Wow. What a great job you did. I mean they are the best AI generated portraits I have seen since a while. The problem with some others was that they were mass generated. Here we can see that you spent some time to make them differ between each other. I can't see the typical "one face" syndrome. My only doubts are:
- Imoen's hair should be more clearly pink/violet, whatever this color in the original is
- Korgan should be more grim. He looks too friendly
- Okay, Anomen and Edwin are little similar. If you could make Anomen's nose little different (for example not so long) it would be perfect.
Are you going to play with the Beamdog NPCs as well? They also stand out. Just saying :-P
@Wombat
For the first, avoid reddit. This is the most toxic and brainless society I have experienced in the internet and I am here since many years (I had my time on 4chan/b as well). Just leave those assholes alone there.
For the second, I'm really sorry for assuming that is AI generated. I can imagine that I would also get pieced off when someone would say something like this for the music I compose, but this is how the things look like today.
For the third, but most important: don't stop making portraits. For Christ's sake! They are really good! If you stop, all of you, great portrait makers are the same! You tease people with some great work which is never finished! :-P. There will be the 30th anniversary for BG1 relatively soon. How beautiful would be to make EET a consistent experience - with refreshed UI, new quality content, CONSISTENT portraits etc! I was hoping that you could do also some <charname> potraits afterwards... Doesn't this beautiful game deserve it?
Best are - Minsk, Nalia, Yoshimo.
Worst - Jan,Aerie, Korgan
I wish someone create portraits of BG companions in style from IWD - full body.
With one additional demand, let this be the pose , the posture from the moment when protagonist is meeting a joinabble character for the first time.
@Wombat your work is beautiful. No doubt this is difficult time to be in the arts. And as another said, Reddit is toxic. But I think you’ll find many appreciative viewers here. A lot of gamers appreciate this skillful use of the original style, to get something different.
AI can be a great tool for those of us with no artistic talent! But it can’t compete with actual skill.
More I look at the portraits, more I like them. Previously I have pointed three problems, but actually the only REAL one is that Korgan looking too friendly. It should be written on his face, that he is eager to decapitate you if you are not willing to pay.
@Wombat
sorry for me being monothematic, but I really see a rare chance we are missing. With release of new HPS Portraits Project, the original BG2 NPCs portraits feel really off. Your work solves this problem so great - through whole BG1 and BG2 we have one style for playable NPCs and second for the rest. This is an acceptable consensus versus having 1 style for playable BG1 ones, another for playable BG2 ones, another for playable Beamdog ones etc.
I understand your frustration, I understand that my idiot post could even make it bigger. I don't really care of in what proportions AI was involved in your work, intentionally or not. Really, this doesn't matter, because the effect is outstanding. You are so close to be a legend - there are only few beamdog portraits on the way :-P.
Look at the responses on this forum - they are all positive and enthusiastic.
Of course I can't force you if you already made up your mind. I want you just to know that it would be appreciated.
@Wombat yeah I shouldn’t have used the word “Compete”. My wife is also in the arts and I know exactly what AI has done to her work. (As in “out of…”)
And I do my own AI portraits to do things to my own taste. Which I deliberate push *away* from the BG style.
As you say, it can generate decent quality stuff very fast. But it also can be maddening and stupid, and often simply will not do things we might want. All things considered, AI is still in its infancy and it will continue to get better at replicating a range of looks and styles, while growing in its understanding of user inputs. So from a professional art perspective it will rock that world.
On the other hand, it is plain looking at much of your work that YOU have a better understanding of getting a particular look you may want than I do. That is a difference I see between a real artist and AI in the hands of a hack like me.
And BTW, I much preferred the original look of BG1 character sprites. That is a mod I would jump at. As I understand, it is a huge job because of the large number of poses needed to create fluid character movement (and that’s why they weren’t redrawn when the EEs came out). But the key issue was, no two-handed fighting style in BG1, so it was easier to re-use the BG2 sprites.
@Wombat yeah I’ve run into a lot of those walls. Even with character art it’s obvious most of the existing renderers don’t actually know what a bow is, and forget crossbow. But yes, for so many things it can give beautiful results lightning fast. I have had a complete blast doing illustrated runs through IWD and BG series (I just finished IWD here). The growing capability in just the last few months is amazing.
