[Portraits] Neural faces of Baldur's Gate, NPC portrait replacer, BGEE+SOD+BG2EE | UPDATE 2024

ivavlakul

Here is a complete portrait replacer for Baldur's Gate EE, SOD, and BG2EE made with InvokeAI and DreamShaper.

Complete Pack
Grab at https://disk.yandex.ru/d/mJQymeL0AnwKjQ


NOTE: Duplicates are not bugs, but copies with SOD or BG2 filenames, when necessary.
M-sized portraits are 210*330; L-sized portraits are hi-res 651*1023.
* Did not test it in the wild yet, there might be mistypes in the portrait file names.
** Finch MOD portrait included as a small bonus.

Larger previews incl. L portraits

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Legacy. version(s): BG1&SOD Alternates

There are 5 alternative portraits for each NPC, available both as higher-res png (420*660)px and standard-res bmp (210*330)px.

Note a few more variants at the bottom of the thread, including a small extra-hires set and a NEW mini-pack for BG2

Full roster


Preview
Ajantis-to-Edwin

Eldoth-to-Khalid

Kivan-to-Safana

Corwin-to-Xzar

And lone Yeslick

For a curious reader

This was a crazy effort: 200-500 generated images per NPC plus extra variants, more than 10k total portraits, nearly 1 out of 5 was quickly preselected, and then iteratively filtered by checking for typical artifacts of AI-generated imagery. BTW, extra variants were generated and reconsidered for most promising images (nearly half of the final set). Also, my potato hardware makes only 1-2 images per minute so you can do the math on how long it physically takes even to generate the starting material.

Compared to the original mini-collection, this time all portraits were edited to mask obvious artifacts and cropped so a face takes nearly half of the portrait space.

Neuro-ladies

This started with a smaller pack of portraits for female NPCs, which is still available if you prefer older variants:

210x330 bmps are here.
Higher-res pngs are there

Disclaimer

There are tensions regarding the legal status of the AI art, and the original post was banned from the baldursgate subreddit. Hopefully, this collection does not offend any artists.

Ecthelion_TR

Very cool, with the exception of Viconia all were very good.

Are you going to do the other npcs? And those of BG2 too?

ivavlakul

Getting unnatural dark skin from Stable diffusion models is tricky as it is intrinsically linked to African face types.
Here are a few other 'leftover' Viconias, though.

BTW, there are a few more alternative portraits for other ladies as well, in case you'd like more variety.

I am still considering to generate male bg1 NPCs for a fresh playthrough, probably it'll be impossible to get a canonical Minsc face tattoo, but including a hamster might be fun.

Ecthelion_TR

Understand, the portrait is very good, it's just that for me it's too innocent to be Viconia.... But it can be used for any other npc.
In my mind Vic always had this kind of dangerous and sensual aura, like all drow.
More or less like the example below.... Made in Midjourney...... Her hand has six fingers, lol.



I've always looked for something like that, in this type of art.
And yes, I would like the alternate portraits, maybe I can use them on other npcs. And I hope you make the male npcs, I think they will be interesting.

ivavlakul

Ecthelion_TR wrote: »

More or less like the example below.... Made in Midjourney...... Her hand has six fingers, lol

Midjourney style is very nice, and in general it provides more control over the image, yet the typical issues are often shared with SD-generated images, e.g. the skin color of the body is quite 'natural' and differs from the pale/dark face. Also the elbow/cloak relations are quite peculiar. Yet, it does not matter for a cropped close-up portrait which is indeed great.


While I struggle with multi-hamster Minscs, here are a few other nice leftovers from the collection of ladies.

Trouveur

ivavlakul wrote: »

Getting unnatural dark skin from Stable diffusion models is tricky as it is intrinsically linked to African face types.
Here are a few other 'leftover' Viconias, though.

BTW, there are a few more alternative portraits for other ladies as well, in case you'd like more variety.

I am still considering to generate male bg1 NPCs for a fresh playthrough, probably it'll be impossible to get a canonical Minsc face tattoo, but including a hamster might be fun.

Thank you, really like this one.

GraionDilach

I don't know what to think about these ones, tbh. They look fine for NPC mods, but as full replacements, they feel overly idealized and nowhere near as rugged as the BG1 ones. Cool experiment though.

ivavlakul

GraionDilach wrote: »

I don't know what to think about these ones, tbh. They look fine for NPC mods, but as full replacements, they feel overly idealized and nowhere near as rugged as the BG1 ones. Cool experiment though.

Sure, the aim was not to replicate the bg1 style although nowadays it might be possible with LoRA. The idea was to get a somewhat consistent set of portraits reflecting a few key character features.

And yes, the resulting style consistency is not above 'somewhat', or maybe even below but fun nonetheless.

ivavlakul

Trouveur wrote: »

Thank you, really like this one.

