Portraits, Portraits everywhere and not a Face to Be Seen

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This is a technical question.

While waiting for my Jaheira post to be answered, I've been amusing myself with portraits. I've been searching out actual actors photographs to use as character portraits. I've surfed, cut, pasted, cropped and reformatted to be exactly the right size in .bmp format. So far so good.

I've saved the final results of my work in the Black Isle/SoA/portraits file. This seemed logical to me.

As my first experiment, I tried to change my protagonists picture in the "customize" section. I could have changed to any of the standard portraits, but my new additions weren't available.

When I went back and looked in the "portraits" file my new pics were there... but the classics weren't.

This leads me to believe that there is another "portraits" file somewhere, and I put my work in the wrong one. Upon using "find file..." my computer didn't find anything. So please

1)let me know where to put my portraits so I can access them. (And please assume I'm technically incompetent, when giving me advice. I manage to do a few things when I stubbornly beat my head against them long enough... but I'm in no way proficient)

2) Is there a CLUA method for changing NPC pics? I don't dare mention the other thing for fear of offending those whose help I need.

and 3)*If* I get this accomplished would anyone like to have access to these pics? If so how would I go about making them available?

So far I have:

Gigi Edgely- Chianna- Farscape (My protagonist, would make a good Bodhi/Valen)

Jet Li- Tai Chi Master title character (Yoshimo)

Keith Hamilton Cobb- Tyr- Andromeda (Valygar)

Allyson Hannigan- Evil Willow- Buffy the VS (Imoen)

Planning to do Liv Tyler- Jaheira, Trance from Andromeda- Aerie, Dwarf from LoR as Korgan, 1st officer from Voyager as Cernd. If there's enough interest I'll keep going and try to get all the major npcs a compatible portrait. Minsc suggestions anyone? (Big bald guys with face paint holding hamsters are strangely hard to find)

Thanks for any and all help.

 

CProgram Files\Black Isle\BGII - SoA

A empty "Portraits" file should be there.
That's the right place.
In BG1 you have to make your own file.
The regular protraits are elsewhere.

Don't forget the name can't be more than 7 (or was it 8?) characters long and must have a L or S at the end for each size Large or Small.

 

One more thing you should do if the files are in the portraits folder, but not showing up in the game. Try opening each file in MS Paint...then ater opening and closing each portrait, press F5 to refresh the folder. That's what happened to me, and that's how I fixed it.

 

If you're planning to override the default portraits for NPCs in the game, such as Imoen, you need to put the portraits in the 'override' directory. In Imoen's case, the portraits should be named 'NIMOENS.bmp', 'NIMOENM.bmp', 'NIMOENL.bmp'. Then restart the game, and Imoen looks a whole lot different all of a sudden. Dimensions (w,h): L=(210, 300), M=(110, 170), S=(38,60).

 

BTW, I made an excellent portrait of Catherine Zeta-Jones some day. The portrait was perfect for a female druid

 

Perhaps you did not notice the "custom"(?) button under the portrait, when you was selecting? It happened to my friends.

 

A few assets:
- there is very good site with celebrity portraits: www.karwal.dk
- the easiest way to change portraits, be it NPCs' or yours, is with ShadowKeeper; note that that is only temporary, for the current game - if you want permanent change, use the metod which was mentioned by Faded
- if I am not mistaken, L and S at the end of portrait names are only a naming convention - a bitmap will be used by the game even without those

 

L and S are so the game can tell whether it is small, large or medium

 

Thanks everyone for the suggestions.

Zvijer... the site you listed was fun. I'll see if he wants to borrow my work when I'm done.

Arryn... The "custom" portrait only works for the main character. I'm trying to avoid using SK cuz it messed up a game I was playing so badly that I had to start over.

The problem for me seemed to be... I originally downloaded the pics as jpegs, worked with them as jpegs, and then converted them to bitmaps, which my system deemed "invalid".

Once I downloaded them as bitmaps, and did all my work that way, and saved them as bitmaps (with the proper L or S designation) the computer did recognize them.
-phew- That was a lot of work spent for a little bit of knowledge.

I still would like to know if theres a way to change NPC pics without using SK.

 

Rename the portraits to the Bioware originals and stick them into your override folder. That will change the NPC portraits.

 

Thanks Rastor, that was just what I needed to know.