KregorRanger's Portrait Collection and How/Why To's
Posted: Thu Sep 11, 2014 8:07 pm
Portraits in NWN can be an awesome addition to the immersion of your character. Descriptions are great, and Arelith gives us the freedom to set and change it at will. But finding the perfect portrait can add a depth to your PC when you pull up your character sheet, or an onlooker examines you, or in the party screen. Personally, being someone who's used portraits even when I was playing standalone, I love a huge portrait collection, and it can even inspire your character's concept and personality.
I'm also very picky with my portraits, and they have to be both well done and artistically similar to the painted realism of the originals. So, I've decided to make a standing thread of my own collection.
I will update this collection dynamically. Updating both the master folder, and releasing incremental updates, so that anyone can just download the incrementals and add them in, rather than a full download.
First the Disclaimer:
Arelith is committed to a no downloads necessary policy, so this is neither a required nor admin sponsored collection. You don't need portraits to run the server, but if you want to see any of my PCs' portraits or many others, you will need these.
What's the best way to get these portraits into my game?
1) Download the linked package, and unzip it.
2) Open your NWN folder (the one that contains your NWN application).
3) If you already have a portraits folder, you want to avoid causing duplicates and the like. You need to rename your present portraits folder - something like OLDPortraits will do - then drag the new portraits folder in. If there's no existing portraits folder, and if you've never done portraits, there may not be, skip to step 4.
4) Simply drag this portraits folder into the NWN folder.
Renaming and keeping the old folder allows you to be able to go fishing for your own portrait again, should it not be included in mine. See below for further Q&A if this is the case, and you want your portrait in the pack!
How do I change my portrait?
You will need to page a DM, and ask them to transfer you to the PC modification area, once there, you can type -portrait along with the main part of the image name in your portraits folder.
For example, if you want to set a portrait which the largest image of the set is named po_hu_f_91_H.tga, you will type:
-portrait po_hu_f_91_
(if there's an underscore at the end, you do have to type it.) Presto! You're done.
I used your portrait folder instead of mine, and my PC now has a generic portrait
Then either I don't have your pc's portrait, or it could be present under a different image name than yours. If you want to compare images, see below for the upcoming browsable image catalog.
How can I find out what portrait my existing PC uses?
You can open your character file using Leto:
http://www.nexusmods.com/neverwinter/mods/61
In order to get a local copy of your character to open, while you are logged into Arelith, go to the main menu, and hit the "save character" button. A copy of your character will now be saved in the localvault folder in the NWN folder.
Alright, you don't have it, and I want to share my portrait with the server!
Submit it to me, via PM, in the form of a Dropbox link, and I will evaluate it, and if it's not a duplicate and passes my quality test, I'll include it in the next incremental update and the master folder.
I found/made/etc a cool image but don't have it in NWN portrait format
Still send me, I'll make it for you if it meets the same standards.
How can I tell if the portrait I want to use is a duplicate?
How can I pick out a cool portrait from the collection after creation?
I will be putting together a browsable contact sheet of every portrait available, with the image name you need to type in the -portrait command. This will be coming soon.
Important note: I want to give credit to artists where credit is due. So if you submit a portrait, if you know where you got it and from whom, please include that in your PM. I will include a credit below the largest image of the set.
How did you come about all of these portraits??
Years of collecting from various downloadable sources yielded a pretty sizable collection. Including some of my own conversions from sources found on Elfwood.com, and Deviantart.com. Added to this was Mrs. Mithreas' (LittleWeasel) own posted portrait collection, to which I then combed through and pulled out portraits based on these criteria:
1) Duplicate images - I culled in favor of those present in LittleWeasel's folder, when possible. I used a combination of an image matching app and human intelligence (RL hours worth of browsing).
2) Poorly scaled images - were either fixed to correct proportions, if possible, or given the boot, if not. Some of these included restoring from previous image sources, if I knew them.
3) PG13 filter - No frontal nudity to any extent, this meant culling a good number of Royo's images, and others.
4) Mismatched art styles - Anything that didn't at least approach an illustrative realistic approach was killed off. This means, no pen and ink, comic style art; no 3D CG art; no anime beefcake or cheesecake; no straight photos or Photoshopped images. I'm still pretty lenient in this, IMO, and do note that I will apply the same judgement to any submitted image that you want to include in future revisions of the pack.
