Custom Portrait

Velkir

Was wondering if anyone knows how custom portrait are gonna work with BGEE..like size and where to put it

Sarainy

I believe there are now 3 sizes of portrait, small and large as before but now with medium too.

All portraits should be saved in the .bmp (Bitmap) format.

Size - Height x Width in pixels - Ending character

Large - 210x330 - L
Medium - 169x266 - M
Small - 54x84 - S

Ending character means you must end the filename with that character, for example if your portrait was for a character called CHAR your portraits should be CHARL.bmp CHARM.bmp and CHARS.bmp

As for the location to place them, most likely the Portraits folder in the installation directory. If it does not exist already, then create it yourself.

In addition, you could (in Baldur's Gate 2 at least) set NPC portraits by using the Override directory. While you could change portraits for party members in game already, this enables you to give portraits to NPCs without even having them join at all. Presumably you can even do this for non-party NPCs too, however I do not know of a list of portrait names.

*Recruitable NPC Spoliers Below*

Here is a list of portrait names for party NPCs however, excluding the 3 new ones.

Oddly Baldur's Gate 2 used M for the ending character of the large portraits for NPCs... As such it might be the case that medium portraits are not needed, but you have to use the M ending character for large size portraits. Apologies if this sounds confusing!

NPC Name - Large - Medium - Small

Aerie - NAERIEL - NAERIEM - NAERIES
Anomen - NANOMENL - NANOMENM - NANOMENS
Cernd - NCERNDL - NCERNDM - NCERNDS
Edwin - NEDWINL - NEDWINM - NEDWINS
Haer'Dalis - NHAERL - NHAERM - NHAERS
Imoen - NIMOENL - NIMOENM - NIMOENS
Jaheira - NJAHEIRL - NJAHEIRM - NJAHEIRS
Jan Jansen - NJANL - NJANM - NJANS
Keldorn - NKELDORL - NKELDORM - NKELDORNS
Korgan - NKORGANL - NKORGANM - NKORGANS
Mazzy - NMAZZYL - NMAZZYM - NMAZZYS
Minsc - NMINSCL - NMINSCM - NMINSCS
Nalia - NNALIAL - NNALIAM - NNALIAS
Valygar - NVALYGAL - NVALYGAM - NVALYGAS
Viconia - NVICONL - NVICONM - NVICONS
Yoshimo - NYOSHIML - NYOSHIMM - NYOSHIMS

Hope this helps!

Also don't forget that you could presumably use something like Shadowkeeper to change NPC portraits too, although I have never even used it myself. It might even give you an easier way of changing anyone's portrait?

Edit: Could someone be so kind as to tell me if and how you can create hidden spoilers like some message boards have? I'd rather hide the list of NPC names above if possible!

Velkir

Anyone has been able to make em work...mine wont show up..not sure if i did it right where exactly (please give me path) where do i need to put my Portraits file? and how do i access em in game

RadioactiveGary

Yeah I followed the instructions as per the manual, but no luck!

Edit: Working, create Portraits folder in the Documents > Baldurs Gate folder!

Velkir

Figured how to make it work..put your "portraits" file in the "documents/Baldur's Gate EE file in game it will allow you to use "custom"

RadioactiveGary

Still cant get sizes quite right, 54x84 for the small one is way too small... I'll keep messing about with it!

Edit: It's ok actually! Looks small in the preview but fine ingame, Thanks @valky

valky

RadioactiveGary said:

Still cant get sizes quite right, 54x84 for the small one is way too small... I'll keep messing about with it!

DOn't mind the preview window, it's properly displayed ingame. Same for me .. once applied the character screen and the party UI does show the proper size.

maldren

I'm able to change my character's portrait but it's not working for npcs.

Straylight

Use the extension "M" for the Large one, instead of "L". You don't need the medium portrait. The small one is unchanged with the extension "S".

Silver6986

Anyone else slightly annoyed that the size of the files has increased? I made my custom portrait years ago in bitmap with the previous standard of 110x170 for Large and 38x60 for Small using bits and pieces of a number of other NPCs (Edwin, Imoen, Sarevok and the original BG1 Paladin type portrait).

Well I went to create my PC tonight only to find that my older protrait sizes are obsolete! What's worse is if I try to make the file larger the portrait looks ridiculously pixelated when going from 110x170 to 210x330!

I don't really have the time to create another one but even if I wanted to I need the above mentioned NPC portraits which aren't in BG:EE so I don't think there is anywhere where I can get lossless versions of them at 210x330 until BG2:EE is released.

If someone thinks this claim is bogus please let me know I would love to be proven wrong, I spent ages creating this and don't really want a messy portrait for BG:EE

*Edit*

Just did some testing, looks like the file size of 210x330 is only for epilogues, so for the most part we only need two sizes (unless epilogues were added to BG:EE??) - 169x266 replaces the older 110x170 and 54x84 replaces the older 38x60 and whilst they don't look like they fit properly on character creation they work perferctly fine in game. I just edited my custom portrait in Paint and increased the size to 169x266 from 110x170, which looked 'ok' in Paint but looked woeful in game, so bummed...