I’m officially excited that you are up to making that sprite mod. I would look forward to that one!
... but actually the only REAL one is that Korgan looking too friendly. It should be written on his face, that he is eager to decapitate you if you are not willing to pay.
And scar on nose is missing. The most fresh scar from all faces. And the mustache shouldn't be present.
Just wanted to say excellent work mr. Wombat. Remember sawing this pack getting nuked on reddit, pretty sad accusations of AI. Discrediting the hours on hours of work you probably did on this is kind of fucked up, but at least I and other people really appreciate your work. Thanks to your pack I can enjoy BG2 again a lot more since I love this style and my own custom BG portrait finally matches the NPC ones with this.
Wow. What a great job you did. I mean they are the best AI generated portraits I have seen since a while. The problem with some others was that they were mass generated. Here we can see that you spent some time to make them differ between each other. I can't see the typical "one face" syndrome. My only doubts are:
- Imoen's hair should be more clearly pink/violet, whatever this color in the original is
- Korgan should be more grim. He looks too friendly
- Okay, Anomen and Edwin are little similar. If you could make Anomen's nose little different (for example not so long) it would be perfect.
Are you going to play with the Beamdog NPCs as well? They also stand out. Just saying :-P
If mr. Wombat doesn't feel like doing it I might try my hand at them, I've done Neera today.
I absolutely love these portraits. Amazing work, thank you for sharing! I especially love Imoen, Valygar and Viconia. Do you have one that you're extra proud of? Or one that was a real pain to do?
I completely understand if you're burnt out after such an undertaking, but if you ever get the urge to create again, it'd be amazing to have some more portraits for the PC. I feel like the originals are really limited (and the ones added by Beamdog don't quite match the style)
Even if it were AI assisted, I would care less.
Some of these portraits are genuinely truly good.
I already use AI to do some stuff both personal and work.
And it ain't easy to force it to generate good stuff, one has to spend a lot of time prompting, make addendums, thinking, sometimes arguing, directing it to get something nice, usable.
That you often have to polish by hand anyway.
Yes, if you know how and are ready to keep some things "unpolished", then you can achieve great productivity increase without much loss of quality.
Just note ... AI is good (yet stupid) servant, but bad master. Do not let it decide. That's your job - and that means you have to understand what you want and set desired quality levels, sometimes even nudging it personally a bit.
Normally, for various reasons, I am not the biggest fan of AI, but some of the portraits are pretty cool.
Second and third one (from left) I like for instance. And even those I don't like, are not bad portraits per se.
Though, Jan looks a bit like a hobo. Minsc looks a bit like a shaolin monk. Edwin looks kind of strange. Aerie
also looks strange but I like the image.
Viconia looks really strange though.
Edit: Though, the third image is Korgan right? I like the image, but in my mind Korgan should look more
evil and what not, mean-spirited eyes. After all he talks about killing children and what not.
How much range is possible to have created via these images? Would text as input change the generation
process? Would be kind of cool if there could be a range of different images, say 10 per character. Would
it even be possible to have such a wide themed portrait pack?
domingo wrote:
> Some of these portraits are genuinely truly good.
Yeah, I actually think the portraits are pretty good in their own right. I am not 100% certain they are
a perfect fit to the game world. In particular Viconia looks strange ... then again the original portrait
also looked strange. When I read the Drizzt saga a long time ago, drow always felt different. Almost a
bit like Elric of Melnibone, though that was from another game world and more like some kind of
vampire with his sword. But as for the quality, I think the quality is quite high. AI, with all its faults,
can help here come up with some images for projects, games and so forth. I think that is a use case
that is arguably good or useful, even though I still don't really like AI.
> I mean the mod still hasn't broke 100 downloads. It's by far the least liked thing I've ever released under this alias.
I can't speak for anyone else but perhaps it may need a bit more time and exposure. Other than the forum thread here, I would not even have known there are (more) mods related to NPC portraits. I often stay mostly in a "niche" on github, looking for updates to mods; or, a few other sites too, e. g. I check lava's webpage. And every few months I have a look at the gibberling homepage too, but mostly I am confined to github.
wombat wrote:
> I can't really say I'm proud of any of my work. Whenever I release content, after a week or two, I just can't stand looking at it anymore.
