Gripe: I'm starting to really hate character portraits in CRPGs

[Aetrion]

I know that character portraits are a long time feature in these games, but it's honestly getting annoying to me that we're at a point where the characters themselves are so visually advanced that you can clearly see when they look nothing like their portrait.

When character portraits started the figure on the screen was really tiny and indistinct. You needed a portrait to know what the person looks like. Now you have a full customization with hair styles and augments, and all of it is bullcrap if you have no portrait that even half way matches them.

We're also at the point where you need up upload an image at 692x1024, so even most of the 40k art you can find on the internet isn't usable because you can't find it in that resolution.

I'm just so done with character portraits. If you're going to give me a character editor just put the face of the character I made in the freaking portrait instead of giving me all these options that I can only use if I don't care that the picture looks completely different.

This feature was great back in the day when the character on the screen was just a generic figure with no features of their own, but now it's just absolute trash to make a highly elaborate digital illustration such a huge part of a customizable character that looks perfectly fine on its own.

You could at least include some default portraits where the face is cloaked in shadow or hidden behind a helmet. Better yet, just get rid of this awful, awful feature that has become this stupid millstone around the neck of the CRPG genre.

[robomagon]

If you really want your portrait to look like your character, you can zoom in on their face in the inventory screen, take a screenshot, and then make that your portrait.

[Tryryke]

YaBoiDRAX lähetti viestin:

Peace lähetti viestin:

Didn't use a costume one.

welp this is your only option i think

https://www.nexusmods.com/warhammer40kroguetrader/mods/1

I hear you can change pictures and everything if you respec your character at the high factorum(?), but that necesitates, well, respeccing the character

[robomagon]

Tryryke lähetti viestin:

YaBoiDRAX lähetti viestin:

welp this is your only option i think

https://www.nexusmods.com/warhammer40kroguetrader/mods/1

I hear you can change pictures and everything if you respec your character at the high factorum(?), but that necesitates, well, respeccing the character

You can just use a mod to change your portrait at any time.

[SethSteiner]

Beezus Hrist lähetti viestin:

Larian innovated and changed this all the way back in 2017, and other developers who make crpgs need to follow their lead.

But why? 3D-Portraits are excactly like the 3D model but they still lack in style. I don't disagree to choice but saying that they innovated (which they don't, using 3D-models isn't new) or that others need to follow their lead is something I can't get behind.

[Artus Shelby Rubicon V Alpharius]

Aetrion lähetti viestin:

...
I'm just so done with character portraits. If you're going to give me a character editor just put the face of the character I made in the freaking portrait instead of giving me all these options that I can only use if I don't care that the picture looks completely different.
...

I'm very happy with the Picture Uploader in the game. The Imperail commissar design fit's my char "Ibram Gaunt" very well.

[Zid]

Use whichever free AI image generation webpage and you can make your own character portraits very easily, probably wont be 100% either but getting it custom and reasonably close is good enough for me at least.

Here is an example: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3109907171

[Aetrion]

Beezus Hrist lähetti viestin:

Larian innovated and changed this all the way back in 2017, and other developers who make crpgs need to follow their lead.

Agreed. This tradition for tradition's sake thing is silly. Character portraits used to be an awesome feature when graphics were really limited and you had no other way to customize your looks, now it's a huge limitation to saddle people with.

[Aetrion]

The portraits are easily the most expensive to create single asset in the whole game.

[Forblaze]

I actually ended up refunding this game because I couldn't get through the character creator because of this. It's really difficult for me to feel like a character is mine when there are these highly stylized and detailed portraits that just don't match my character. I would much rather have dynamic portraits that actually reflect what my character looks like even if they were low quality.

[gurugeorge]

For a long time, portraits made from character models looked pretty bad, but more recently games have started making them (I think Deadfire had them? Can't remember, some fairly big games recently, maybe BG3?).

It's a bit of a toss up because imaginative painted portraits do have a lot more character still than anything that could be made from 3-d models (not because 3-d models couldnh't have the variety that portraits have, but because they don't, becuase they have to budget by having a limited range of facial types and potential facial adjustments).

But yeah, it's certainly much more viable now to have portraits lifted from 3-d models than it used to be.

I don't think the 3-d models in Owlcat games are refined enough to do it with though.

