You can use pictures as your avatars only if you have the artist's permission
JuliusBorisov
Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,758
According the Rule 2 of the Forum Guidelines, if you possess verifiable consent of the owner of copyrighted content, you may post the allowed content (within the limits of the content rules).
Which means that you may use copyrighted content, including pictures, only if you possess consent of the owner of it.
Recently, we've received the Copyright Infringement DMCA Takedown Notice towards the forum avatar of one of this forum's users.
An artist said the image in question was taken from their website and used without permission. We removed it immediately.
Usually, users are free to use pics as avatars unless the artists say otherwise.
So, folks, make sure the image you use as an avatar here can be used that way. Pay attention also to pictures you use for your characters in-game and then post on this forum for other forum members - you can do that only if you credit the artist and that artist is not against such use.
Which means that you may use copyrighted content, including pictures, only if you possess consent of the owner of it.
Recently, we've received the Copyright Infringement DMCA Takedown Notice towards the forum avatar of one of this forum's users.
An artist said the image in question was taken from their website and used without permission. We removed it immediately.
Usually, users are free to use pics as avatars unless the artists say otherwise.
So, folks, make sure the image you use as an avatar here can be used that way. Pay attention also to pictures you use for your characters in-game and then post on this forum for other forum members - you can do that only if you credit the artist and that artist is not against such use.
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But here is something for context that may make things easier for everyone else to understand:
Time it takes to complete an artwork: Anywhere from an hour to several days.
Time it takes to drop the artist a message or read their FAQ: Roughly five minutes.
I just discovered thit artist whose name is Dave Rapoza and i would like to use one his creation as my profil picture ? Can i do it ?
The portrait unlocker Julius linked to would not be of help, it is designed to allow the use of NPC portraits in gameplay, not gameplay portraits in your game directory. The portraits folder, additionally, is there to add more portraits to your gameplay, not take portraits from your game.
I didn't use the Bioware forums much, but if memory serves, the NWN portraits in use were from a predetermined set selectable in the site, and it did not contain all of the NWN portraits. I also think you could not use your own uploaded portrait on their website.
The stock game portraits are condensed into game data files, and don't exist as separated images in your installation. What you want is to extract the game data from your .bif files (which are kind of like hak files containing the core game assets) for the portraits.
Beamdog has not changed most of the .bif data for EE, and someone has already extracted the .bif files from 1.69 for you and made them available on the Neverwinter Vault. You will want to download the bioware_tga.7z file from https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/other/nwn1-standard-assets. Once you extract the assets from the .7z, the portraits are listed under "po_...", as all of the .tga files used by the game are in the download.
They are .tga Targa Bitmaps, so you may want to convert them for forum use to something like .png using a image processor like Adobe Photoshop or GIMP. I'm not sure which formats this forum supports.
If you can't thumbnail the TGA's after you downloaded them, you may find a name for the portrait you want by browsing these thumbnails I posted on Google Drive.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-yXVCjkegF5b1h5aUNTdmlJbDA
Don't download one of these portraits to use, however, since I added empty space to the sides of them to keep them fully visible. Only use them to find the name of the file you want, and find that (alphabetically) in the .tga folder you downloaded.
I was on there until we were "encouraged" to move to the first of two EA/Bioware boards. Anyone interested in how the old nwn.bioware site looked should look here. That is the view from the 28th of August 2005 (about a year before I joined those forums) via the wayback machine.
TR
To put the discussion in some context however, I could share a story. It's important in that the more widely spread any image or content you own is , the more people think it is ok to use it for free/without permission. A company (that will go unnamed because it would be against the out of court deal we made ) used one of mine (thinking they owned it apparently! As everyone always claims.) for a billboard advert. £11k was the first of many cheques I got from them after a difficult legal battle. It then got used by a subsidiary, and I got 2 cheques every month!
Models , artists, creators etc post their work to promote their work and we all hope for the one being picked up that will turn us from struggling artist to succesful artist. It's sheer luck most of the time. (Hence my name) Google image search has shown me people using images of me as their avatar and if I contacted them about it I got told to F off. So I applaud Beamdog supporting the original content creators on their forum.
Steam workshop is a huge opportunity for people to upload from neverwintervault and steal ohers' works. I have serious doubt about one up there now cos it smacks of a guy Maximus banned from IGN vault several times for trolling and stealng others work as his own, but not sure how to procede. I also dont know who is responsible for policing that, Beamdog or Steam. I also dont know how much I care given it is not my work and it rarely ends positive for the actual creator. The wars on IGN vault over use were not pretty either.
anyway.. /end rant
Have fun
TR