I think as a whole it looks nice. There are a few individual portraits that looked strange to me, Jan and Viconia in particular. But as art on their own, I think they are perfectly fine. Viconia confuses me a bit because it is a bit different to other "regular" drow art; then again who knows what regular is. Jan looks a bit human-like, like just an old human. Of course one can also ask how a gnome should look, but I kind of imagine them a bit different. These are mostly just details though.
IF your goal is to get more downloads, then I would not only make an image-related mod but also extend it with a few unique stories or mini-quests - nothing too big but something that is fun. For instance, in the "Unfinished Business" mod, my favourite quest add-on is the kidnapping of Boo. It's just great from a storyline perspective. That way users can relate more to the art AND the content that is offered; and with a small objective (e. g. simpler but fun or interesting stories, and mini-quests that are short), you probably do not need to invest too much time either.
By the way, if you have not done so ask Acifer. He likes art and may give some advice on growing mod content over time slowly. (And Lava but I think Acifer is more into art and design per se than Lava is; Lava is very profilic, as he created many unique mods.)
I've only just seen this, but this is really, exceptionally cool. Also really neat to see a bit of the process on Yoshimo, it's really refreshing to get a whole portrait pack nowadays done by a real person. I particularly love Keldorn, Haer'Dalis, and Valygar. How long did it take you to make them?
Comments
- Imoen's hair should be more clearly pink/violet, whatever this color in the original is
- Korgan should be more grim. He looks too friendly
- Okay, Anomen and Edwin are little similar. If you could make Anomen's nose little different (for example not so long) it would be perfect.
Are you going to play with the Beamdog NPCs as well? They also stand out. Just saying :-P
Tanks for the mod.
For the first, avoid reddit. This is the most toxic and brainless society I have experienced in the internet and I am here since many years (I had my time on 4chan/b as well). Just leave those assholes alone there.
For the second, I'm really sorry for assuming that is AI generated. I can imagine that I would also get pieced off when someone would say something like this for the music I compose, but this is how the things look like today.
For the third, but most important: don't stop making portraits. For Christ's sake! They are really good! If you stop, all of you, great portrait makers are the same! You tease people with some great work which is never finished! :-P. There will be the 30th anniversary for BG1 relatively soon. How beautiful would be to make EET a consistent experience - with refreshed UI, new quality content, CONSISTENT portraits etc! I was hoping that you could do also some <charname> potraits afterwards... Doesn't this beautiful game deserve it?
Worst - Jan,Aerie, Korgan
I wish someone create portraits of BG companions in style from IWD - full body.
With one additional demand, let this be the pose , the posture from the moment when protagonist is meeting a joinabble character for the first time.
AI can be a great tool for those of us with no artistic talent! But it can’t compete with actual skill.
Thank you for posting!
sorry for me being monothematic, but I really see a rare chance we are missing. With release of new HPS Portraits Project, the original BG2 NPCs portraits feel really off. Your work solves this problem so great - through whole BG1 and BG2 we have one style for playable NPCs and second for the rest. This is an acceptable consensus versus having 1 style for playable BG1 ones, another for playable BG2 ones, another for playable Beamdog ones etc.
I understand your frustration, I understand that my idiot post could even make it bigger. I don't really care of in what proportions AI was involved in your work, intentionally or not. Really, this doesn't matter, because the effect is outstanding. You are so close to be a legend - there are only few beamdog portraits on the way :-P.
Look at the responses on this forum - they are all positive and enthusiastic.
Of course I can't force you if you already made up your mind. I want you just to know that it would be appreciated.
And I do my own AI portraits to do things to my own taste. Which I deliberate push *away* from the BG style.
As you say, it can generate decent quality stuff very fast. But it also can be maddening and stupid, and often simply will not do things we might want. All things considered, AI is still in its infancy and it will continue to get better at replicating a range of looks and styles, while growing in its understanding of user inputs. So from a professional art perspective it will rock that world.
