AI Portrait Generation
Zeno_42
Member Posts: 178
So I've been playing around recently with using online tools to generate AI portraits. Its taken a long time to find prompts that provide a good "look" for a game like icewind dale. But when it works, you can use the same style keywords for multiple characters to generate a set of well matched, thematic potraits.
I've been using Bing Copilot Designer. And have settled on style prompts of "rpg portrait by justin sweet, soft focus, blurred, minimalist features, oil paint, drawing, in the snow, d&d, dark shading"
As examples, this process generated the following set for my long time CRPG party (which I've been using since Wizardry 8 was new)
Grimslade "Grim" (no last name): Mercenary Barbarian and Leader. Cynical Conan.
Brigit "Blur" (no last name): Speed-focused orphan with delusions of Samurai heritage
Duncan "Black" Dougal: Morbid and mildly unhinged rogue/duelist
Adam "Ace" Masters: happy-go-lucky halfling crossbow master and gadgeteer
Selina "Star" Cullen: slightly loopy hippy moon cleric
"Sapphire": out-of-touch Elf wizard magical genius lacking in common sense
I've been using Bing Copilot Designer. And have settled on style prompts of "rpg portrait by justin sweet, soft focus, blurred, minimalist features, oil paint, drawing, in the snow, d&d, dark shading"
As examples, this process generated the following set for my long time CRPG party (which I've been using since Wizardry 8 was new)
Grimslade "Grim" (no last name): Mercenary Barbarian and Leader. Cynical Conan.
Brigit "Blur" (no last name): Speed-focused orphan with delusions of Samurai heritage
Duncan "Black" Dougal: Morbid and mildly unhinged rogue/duelist
Adam "Ace" Masters: happy-go-lucky halfling crossbow master and gadgeteer
Selina "Star" Cullen: slightly loopy hippy moon cleric
"Sapphire": out-of-touch Elf wizard magical genius lacking in common sense
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"dark brown skin, cameroonian elf woman, sharply pointed ears, wizard, straight dark black hair, silver facial tattoos, eyebrow rings, dark eyes, in simple purple robes with a hood, looking focused, rpg portrait by justin sweet, soft focus, blurred, minimalist features, oil paint, drawing, in the snow, d&d, dark shading"
When I first started searching for new BG portraits (2001 or 2002?) there were so few to find. Remember Portrait Portal? That guy did maybe a dozen in a couple years (you still see his work, and derivatives of it all over).
Now apparently anyone can do it. Just Google “Fantasy Portraits” and there’s hundreds, thousands even. And dozens new every week. And that’s just people who are posting what they done. It’s like we’re living with the Star Trek holodeck already.
Roland "Hero" DeSalle The overly-idealistic paladin:
Katarina "Kat" Kitovski: The cynical thief that does the dirty work behind his back:
Francisco "Falcon" Fernandez: The jaded mercenary duelist:
Tessandra "Tess" Tagliatova: The bard with her head stuck in the past:
Keira: the half-elf former street rat pickpocket trying to be something more
Kord: the half-orc city guard attempting to help her do that
Telemachus
Prompt:
"Mid 30s, male Human, Paladin, just over 6’ tall, muscular, brown hair, neat brown beard, and mustache. sun motif, Appealing smile, comfortable. Wearing plate armor, Pointing a sword at the sky and singing, rpg portrait by justin sweet, soft focus, blurred, minimalist features, oil paint, drawing, in the snow, d&d, dark shading"
Prompt:
"early-30s, Human female, paladin, sun motif, 5’8”, athletic, vibrant red hair, beautiful, mature, confident, plate armor, holding a mandolin and singing, rpg portrait by justin sweet, soft focus, blurred, minimalist features, oil paint, drawing, in the snow, d&d, dark shading"
Prompt:
"Human Male, early 30s, 6’8”, mercenary, muscular, wide face, broad shoulders, dark hair, full beard, moustache, scowling expression, chain armor, tapping a plain wooden staff, rpg portrait by justin sweet, soft focus, blurred, minimalist features, oil paint, drawing, in the snow, d&d, dark shading"
Prompt:
"Human female, ranger, leather armor, green cloak, Late 20s, tall, 5’9”, slim and wiry, blonde, confident, holding a lute, rpg portrait by justin sweet, soft focus, blurred, minimalist features, oil paint, drawing, in the snow, d&d, dark shading"
Prompt:
"Human female, small, 5’2", sturdy, dancer build. short brown hair, flirty expression, loose robes with low top, dancing with her arms in the air, rpg portrait by justin sweet, soft focus, blurred, minimalist features, oil paint, drawing, in the snow, d&d, dark shading"
Prompt:
"female serbian human, very short, 5’ tall, long dark braided hair with decorations. wearing leather armor, Joking and laughing, holding pan pipes, rpg portrait by justin sweet, soft focus, blurred, minimalist features, oil paint, drawing, in the snow, d&d, dark shading"
But she was quite blown away by your results here. She also noted, your descriptors for the AI are quite well chosen! You have a good artistic mindset (experience?) that undoubtedly helped you get these outstanding results.
I will still give a try, but she maybe adjusted my expectations downwards...
I also put them up on my blog here.
