the area. I don't think it really fits to make him into the helpless, lovestruck pawn.
But yes, it's a constant annoyance that most fantasy clothing for female characters is barely clothing at all. There are third party programs that allow you to convert clothes from other, including male, figures. With DAZ's Genesis 1 it was possibly to do it in the program, but all with varying results (you might get some horrible scrunching around the chest area, for example).
Skie here is wearing a male tunic:
I shouldn't laugh considering I waste my money fiddling with this crap. But... yeah.
The software is getting better every year though. You have to be selective.
@Coutelier I often will go with the more ridiculous, risque attire because that's where the quality models are. So as you'll see below my females end up with bare tummies and other stupid crap like that. The way I see it, it's still better than a chainmail bikini, and it looks better than trying to fuss with a cheap model because the only realistic stuff is all those 1.99 deals.
I prefer just doing character concepts like these:
These were all DA2 characters (yes I know some people here hate that game) but the second two are dead and forgotten. The first here, Jenae, has been converted to D&D.
/further derails her own thread
It gets warm wearing full suits of armour you know!
@SassyGoldElf as I say, I think the main thing I've learned to avoid is putting too much expression on the faces; that's when you really do get to Uncanny Valley and it's not just a meme. Don't want to look again into the Book of Mass Effect Smiles...