This guy says you have his money bag strapped to your belt:

That is... disgustingly brilliant. Brilliant and disgusting. I wish I had a use for that one, I'd take it right away.

These last two are awsome, not just because they cover the non "I want the most beautiful character you can possibly manage" but because they are well-matched in style with BG2 stuff. The fat guy can use a few tatoos, I think

To be honest I think the 3D portraits lend themselves better to being transformed into BG style. If you take the 3D body and BG armour/clothing it almost comes out perfect. 3D body and clothing is too photolike for my taste.

I really need to figure out Poser or something similar to start generating my own characters.

well you can make the armor and clothing in 3d to suit you needs. you just make them in a bg style.

There's two problems with that SK...revolving around the words "you" and "make"!

I've been trying to find a decent set of chainmail that fit with the game and never realised that one of the original BG1 portraits has a set (its the portrait Jastey uses as her avatar). I had to rework it some:

I think it's an interesting concept, but something that might need to be resolved is that the top of his head is missing (BG does not do it, Ithink, though NWN does), and the chainshirt looks too smudged - I actually did not realise it was chain till I read your post Cheers!

Several of the portraits in BG1 and 2 do miss out tops of heads...take a look at Minsc (and he is a part of most parties!). Some portraits show more of the body in order to show hands or items and such, there is quite a variation there...not so much in BG2 though.

I really dislike the idea of sticking exactly to BG2 format, every portrait in BG2 has a sameness to it that lends nothing to the game imo. Considerig that some players play with portraits that are not BG2-like the argument of similarity increasing immersion is less convincing.

Fair enough



Not in my party Have two other rangers I like waaaay more than him.

Yes well...I think we all know at least one of the rangers of which you speak!

Any of these better, (I don't like to attempt adding hair):

The original, and the best I've managed. Trying to:
1 Get rid of the beard
2 Lessen the association with the subject
3 Make it look less like a slightly awkward ranger and more like a slightly awkward cleric of Lathander--and no, this is not an attempt at introducing Faramir, the cleric. They're different, but I liked the expression on this screenshot.
4 Have the portrait face left for no reason other than that it seems more pleasing to have the dude face the game.
5 Crop to have the face take up 2/3 of the view (cropped bmp has the approximate proportions I'm looking for. It would be OK, but it still looks too much like: a photo, a ranger outfit, he only wears dark clothes
6 I managed to change the color of one eye, but didn't quite get there with the other. I'm shooting for something other than blue, but still believable. Hazel, greenish or brown would work. In the game, elves are described as having vividly colored eyes. Gavin's human. His eye color should be fairly non-descript.
7 I don't actually mind the way the leather armor came out. I'm kind of happy with the way the blur tool darkened the front by the neckline. This is kinda gross, but it makes it look like body oil and sweat have darkened the leather where it's closer to bare skin. Leaving that alone but changing the shirt and gambeson to something that looks more like unbleached, i.e. cheap, linen would be cool.


Edit: I had a go at it anyway. Not 100%, but better.

Edit 2: Had another go locally, and managed to make the nose more beaky using a pinch tool at about the midpoint. It's a toss up. I like both, really, but they still look like photos, sort of.

Edit 3: Best effort to date. I think it should be obvious which it is. This version is 82x128. The original is something like 250x3-something, so it's big enough.

I'll get on to this one shortly berelinde!

Here's one I did this evening, the red sky was suggested by a friend of mine, it was grey originally...not sure with the colours...it's Gultar the Blind, a seer who is heavily bound in local politics...often only "seeing" things that benefit him:

He looks great--and malevolent. Red sky is definitely more effective than grey would have been.

If you're still interested, the new edit (with the pink sky) is getting there, but it still has a ways to go.

Edit #800: I'm still waffling. Condemnations on my indecisiveness! It desperately needs to be baldurized, but I don't want to lose the expression. And I think I'm at the end of my abilities to change the photo.

Edit #799: You know, the more I think about it, the more I start to think I might already be there. At this point, I've got 2 portraits that I can live with, which is 2 portraits more than I started with. If you feel like it, and find yourself bored, that would be cool. If not, I'm still in better shape than I was.

Something I did quickly this evening:

Elfgirl (looks a bit weird eh?)

I like that one very much. Only thing, the hair on her left side look like a misplaced background (not the one beside the forehead, but the hair behind that, if you know what I mean).

Would you mind removing the elf-ear?

[EDIT: Being able to spell would help.]

First one of the new year, a very old Druid type guy:

That is a wonderful portrait!
About all his earrings, tho, I have an image of there being so many holes in his cartiledge that it would collapse inwards.

I like it

Another one for the new year. I'm not sure about the eyes (he had none when I started!) but I liked the look so I left them as they are:

The closer I look at his eyes the more I see a hint of sadness.

It's been a while so I decided to try another. I seen this girls photo online and thought the eyes were very nice. I really like the dress too...though I'm beginning to feel I'm over-using it.

Rab, the last one is breath-taking!! I´ve never created such a good one, no matter how hard I tried. Can I have the original? I would like to reserve this one. And the one above, too, hehehe... If you don´t mind, of course...

