Companion portrait black-screened and now they don't exist in the story.

[Deitrix]

So after leveling him, Astarion's portrait became blacked out. I can still faintly see him, but it looks like an overexposed photo. Nothing serious I figured, so I pressed on.

But now his personal cutscenes aren't playing in camp. No him skulking off to eat. No bite night. No dead boar I can question him over. It feels like the game just forgot he's here from a story-perspective. Given that you need to get the bite-night cutscene to basically do ANY of his personal quest stuff, I'm pretty worried this has screwed up my entire run, since he was who I was gonna romance and all that.

Has anyone else had a problem like this? Is there a fix anyplace or do I need to restart my run. That would suck.

[Deitrix]

No one?

[Mr. Pestbird]

i can confirm that the portrait is also black for me. but not the cut-scenes. i did not have a single cut-scene yet. i am pretty early in the game. maybe he has no portrait because he is a vampire and has no mirror image?

[m.edwards]

This happened for me too but Astarion's portrait returned to normal after the next level up

[Punisher]

Two of my companions portraits (Gale and Shadowheart) became full black (can't see nothing) as they leveled up to level 3. Have not yet leveled up again to see if it will return to normal. Using DX11.

[Rail]

happens to me quite often when I reset builds, dunno what causes it but it gets kinda annoying if 2+ members have it at the same time lol

[Metalfyre]

I encountered it for first time today. All my companions and me are lvl 12. When inviting Gale into my group, his portrait is black

[edit] a restart solved the issue for me though [/edit]

[Helix]

I have had the dark portrait many times before. I dont understand how the portraits happen, but a funny side note... 2 of my male characters are shirtless in their portraits (1 is Astarion)... lol... They were fully clothed when they levelled up. I promise... lol lol lol

[Nihrahk]

I've had this with multiple companions, Astarion, Lae'Zel, Halsin, Wyll... I don't even need to level them up, just need to switch out a party member and there's a chance that companion will have a black screen portrait.

[C O M M U N A R]

You can fix the blacked porraits and bright hair by doing 2 things:
1) On lvl up screen choose an "add new class" (multiclass) option. Than cancle it and just continue your lvl up normally. That must fix the blacked portraits.
2) Make shure that you set "shadow quality" on "high" before leveling up, so your Tav/companion will not have a wierd hair color

[FlatFeet]

To anyone who finds this issue. The bug exists when you level up a character in a dark area for whatever reason.

You can respec the character with Withers, or wait until your next level and before you apply it, be in camp or a nicely lit area.

This video is what solved it for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcvjHDSoEOM