Beard Technology & Character Portraits

[rjshae]

Back in the old BG/IWD days, we used to select a character portrait to represent our PC(s). If they choose to follow that approach for PE, I was contemplating how it would be interesting if we had a little extra control over those portraits, such as the ability to tint features and apply layered hair and beard graphics. I'm not sure how practical that notion is, but some customization options might be a nice enhancement.

 

What do you think?

[jivex5k]

As long as I can import I'm happy.

I plan on role playing a cat with his head in bread.

Edited October 17, 2012 by jivex5k

[Nerei]

Personally if I want different colour hair on a portrait I normally just run it though PS. That is probably also the way we should expect to do such things.

 

That said it definitely should be possible to create portraits where you can control tints and facial hair simply with layers and tint control like there are in programs like PS. it would probably not be too hard either to write such code (depending on the image file naturally) if the portraits are made to support it from the start. If it is simply about layer number it should also be possible to make custom material to work with it.

 

Personally I would not mind it but it is not really all that high on my list of priorities either

 

In the end it would be all about value you get for the money put into it and a simple import option will probably give you almost as much for much less

[rjshae]

The IE portraits got kind of old after a while, so having some built-in customization capability would be nice if it can be done relatively easily and effectively.

[tox1c5lug]

Some form of facial customisation would be cool.

[Hormalakh]

I don't want 50 different nose types, 100 different ear types, and 60 different eyebrow types.

 

If a beard is going to show up in an isometric view, fine, put in beards. But don't waste time on things that don't much matter. I would rather have more voice types, more portraits, more skin tones, more body shapes than changing minutiae.

[rjshae]

Yes, fiddling with those minor features wouldn't add much value.

[HangedMan]

I don't want 50 different nose types, 100 different ear types, and 60 different eyebrow types.

 

If a beard is going to show up in an isometric view, fine, put in beards. But don't waste time on things that don't much matter. I would rather have more voice types, more portraits, more skin tones, more body shapes than changing minutiae.

What if it were 6 of each? Six of each facial feature (with some slight differences between races/gender), that would barely compare to the ridiculously large numbers you were using.

[Calmar]

Back in the old BG/IWD days, we used to select a character portrait to represent our PC(s). If they choose to follow that approach for PE, I was contemplating how it would be interesting if we had a little extra control over those portraits, such as the ability to tint features and apply layered hair and beard graphics. I'm not sure how practical that notion is, but some customization options might be a nice enhancement.

 

What do you think?

 

That would be really cool. I love portrait pictures more than just ingame faces on the character models.

[Tusck]

As a dwarf player, I would vote YES to any advancement in beard technology.

[Hormalakh]

I don't want 50 different nose types, 100 different ear types, and 60 different eyebrow types.

 

If a beard is going to show up in an isometric view, fine, put in beards. But don't waste time on things that don't much matter. I would rather have more voice types, more portraits, more skin tones, more body shapes than changing minutiae.

What if it were 6 of each? Six of each facial feature (with some slight differences between races/gender), that would barely compare to the ridiculously large numbers you were using.

 

No. I only want 1. The face is barely going to be seen. The face is going to be a portrait. Instead of wasting time and money on modeling extremely fine details that would never be seen, I'd rather they focus that energy elsewhere. I mean where would it stop? If we can change the nose and eyebrows, then why not the color of their fingernails? Why not the color of their eyes? It's unneccessary detail.

 

tl;dr - if its never going to matter visually in-game, why waste time/$ on it?

[rjshae]

That might

I don't want 50 different nose types, 100 different ear types, and 60 different eyebrow types.

 

If a beard is going to show up in an isometric view, fine, put in beards. But don't waste time on things that don't much matter. I would rather have more voice types, more portraits, more skin tones, more body shapes than changing minutiae.

What if it were 6 of each? Six of each facial feature (with some slight differences between races/gender), that would barely compare to the ridiculously large numbers you were using.

 

No. I only want 1. The face is barely going to be seen. The face is going to be a portrait. Instead of wasting time and money on modeling extremely fine details that would never be seen, I'd rather they focus that energy elsewhere. I mean where would it stop? If we can change the nose and eyebrows, then why not the color of their fingernails? Why not the color of their eyes? It's unneccessary detail.

 

tl;dr - if its never going to matter visually in-game, why waste time/$ on it?

That might be something modders can implement, if the developers leave in the hooks. But I agree that a modest selection would be more than sufficient: 3 hair styles/5 hair colors/6 flesh tones/4 facial hair options and a variable background would give you 360+ variants at a cost of 12 graphical overlays and a color palette. They might even be able to use the same production technique as with the area images: render in 3D then have an artist bring the face to life.

Edited October 19, 2012 by rjshae

[Hormalakh]

That might be something modders can implement, if the developers leave in the hooks. But I agree that a modest selection would be more than sufficient: 3 hair styles/5 hair colors/6 flesh tones/4 facial hair options and a variable background would give you 360+ variants at a cost of 12 graphical overlays and a color palette. They might even be able to use the same production technique as with the area images: render in 3D then have an artist bring the face to life.

 

I can get behind this. I was, however, under the impression that portraits would be akin to those in BG/BG2 where you have an artist's rendition as opposed to the 3D model. If you do have a 3D model portrait, then I can understand the different noses, eyebrows, etc being implemented. I just prefer artist renditions better, because you can always import your own picture in and there are many portraits made like this already from previous IE games.

 

If the models are going to be changable, I'd like the changes to be seen from the isometric view. Thus beards make sense, as well as hair length and color. Body types (chubby, thin, muscular, pear-shaped, apple-shaped, etc) would also be visible. These are the things that interest me.

[HangedMan]

That might be something modders can implement, if the developers leave in the hooks. But I agree that a modest selection would be more than sufficient: 3 hair styles/5 hair colors/6 flesh tones/4 facial hair options and a variable background would give you 360+ variants at a cost of 12 graphical overlays and a color palette. They might even be able to use the same production technique as with the area images: render in 3D then have an artist bring the face to life.

 

I can get behind this. I was, however, under the impression that portraits would be akin to those in BG/BG2 where you have an artist's rendition as opposed to the 3D model. If you do have a 3D model portrait, then I can understand the different noses, eyebrows, etc being implemented. I just prefer artist renditions better, because you can always import your own picture in and there are many portraits made like this already from previous IE games.

 

If the models are going to be changable, I'd like the changes to be seen from the isometric view. Thus beards make sense, as well as hair length and color. Body types (chubby, thin, muscular, pear-shaped, apple-shaped, etc) would also be visible. These are the things that interest me.

 

I was under the impression that it'd be a 3D model, though I'm not sure where I got that idea from. Maybe I've been playing too much NWN2.

 

However, if it is all about artistically drawn portraits, then I can totally agree with you about removing the genuinely useless superficial details (like nose size).