Portrait problems...

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you know what's frustrating, when you have tons of cool portraits and you can't decided what to use for your thief, ranger etc.... Anyone else have this problem?

[ March 26, 2003, 19:16: Message edited by: Taluntain ]

 

Yes - especially when I'm creating a full party game. The portrait you choose seems to dictate the overall theme and personality or your character, even though it may seem like a very superficial thing.

Maybe you should try freshening up your portrait library? You can't choose one because you've looked them all over a million times. Do you have any NWN portraits? I found them to be a welcome charge to my game. It's like I had a whole new crop of PC's to choose from.

 

I hadn't thought of going through the NWN portraits actually.. thanks!

 

No problem - do you want to know how to get them?

You need photoshop for my method (image ready, maybe but I'm not sure)

 

any version of photoshop would do? I got ver. 6

 

Perfect. Here goes:

1. Open PS first, then NWN.
2. Make like you're creating a character, then get to the portrait selection screen. Select the portrait you want (so it's big on the left side of the screen).
3. Hit "print screen' on your keyboard. This will copy a screenshot to your clipboard. (any other screenshot method works fine here)
4. Hit 'ALT - TAB' to toggle to photoshop.
5. Open a new document (this should default to RGB, 800 x 600, since that's what's in the clipboard).
5. Now select 'Edit, Paste', or Ctrl-V to paste the screen in the document as a layer. Repeat this for as many of the portraits as you want.
6. Choose the crop tool, and set dimensions at the top. Width=110px, Height=170px, Res=72. This will perfectly crop all the layers beneath it as well.
7. Save these files as bitmaps. These will be the Medium size portraits.
8. For the small portraits, repeat step 6, only with these crop dimensions: W=38, H=60, same res. Change the color from RGB to Indexed (image, mode, indexed).

Voila! Whole new army of killer portraits that need no colour correcting or anything because they came from a game, so they will look perfect onscreen in your BG2 game. Same for BG1 and IWD 1 and 2.

This totally revitalized my game, especially since I tried assigning new portraits to all the NPC's, just to give the game a new spin. It feels like a new game.

 

Some new outfit for Jaheira?

Actually I think you'd be better off with a self-made portrait for your most beloved character. Nothing feels better than putting yourself in a shining plate mail in your BG2 game.

 

Actually, the problem I have is that all the pictures I want are in the 'portraits' folder, but when I run SoA/ToB, half of them don't show up. If anyone has this problem, and hopefully a solution, please tell me.

 

It could be a few things - the number one reason probably is that the name is too long. Now when you say they don't show up, do you mean you can select the name but you only get the question mark head thing as a portrait, or do they not show up as in they aren't even selectable in your directory?

If self made, did you save them as the right type of file?

[ March 28, 2003, 00:27: Message edited by: Death Rabbit ]

 

large: BMP, 110*170*24bit
small: BMP, 38*60*8bit

The name (before the dot) can't be longer than 8 signs.

 

KICK ASS! Thanks DeathRabbit! This will really help alot

 

No problem - let me know how it goes!

With that method, you can do the same thing with other games, too. I've taken images from Nox (love that game) and a few others. Works great. I like variety with portraits.

 

Good lord..I think I have effectively tripled my portrait stash with the NWN ones...

LOL if I had the patience and skill, I could make a mod using ALL these portraits