[HOWTO] Making Custom Portraits

[Ziroc]

Custom Portraits:
If you want to create and import a custom portrait for NWN, read on!

Download the portrait templates:HERE

Unzip portrait_templates.zip and inside you will find the following template images.

s_xxxxxH.tga (Huge)
s_xxxxxL.tga (Large)
s_xxxxxM.tga (Medium)
s_xxxxxS.tga (Small)
s_xxxxxT.tga (Tiny)

Rename the Files:
For male portraits: replace the "s" of each of the files with "m". Example: m_xxxxxH.tga

For female portraits: replace the "s" of each of the files with "f". Example: f_xxxxxH.tga

Now replace the x's with whatever you want, but it must be five characters long. Example: m_reedoH.tga, m_reedoL.tga, etc.

Next, bring the Templates into a Paint program that will save out .tga files. (Adobe Photoshop, Paintshop Pro, etc)

Take your custom image/portrait and paste it into all 5 template images, covering the WHITE space. Exact dimensions are printed on each template - you can just resize your custom image to those dimensions and paste, covering the white space. Make sure you DON'T go into the black space.

Now simply save all the images (24bit, if it asks) and place them into your /portraits directory, which you can find where you installed NWN. Warning: When saving do NOT compress the files whatsoever or it may cause problems.

That's it! Load up NWN and your portrait will be available when you create a new character!

[Katherine]

Thanks for the info, Ziroc.

Kat

Thankee Kind Sir!

[Cecil]

Swift! I was just thinking about this saturday night. Thanks. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Attalus]

Yeah, we tried and failed miserably. Thanks, Z.

[Micah Foehammer]

Z,

Which format do you save the custom pics as? 24 bit tga? 24 bit bmp?

I am assuming that you want to run these WITHOUT any compression when you save them?

thanks

[Micah Foehammer]

Z,

No luck with the custom portraits. I took an original, resized it exactly to the sizes specified in the .tga templates using Jasc Photo shop pro. Saved out each image as an uncompressed 24 bit .tga file and nada. All i get is a white screen in portrait screen.

What am I doing wrong????

[Micah Foehammer]

DOH!!! Nevermind .... I figured out what I was doing wrong. Thanks for the info Ziroc. Got it to work JUST fine. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Memnoch]

Just bringing this back up for people. I have to say that it's a damn unwieldy way to create custom portraits - try pasting your custom portrait into the Tiny-size template (16x25 pixels) and you'll know what I mean. [img]graemlins/awcrap.gif[/img] I would have thought that being such a customizable game and all, Bio would have tried to make this easier for people - custom portraits and soundsets add greatly in roleplaying a character.

So far this only works for NEW characters - if you have an existing character AFAIK the only way you can do it is to call up your DeBug console (the ~ key) - but remember that using that will flag your character as Not Legal, so just be aware.

Maybe there's some way to do this using the DM client - I don't know, I haven't looked at the DM client that closely yet.

If someone works out a way to replace current portraits with new custom ones WITHOUT using the Debug console could they please post that information here. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Ziroc]

Originally posted by Micah Foehammer: Z, No luck with the custom portraits. I took an original, resized it exactly to the sizes specified in the .tga templates using Jasc Photo shop pro. Saved out each image as an uncompressed 24 bit .tga file and nada. All i get is a white screen in portrait screen. What am I doing wrong????

They gotta be in 32-bit (TGA uses a transparency)