On the other hand, it is plain looking at much of your work that YOU have a better understanding of getting a particular look you may want than I do. That is a difference I see between a real artist and AI in the hands of a hack like me.
And BTW, I much preferred the original look of BG1 character sprites. That is a mod I would jump at. As I understand, it is a huge job because of the large number of poses needed to create fluid character movement (and that’s why they weren’t redrawn when the EEs came out). But the key issue was, no two-handed fighting style in BG1, so it was easier to re-use the BG2 sprites.
I’m officially excited that you are up to making that sprite mod. I would look forward to that one!
If mr. Wombat doesn't feel like doing it I might try my hand at them, I've done Neera today.
@Wombat how are you?
I completely understand if you're burnt out after such an undertaking, but if you ever get the urge to create again, it'd be amazing to have some more portraits for the PC. I feel like the originals are really limited (and the ones added by Beamdog don't quite match the style)
Some of these portraits are genuinely truly good.
I already use AI to do some stuff both personal and work.
And it ain't easy to force it to generate good stuff, one has to spend a lot of time prompting, make addendums, thinking, sometimes arguing, directing it to get something nice, usable.
That you often have to polish by hand anyway.
Yes, if you know how and are ready to keep some things "unpolished", then you can achieve great productivity increase without much loss of quality.
Just note ... AI is good (yet stupid) servant, but bad master. Do not let it decide. That's your job - and that means you have to understand what you want and set desired quality levels, sometimes even nudging it personally a bit.
Second and third one (from left) I like for instance. And even those I don't like, are not bad portraits per se.
Though, Jan looks a bit like a hobo. Minsc looks a bit like a shaolin monk. Edwin looks kind of strange. Aerie
also looks strange but I like the image.
Viconia looks really strange though.
Edit: Though, the third image is Korgan right? I like the image, but in my mind Korgan should look more
evil and what not, mean-spirited eyes. After all he talks about killing children and what not.
How much range is possible to have created via these images? Would text as input change the generation
process? Would be kind of cool if there could be a range of different images, say 10 per character. Would
it even be possible to have such a wide themed portrait pack?
domingo wrote:
> Some of these portraits are genuinely truly good.
Yeah, I actually think the portraits are pretty good in their own right. I am not 100% certain they are
a perfect fit to the game world. In particular Viconia looks strange ... then again the original portrait
also looked strange. When I read the Drizzt saga a long time ago, drow always felt different. Almost a
bit like Elric of Melnibone, though that was from another game world and more like some kind of
vampire with his sword. But as for the quality, I think the quality is quite high. AI, with all its faults,
can help here come up with some images for projects, games and so forth. I think that is a use case
that is arguably good or useful, even though I still don't really like AI.
I can't speak for anyone else but perhaps it may need a bit more time and exposure. Other than the forum thread here, I would not even have known there are (more) mods related to NPC portraits. I often stay mostly in a "niche" on github, looking for updates to mods; or, a few other sites too, e. g. I check lava's webpage. And every few months I have a look at the gibberling homepage too, but mostly I am confined to github.
wombat wrote:
> I can't really say I'm proud of any of my work. Whenever I release content, after a week or two, I just can't stand looking at it anymore.
I think as a whole it looks nice. There are a few individual portraits that looked strange to me, Jan and Viconia in particular. But as art on their own, I think they are perfectly fine. Viconia confuses me a bit because it is a bit different to other "regular" drow art; then again who knows what regular is. Jan looks a bit human-like, like just an old human. Of course one can also ask how a gnome should look, but I kind of imagine them a bit different. These are mostly just details though.
IF your goal is to get more downloads, then I would not only make an image-related mod but also extend it with a few unique stories or mini-quests - nothing too big but something that is fun. For instance, in the "Unfinished Business" mod, my favourite quest add-on is the kidnapping of Boo. It's just great from a storyline perspective. That way users can relate more to the art AND the content that is offered; and with a small objective (e. g. simpler but fun or interesting stories, and mini-quests that are short), you probably do not need to invest too much time either.
By the way, if you have not done so ask Acifer. He likes art and may give some advice on growing mod content over time slowly. (And Lava but I think Acifer is more into art and design per se than Lava is; Lava is very profilic, as he created many unique mods.)