Glad you like it. Consider them both reserved!

There should be more ladies in the works soon, I find it easier to do women than men...or at least its harder to find male photos...perhaps thats an unconcious thing though...anyway...more later!

Hey, Rab, one request is crossing my mind - please, can you make that lady on the picture above suited in some armor? Perhaps cutted and pasted from original ones. I would like to have her in two versions - first one original like it is now, and the second one armored...

Thanks in advance...

Sure, no problem. Any armour in particular...either from original portraits or any I've done? See the link in my sig for the gallery.

No matter if you´ll use your own or the original one, just make it look good...
Freedom is on your side...

Kulyok mentioned elsewhere about a Xan alternate portrait. I had a go but I think for some the well known actor might be a bit too much...

There's something odd about this. I've done a lot to try to make it right but something is odd...still:

Don´t know if I hit it, but it looks to me the armor is a little bit bigger than it should be. Perhaps also the angle of armor is a little bit different than the rest of the image... But that could be only my thoughts. As I´m not a specialist, I would go with this picture nonenthless...

I might have a go at putting her in some other armour.

More later...

Is that Erica Campbell?

http://photobucket.com/mediadetail/?media=...p;pageOffset=19

Don´t know, maybe so.

I don't think it's that girl.

Let's just say the site where I got the photo from is not somewhere you'd let your children visit online.

Do a search on Erica Campbell.... just not at work.

First portrait I've tried doing in about 4yrs...

I liked the original scar/stitching connecting the two halves. My first efforts are not exactly what I imagined but until I get a working version of Photoshop I'll be using Gimp2 (free but inferior to PS in my opinion).

I probably shouldn't have posterized the version without the right hand but it was late and I was tired...recoloured the BG1 Skie armor.

Hi to everyone that might remember me from years back, not sure how productive I'll be but while the enthusiasm is here I might as well share it![attachment=4003:Keira_Kn...an_24883.png] [attachment=4000:skieALT1.png] [attachment=4002:skieALT.png]

Did this for yesterday for someone at SHS, a Jahiera/Viconia combo, hair needs tweaking:

[attachment=4004:VICALT.png]

Black hair version of the above:

[attachment=4005:VICALT2.png]

And if Edwin's sister was Jessica Biel:

[attachment=4006:bielL.png]

Edwin's portrait's hands seem more suited to a woman anyway.

Anyway, since you're posting portraits, here's one I made, fairly modified from another picture. I think I've added in a tad more shading to make the face less flat, but I've yet to upload that version. What do you think?

I've found if you are converting to BG portraits it helps if you use skin grafts from BG originals, overlay it on the sking and blend it in with opacity and smudge tools.

I think your picture would be better too if you sharpen it a little.

Good stuff.

What?

I'm not an artist of any sort and really don't know much about using GIMP, so I'm a little lost. I know about opacity and smudge, but skin grafts? You mean just copy/paste samples of the skin paint onto the new portrait?

Yes, I know it sounds odd but I'm not an artist either so I use what I think works and this is what has worked for me in the past. The BG portraits are pretty good and everyone wants something like that for their own in game portrait so using the BG portraits as grafts can help "baldurize" something that isn't even close, such as an actual photograph of someone.

Basically I find an original portrait with the colour skin I want, I select an area (for example forehead), I Copy and Paste As Layer into my new portrait. Overly it on the photos forehead, reduce the opacity and start lightly smudging. Voila you get a BG portrait type texture on your new portrait.

Like the Blackhair version in my picture above, jahiera's forehead, eyebrows and mouth, Viconias face, yoshimo's hair.

I might have to give it a try sometime. For now, that portrait is far down on my list of things to do, so I'd likely only get around to it if I'm bored of working on other stuff (which I was that day).

Do you use GIMP, PhotoShop or something else?

Currently I'm using Gimp2, most of the older portraits in this thread were done using Photoshop. I'd rather have photoshop but it is a bit expensive.

I tend to make portraits because I can do them fast which means the long hours needed to complete a mod can be avoided...

I had intended on putting this off until later, but then curiosity overcame me and I decided to see what I could do. The samples from the original BG portraits that I used came from Yoshimo (hair and skin, sparingly on the latter) You'll notice that I also cut the hair much shorter. This is because I couldn't get it the texture to look decent when it was longer, plus I think he just looks better with his hair more trimmed. The armor is a picture that I tried to make look a little less like a picture. GIMP's perspective tool came in very handy to make it fit the portrait. The leather straps were originally black, but a brown gave more contrast to the portrait. I haven't messed with the background yet, but I'd like to have a different one eventually.

What do you think?

Nice, I think he might need a longer neck and something in the landscape over his left shoulder to balance the image. Otherwise good stuff. The whole picture could probably be sharpened a little too.

The armor makes his neck look short, but actually, when I first cut his hair off with the older leather armor, his neck was too long! I think it's just a trick of the eyes. And yes, the background really needs to be redone. Thanks for the feedback.

Newest version. Old one next to it for comparison:

Definately an improvement, probably just needs some touching up to finish it off.