Yes, it needs touching up, but how to go about it is something I don't have any ideas for right now. The armor and the face still look like separate styles, though they blend in much, much better than they did before. Perhaps a little less light edge along the right side of the armor? The light isn't supposed to be coming from that direction.

Yeah there is some light edging on the right side of the picture, it looks like the kind of thing that happens when you cut and paste onto another background. Is that what you did to replace the background? If you still have layers to work with perhaps using eraser with a low opacity on those edges might work. If not, make a copy layer and clone some of the background on the bottom layer so it goes below the shoulder, then erase the light edge on the armor on the upper layer, that way you aren't left with any empty space behind after erasing.

Also the lower left piece of armor (if forms a little square in the lower left) looks like it was missed on the sharpening, it is a lot blurier than the rest of the armor.

It's still in layers. I think the bright edging on the one side is because the original lighting in the armor picture came from different directions, whereas I'm trying to get it to come from just one. I should be able to erase it easily enough... that's just something I missed earlier. On the piece of armor, that's a separate layer and is actually the top of a shield (he's left-handed), so it's not surprising it got missed in the sharpening process since I only worked with individual layers with that tool. Really, I'm not even sure I can sharpen multiple layers at a time. It is somewhat less blurry than the previous picture, but I can see it needs work done. I'll see what I can do with it.

Thanks for the advice.

A quick one for tonight, Natalie Portman:

[attachment=4007:nportmanL.png]

Did you add lines to her face, or did you actually find a picture of an actress minus makeup?

I used the paint tool in gimp set to Colour (instead of Normal) and picked a colour from a BG portrait skin tone and painted over her face. It evens out the skin tone and generally erases blemishes etc unless you purposefully leave them in.

Do the same thing to change armor colours etc in other pictures without losing the shading.

That's the method I used. Whether it works well or not depends on the original color of what you're painting over. For instance, color, hue, saturation, etc.,... none of those worked well when trying to paint over black armor. I was able to use it slightly, but most of the effects on the armor that I did were done manually. The face worked out much, much better by just using a couple of the paint tools (color and hue I think).

Another for today:

[attachment=4008:galifanL.png]

from head:

[attachment=4009:zach_gal...allpaper.jpg]

The face still looks like the picture. I wonder what blurring it, then resharpening would do? Or speckle painting with various skin tones, and then blending in? The BG style, to me, is hard to emulate. It's like they have duller coloring (but very saturated if that makes sense) and exaggerated highlights (Yoshimo's nose tip and lower lip). That particular head does work well with the armor, but, to me, it's just not blending. Not saying I could do a better job, but I'm just trying to give an honest critique. Hope you don't mind.

No worries, the main reason we use photo's is because we probably aren't capable of painting a face from scratch! (At least I'm not!!).

The original BG artists probably just came up with a "look" and made their portraits based on rough sketches by whoever was decent enough in the design team.

Us poor folk are stuck with photo's, blurring and anything else we can make Gimp/PS do.

I couldn't help but mess with your latest one. I added highlights to his hair and beard, nose, forehead, cheeks, and above the eyes where the bone protrudes. Since the armor seems to be the object of a lot of light from the front, I figured the face should be, too. Of course, since I changed the hue slightly to be a little more warm (I think that's the term!) and then upped the contrast slightly the highlights aren't that bright compared to the original. I recolored the lips because I thought they stood out a bit too much. The eyes have a bit more glow to them (styled after Yoshimo's portrait), though I think they now look a little funny in the small portrait size. Is it better? I don't know. I think I successfully made it look a little less like a picture, but perhaps I might have tinkered around too much. You can judge.

Anyway, here's the end result:

The hair definitely looks better but I'm not so sure around the eyes, something wrong there alright.

I agree. I think doing the contrast/brightness thing exaggerated the lighting/shading around the eyes and makes them look funny. I only spent about ten minutes on it, so it was a rush job. But anyway, it was mainly for the fun of trying something with it. Probably could fix the eyes fairly easily by manually re-shading it. Also, I don't think more brightness on the eyes themselves works very well for this particular portrait. Oh well!

I did this one last night. The object was to work more with the face and try to get the style of highlighting that BG has in the portraits. I don't think it's too bad. I didn't focus too much on anything else yet.

Much less photo-like, good stuff! So what did you do to it?

I've been playing around with various gimp settings trying to get a better BG feel to photos but not having much success. If I could get that to a decent level there would be huge catalogue of source material for portraits.

My process is:

1. Mildly blur the face texture.

2. Select all the skin (including that with facial hair). Make sure the eyes are not in the selection.

3. Copy Yoshimo's skin and use it as a brush.

4. Use the paint brush under Color setting and paint over the skin. Do it again with the Hue setting. I can't remember the opacity.