I do like the innovation Owlcat made of giving you 3-d models that are already set up to look as close to the portraits as possible. More games should definitely do that, it saves a lot of faffing about.

The thing is though, you can never have enough portraits I find. The stock ones that come with games are always too few. I actually make characters by looking at the stock portraits plus a whole bunch of custom portraits and seeing what the portrait suggests to me as a character, and then try and make both the build and the model fit as close as possible.

[Moscato Breeze]

I used a random portrait I found online. I didn't even bother sizing I didn't have to. like the guy above said I used AI art. Super quick and convenient it's not like I take pride in it or anything.

[Balekai]

I fixed my problem with portraits over the years... by learning how to make my own form existing assets or portraits from the internet.

I never thought of AI generation though as posted above by Ziddan. I may run my custom portraits through one to possibly make them better!!

Making my own portraits really started after dabbling in meshes and textures for custom armours in Bethesda games, Neverwinter Nights 1-2 and Dragon Age 1. I gained enough skill using photoshop/GIMP digital umm artistry? That all I need now is the right base Portrait and some in game resources.

For example I just made my own version of the female Psyker portrait that has the exact same face, hair, augmentations and makeup of my in game character. The great thing about this game is that the head textures and art match up almost perfectly with some of the default portrait art. It only took me a few hours.

1. Create character look in character creation.

2. In character creation screen, zoom in as much as possible and get the character's body facing and looking the exact same angle as it should be in the portrait.

3. Take Screenshot(s).

4. Screenshot the biggest version of the psyker portrait. The best thing to have done would have been to extract the real sized version, but I couldn't figure it out. Which unfortunately adds more steps when it comes to unsharping and despeckling to recreate resolution in GIMP after scaling image parts up and down.

5. Scale up base Image to proper Fulllength portrait size. Unsharping/Despeckling with enchanced tools.

6. Open character creation screenshots and start cropping/copying/pasting as new layers the in game face, hair, and anything else (like feathers) into different new layers. The more layers you make of different parts the easier it becomes to edit them separately and create the perfect portrait, (or texture for mods).

7. Use your skills at photoshop/GIMP to move and scale the head/face/hair layers into position. Change the colour and hues accordingly. Blend the neckline perfectly by creating temporary layers of default neckline then smoothing over, making a seemlessly looking new face. My own looks more default than the actual default Psyker face!! :D

8. Save all the layers seperated as you go so you can changethings up on the fly,

9. When completed merge down all the layers in order then exract as Fulllength in chosen directory.

10. Start sizing up your portraits for Medium and Small with scaling, unsharp tool and despeckle. Making them look identical to the default type of small/medium versions.

ENJOY! :P

...or just do what Ziddan suggested. New technology to cure us from the dreaded I CAN'T FIND THE RIGHT PICTURE DANGIT!!" problem. :D

[D-Black Catto]

I always use custom portraits and don't look at the in game graphics close, as they are ugly and irrelevant

[Balekai]

Here's the latest portrait i made for my character with the steps on the previous page:

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198010398692/screenshot/2267063580005570493/

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198010398692/screenshot/2267063580005568555/

[Noin Trongaz]

Blackdragon lähetti viestin:

A game should just have decent graphics and use your full custom appearance as the portrait. Case in point: Baldur's Gate 3.

And no, that game's graphics should not be considered "exceptional". It's 2023, those kinds of visuals should be the NORM. Hell, Skyrim mods can look better, and that game is 12 years old.

I completely disagree. If having BG3's graphics should be a requirnment, then a lot of games will never be done.
In general, I find myself to only enjoy the graphics for the first few hours and later don't notice them that much. BG3 had millions in budget and a huge team.
I feel like the increasing graphical fidelity is often a disadvantage rather than an advantage. Studios spend hundreds or thousands of hours making assets the details of which most people will never even notice. One cutscene of the quality of BG3 is dozens if not hundreds of hours of work for several professionals from different fields.

About Skyrim mods - trust me, as someone who tried modding a bit, most people don't realize how much effort and sweat go into that stuff. People were modding that game for 12 years to arrive to what is possible today and some of the bigger mods have had enough people and working hours invested into it that they could make their own game with this much effort. What you see today in the assortiment of mods availible for the game is the result of efforts of tens of thousands of people, done over longer than a decade.