Thanks for commenting, quite encouraging. Maybe I will finish the complete set for bg1 someday.

Greener

Absolutely brilliant! I would also encourage you to attempt the male portraits as well

Endarire

Why are they "neuro?"

Thankee!

ivavlakul

Endarire wrote: »

Why are they "neuro?"

Theory: cause they are drawn by an artificial neural network.
Practice: dunno, it just sounds funny.

Meanwhile male NPC portraits are being baked, and some results are hilarious.

PeterBazooka

I like these a lot. I'm looking forward to seeing the finished results of the male ones.

savagek

Really liking these.

ivavlakul

Once again thank you all for the positive feedback.

The complete pack (including males and extra female portraits) is already half-done,
and here is a small teaser of Edwin who did not enter the final shortlist.

ivavlakul

Aaaaand done, just updated the first post in the thread.
A final note, genuine Minsc with double-Boo.

Trouveur

Thank you!
Definitely like the updated Viconia 2.
One of Montaron and two of Xzar caught my eyes too.
Minsc is nice too.

Do you plan to also do the important NPC like Hood Man, Caelar and Hephernaan?

ivavlakul

Trouveur wrote: »

Thank you!
Definitely like the updated Viconia 2.
One of Montaron and two of Xzar caught my eyes too.
Minsc is nice too.

Do you plan to also do the important NPC like Hood Man, Caelar and Hephernaan?

Cool, thanks for the feedback!

*Generating non-joinable NPCs might be interesting but only after BGII facepack, and this project is also on a long sabbatical 'maybe'.

ivavlakul

As the neural portrait pack got a bit more than a humble hundred downloads, here is a small delight. You have probably already spotted bg1/2 portraits enhanced by NNs, and indeed it can be a joyful experiment. Here is Imoen generated from Imoen (yeah, obvious) and from two famous handsome male wizards.

ivavlakul

A few delightfully dark alternates for everyone's favorite drow who is not Baeloth.

ivavlakul

... and the gloomy elf finally reunited with his Moonblade.

ivavlakul

Hello fellow adventurers!

As the neural-faces pack has hit 300+ downloads, I am releasing a yet-another bonus.
Here is a manually and subjectively selected subset of portraits: some are inherited from the original pack, and some are completely new.

A major feature of this pack is that all portraits were processed with a fancy LDSR upscaling resulting in trembling crispiness for all hires screen users. The pack includes -M and -L portraits, where -M variants are cropped (for in-game sidebar portraits), and -L variants are original uncropped versions (for character record screen), when available.



The resolution of all files is 1023*651 which is the largest possible for EE to process directly w/o manual resizing (technically it can be even 1024*652, but it has a bit skewed aspect ratio).

Download link: https://disk.yandex.ru/d/Y51P8Y-7_zK4KA

Preview of -L portraits:

Allanon81

Need more Assassin, backstab, ninja, tactical types. Other than that these are 😎.

ivavlakul

Allanon81 wrote: »

Need more Assassin, backstab, ninja, tactical types. Other than that these are 😎.

You won't believe it , but here is a premade set of human and dwarven ninja wannabes. Images are 'neural' as previously and produced with the same setup and lots of retries. No postprocessing except cropping to fit the BG aspect ratio.
* Not all of them look like ninjas, but probably will do their job for rogue-type characters.
** Taken right from the shelf and now only a few shmexy Jaheiras remain there.

Grab them right now!

Peek inside:

Allanon81

@ivavlakul IMO those dudes look like GQ douche-bags. If you google “assassin d&d” you’ll see more what I’m thinking.

ivavlakul

Allanon81 wrote: »

@ivavlakul IMO those dudes look like GQ douche-bags. If you google “assassin d&d” you’ll see more what I’m thinking.

Should be badassier or even more evilish, sure, but I still like the light reflections on some blades and armor.
Generating such portraits w/o extra object is much easier, but extra stuff like weapons remains problematic for detailed close-up images.

* Midjourney might be more skillful in terms of artistic style, as in the complete set of NPC portraits from Reverie.

** Stable Diffusion models other than DreamShaper (used here) might be also interesting to explore. But this project has already gone too far .

Allanon81

That Viconia is pretty sick. Oh baby!

Trouveur

I tried some tweaks on some of your portraits (if you're not OK with this just tell me and I will delete my post).

Xzar :

Viconia :


Thanks again for all this work. :-)

Aerakar

Those are great @Trouveur

ivavlakul

Great to see such edits, nice!

* I consider http://www.wtfpl.net/ as a quite appropriate license for the original images if the word 'original' is applicable at all.

ivavlakul

Hello fellow adventurers!

Better late than never: here is another small bonus for the neural portrait pack.
Meet the fancy Amnish Champions.

No alternative portraits to select from, but there are crispy-hi-res L-versions inside:
Grab Here!

The selection is fully subjective (sure) but kind of matches the initial style of the pack.