5. Slightly up the brightness and contrast.

6. Paint in (with about 40% opacity, I think) plain white over all the areas I want to highlight - Cheekbone, forehead, lip, nose bridge, and above the eyes.

7. Blend the white in using a smudge tool. Do this enough so it fades back into the skin tone.

8. Darken the face right beneath the cheekbone I just highlighted. If I don't do this, his face will look flat or very wide.

9. Earlier processes had removed a lot of the stubble, so I had to put some more back in. I used the Small Galaxy brush to paint pure black (lower opacity) over his chin.

10. I added a slight glint to his eyes, as in Yoshimo's portrait.


That's about it. It took a fair bit of trial and error (about three hours of work) to get it to look right. I think I'm getting better though! I also noticed that while initially I found photos more difficult to "Baldurize" that this one was quite a bit easier than the portrait I did before.

I'll have to try that out myself. I got bored with the effort on real photo's so went looking for some 3D art online, found a decent chubby face done by an 11yr old in Poser...

[attachment=4010:monkL.png]

[attachment=4011:headexpress1.png]

A clean-shaven gnome?

For color, did you just paint a brown over the original lighting on that?

Yeah just picked a skin tone and painted, there are some highlights in various parts but not much.

I was going for a monk type look, the hair at the top was just a coincidence left from the garrick portrait that was used as a background.

I didn't pay too much attention to the hair. At a glance, I thought it was specially added there, sort of like a ponytail without any other hair around it. The model seems to work well enough (though I think it probably needs a bit more blending), but I think you'll get the best results from a photo. I'm not sure about BG2, but I heard that the BG1 portraits were pictures of people that the artist painted over.

Just for the fun of it, I tried drawing, from scratch, the same face that I did earlier. I put it next to that which I was trying to copy. Note that I didn't put one over the other to get proportions or anything. It was entirely freehand just to see what I could do. I probably need a wee bit more practice before I can do hand-drawn (or should I say mouse-drawn?) portraits.

Anomen with a younger face:

Nice stuff, the face still seems a little out of place with the armor but every pic you're getting closer.

I've given up trying to get perfect Baldurization, now I'm just going for entertaining myself.

Something I did for someone at SHS but not sure if it will be good enough, no matter, I like Elizabeth Banks (the source photo).

[attachment=4012:auroraL.png]

Also I like Scarlett Johanssen...but who doesn't? Hair still gives me a problem but meh....

[attachment=4013:scarlettL.png]

Loved the world over...by some:

[attachment=4014:bieberL.png]

And another:

[attachment=4015:zooeyL.png]

Who?

I was thinking today that with BGEE some people might like BG portrait blanks that they could just stick any face into, even their own.

For example:

[attachment=4016:EGREYL.png]

Get a passport photo of yourself, chop out your face, stick it in the hood, erase the bit that goes over the fingertip, maybe add some shadows on the outer edge, you're done.

Turn those hands into black gloves and you have a ringwraith.

Hehe, Nazgul, Child of Bhaal...?

Alternative Minsc?

[attachment=4017:barb2L.png]

Alora's unmentioned twin sister:

[attachment=4018:errorL.png]

I was thinking Nazgul at first, like I mentioned, but why not something a little more BG-oriented? Like this:





On the "new Minsc" the skin tone between the head and the body is slightly different. Perhaps, that a small tweak more to the red might work with the color balance or hue tool?

Nice though it might be more fitting if the skull was bone instead of a golden hue.

Yeah the main problem I had with MinscB was that the body from the BG portrait has very smooth skin appearance and the head was heavily textured. No matter what coloration I tried there was always a difference.

One thing I try to remember is that all these are the Epilogue size portraits and many of the issues are really not noticeable at 110x170. Also a reason why I don't like many of the full body portraits people use, they look great in large but really fail in game when reduced down.

The skull was bone, but I darkened it because of the hood. Now that you mention it it does look more gold than shaded though. Bummer.

The shiny skin on the one portrait seems to be obtained by an extensive use of light with dark and almost avoiding shades that are between. At least, that's how I came moderately close to it in the redo of Anomen up above.

I also don't like the full body portraits for the reason you mentioned, but also because they don't match the original portraits at all.

Are you intending on putting a portrait pack together, or just do this for the sake of something interesting to do?

Just for the sake of something interesting to do. There is a gallery up with some of the really old stuff I did a few years ago here at BWL and I have a mod that gives a dialog portrait (the smallest size) to every npc in BG2, that was funny and time consuming to do. I had a forum of my own up until recently but it was too much effort with everything else going on in life.

http://www.blackwyrmlair.net/~rabain/rabgallery/

I'll continue to mess around with portraits as long as it entertains me, even if no one is watching.

Did this today, not sure about how well it meshes with the clothing but I think the skin tones are at least decent:

[attachment=4019:songL.png]

[attachment=4020:Head_01.jpg]