For me its usually an iterative process. I start with a simple description, see what pops out, and then add additional descriptors to reinforce what I like and discourage what I don't until I get the image I was going for. Of your set, Telemachus, Alcina, and Calliope popped out quickly. Sybil took a bit more work because her description kept setting off "inappropriate content" filters, so I had to revise the description a few times to get the look without it getting the wrong idea. It kept making Ulysses look more like a brooding mage than a Little John type, so I took a few tweak cycles to get the look above. Eurydice is the most interesting.... because I think it remember previous requests in some ways each time I redo the query. I initially labelled her a "half-elf", but the features ended up looking more elven than your description. So I reverted to human and looked for a real-world ethnicity that had elvish looking features. My go to for that is below. Just picked one that looked promising, went through a couple re-submissions, and picked out the one I liked the best. But the result still had slightly pointy ears, which was a nice touch but feels like it had to have been remembering the previous queries a bit to get that.
https://fstoppers.com/portraits/average-faces-women-around-world-2944
The style was the hardest. I spent a long time make images of the original six trying to get the style right for a run at IWD2. Once I got a set of descriptors that consistently did a good job with that, then making images for all the characters in my library went pretty quickly.
I don't know if you looked at the link to my blog where I have the portraits I actually used, but it is interesting. Telemachus and Alcina were the two characters I played in a friend's D&D game in the late '80s, so obviously those were matched to my old memories. The other four, were partly inspired by the portraits I found. So we have a sort of circular process for them.
Sybel was a bit of an outrageous portrait to start (when you start Googling "Fantasy Female...", you get many results that push the limits of good taste!). Still, its interesting how similar (and yet really, how much better) the portrait you submitted was to the original I'd used. I particularly like the energy and life the AI (!) gave to all of them.
The Eurydice portrait I'd used was presumably meant to be a human rogue. But you know, 2E rules, she had to be a half-elf. And it does look like the ears on yours are slightly pointed? Which is funny in its own way. I always figured a significant number of Half-elves, Half-orcs, etc may simply choose to live their lives in human society such that "humans" may often have a range of quirks like pointed ears, unusual skin tints, stronger physiques etc. Just a highly variable populous, at least in such a high fantasy setting as the Realms. So maybe slightly pointed ears on someone otherwise human looking, might not draw any question or interest from most observers. Ultimately your effort was worth it, Eurydice is the serious stand out of the bunch of them.
Of the images at the beginning of this thread of my own characters, some took a *lot* longer than others to get right. "Ace" the halfling took a long time to get just the right combination of Hobbit and laid back charmer. Sometimes too much Bilbo, sometimes too much Tasselhoff (or Hasselhoff). I went thru a 100 revisions of Sapphire to get just the right Asian/African/Elven mix. And getting "Kat's" cynical smirk with an edge - with a look in her eyes that says she's already figured you out - took some cycles. Or "Star's" particular combination of "not a beauty queen", "spiritual", and "just a tad too much of a wide-eyed believer" just right took a lot of iterations. "Falcon" was particularly difficult too - combining "drunken cynicism", "boredom with having run out of challenges", and "secretly wishing he still believed in something" with a Spanish falcon motif. Sort of Inigo Montoya gone sour.
Finding existing images meeting requirements like that is close to impossible. But being able to start somewhere in the ballpark and say "now make him a little scruffier". Nah, "longer hair". How about smaller "tattoos". Etc... Allows me to dial in on a particular look in way I've never before been able to do. And once I got the hang of it I still feel like it takes me less time to come up with a portrait I'm happy with this way than it did spending forever in web searches trying to find just the right picture.
So yeah. I would definitely encourage you to play around with it. Particularly if your wife can give you pointers on the proper Artistic terminology. I had to do a lot of poking around on google to find the right words to express art styles to make stuff that fit in with games with a strong aesthetic - like IWD or Deadfire. But as you can see, the results can really be worth it. Wish this had been around back in my own PNP days.
Prompts:
"muscular,male,maori,warrior,mercenary,battle-scarred,thick black hair,goatee,facial tattoos,leather armor,fierce,intimidating,calculating,menacing,standing sideways,holding an axe over his shoulder,glowering at the viewer,rpg portrait by justin sweet,soft focus,blurred,minimalist features,oil paint,drawing,in the snow,d&d,dark shading"
Prompts:
"irish woman,late 20s,short reddish-brown hair,green eyes,athletic,scruffy,scrappy,small celtic tattoos on her face,leather armor,feisty,in motion,restless,wild,lopsided grin,jittery,slashing a short sword,ready for battle,speedy,rpg portrait by justin sweet,soft focus,blurred,minimalist features,oil paint,drawing,in the snow,d&d,dark shading,full length portrait"
I've been working on adding personality with describing the scene better. Something like this says a lot more about "Tess" above as a character than the portrait above ever did - even though the one above captures her look pretty well.
Also found a fly in my "AI portraits are easy" ointment. Spent hours last night trying to get a good beardless female dwarf blacksmith. That was painful. Say "dwarf" or "dwarven" and its bearded lady city. Adding "clean shaven" and the like did nothing. Go on and on about "stout" and "broad" without saying "dwarf" and you get the high school lunch lady in armor. Best I got so far was these.
And just try to make a Gnome that doesn't look like a Garden Gnome gone rogue...
I just started playing around with Artflow as well. Things I like:
- has an explicit place to separately list things I *don't* want. Goodbye bearded lady!
- allows you to do what it calls "train an actor". Which is essentially "remember this face/character design and then let me reuse it with tweaks to expression, position, background, etc"
- has an explicit "make variant" function - where you tell it "start with this image I just made and then change such and such about it".
Things I don't like:
- I haven't yet got it to make anything resembling the soft oil painting style I've been using for IWD imagery.
- It doesn't respond to me tweaking my prompts quite as intuitively as Bing does. With Bing even when it goes wildly off the mark I generally understand why it did what it did and how to shove it back in the right direction. With Artflow it just doesn't feel as responsive. Working with Bing is like working with an overly literal artist who doesn't speak English well. You sometimes get some bizarre interpretations, but you can usually figure out how to nudge it in the right direction. With Artflow it feels like working with a more temperamental artist that has its own opinion thank you very much.