And without further ado, the master collection:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/isxbosly6yj9c ... s.zip?dl=0
I'm also very picky with my portraits, and they have to be both well done and artistically similar to the painted realism of the originals. So, I've decided to make a standing thread of my own collection.
I will update this collection dynamically. Updating both the master folder, and releasing incremental updates, so that anyone can just download the incrementals and add them in, rather than a full download.
First the Disclaimer:
Arelith is committed to a no downloads necessary policy, so this is neither a required nor admin sponsored collection. You don't need portraits to run the server, but if you want to see any of my PCs' portraits or many others, you will need these.
What's the best way to get these portraits into my game?
1) Download the linked package, and unzip it.
2) Open your NWN folder (the one that contains your NWN application).
3) If you already have a portraits folder, you want to avoid causing duplicates and the like. You need to rename your present portraits folder - something like OLDPortraits will do - then drag the new portraits folder in. If there's no existing portraits folder, and if you've never done portraits, there may not be, skip to step 4.
4) Simply drag this portraits folder into the NWN folder.
Renaming and keeping the old folder allows you to be able to go fishing for your own portrait again, should it not be included in mine. See below for further Q&A if this is the case, and you want your portrait in the pack!
How do I change my portrait?
You will need to page a DM, and ask them to transfer you to the PC modification area, once there, you can type -portrait along with the main part of the image name in your portraits folder.
For example, if you want to set a portrait which the largest image of the set is named po_hu_f_91_H.tga, you will type:
-portrait po_hu_f_91_
(if there's an underscore at the end, you do have to type it.) Presto! You're done.
I used your portrait folder instead of mine, and my PC now has a generic portrait
Then either I don't have your pc's portrait, or it could be present under a different image name than yours. If you want to compare images, see below for the upcoming browsable image catalog.
How can I find out what portrait my existing PC uses?
You can open your character file using Leto:
http://www.nexusmods.com/neverwinter/mods/61
In order to get a local copy of your character to open, while you are logged into Arelith, go to the main menu, and hit the "save character" button. A copy of your character will now be saved in the localvault folder in the NWN folder.
Alright, you don't have it, and I want to share my portrait with the server!
Submit it to me, via PM, in the form of a Dropbox link, and I will evaluate it, and if it's not a duplicate and passes my quality test, I'll include it in the next incremental update and the master folder.
I found/made/etc a cool image but don't have it in NWN portrait format
Still send me, I'll make it for you if it meets the same standards.
How can I tell if the portrait I want to use is a duplicate?
How can I pick out a cool portrait from the collection after creation?
I will be putting together a browsable contact sheet of every portrait available, with the image name you need to type in the -portrait command. This will be coming soon.
Important note: I want to give credit to artists where credit is due. So if you submit a portrait, if you know where you got it and from whom, please include that in your PM. I will include a credit below the largest image of the set.
How did you come about all of these portraits??
Years of collecting from various downloadable sources yielded a pretty sizable collection. Including some of my own conversions from sources found on Elfwood.com, and Deviantart.com. Added to this was Mrs. Mithreas' (LittleWeasel) own posted portrait collection, to which I then combed through and pulled out portraits based on these criteria:
1) Duplicate images - I culled in favor of those present in LittleWeasel's folder, when possible. I used a combination of an image matching app and human intelligence (RL hours worth of browsing).
2) Poorly scaled images - were either fixed to correct proportions, if possible, or given the boot, if not. Some of these included restoring from previous image sources, if I knew them.
3) PG13 filter - No frontal nudity to any extent, this meant culling a good number of Royo's images, and others.
4) Mismatched art styles - Anything that didn't at least approach an illustrative realistic approach was killed off. This means, no pen and ink, comic style art; no 3D CG art; no anime beefcake or cheesecake; no straight photos or Photoshopped images. I'm still pretty lenient in this, IMO, and do note that I will apply the same judgement to any submitted image that you want to include in future revisions of the pack.
And without further ado, the master collection:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/isxbosly6yj9c ... s.zip?dl=0