Do you want your character portraits to be like Baldur's Gate or NWN2?

[Feldoth]

Why not something in between? I posted this while kickstarter was still going crazy, so it got buried pretty fast, but so far I've not heard any (accurate) criticism of it: http://forums.obsidi...ered-portraits/

 

It doesn't account for everything, but I think it provides a nice balance between 2D art and customization.

 

I read your ideas, but I was honestly confused. Did you want layers so that when your character wears a helmet, it would unlock tahat layer in your portrait or were you talking strictly about changing colors and the like for a single image? I feel that a image editor sort of isn't worth the trouble for devs because one could always do that in photoshop and reimport the portrait.

when you make the 3D model of your character in a game you get to choose from various hair styles, colors, face types and so on, combine them and create your avatar. what he means, is they can implement something like that in a 2D image fashion. so you have 10 faces, 15 hair styles, 5 hair colors and 8 clothe types, all made in 2D BG style for your portrait. you can combine them any way you want to make a custom portrait for your character

however i still think the best solution is to make a character in 3D and then take a picture of him and use it as a portrait... EVE style for those who know, with maybe a an effect added to make it look hand drawn

 

No. This is not at all what I mean.

 

I mean being able to change colors - that's all. Possibly change visibility of something like a beard, but that's a stretch. If you look at that thread I took a picture of a random guy and changed his hair color, I didn't give him a new hair style or different facial expression.

[Tycreager]

I think I would like The old style BG portraits, doing this or taking a snapshot of your character would be cool. That way it could satisfy both parties on the subject. Also I liked the idea of the portrait changing based on certain things that happen to you.

[Frenetic Pony]

While I want fully 3d characters, I quite enjoyed the hand drawn portraits. For that matter, even though I love digital painting (both enjoying and drawing in) I'd love to see the portraits hand drawn. It tends to make features bolder and not allow a ton of detail, which I think works better on those small portraits, relative to the amount of screen it takes up.

[Theobeau]

+1 for BG style.

 

There were some gorgeous vanilla and customised portrait sets for BG1, surely enough to satisfy most player's preferences re: gender, race, aesthetics etc...

 

And as the poster "Tiax rules all" proves, there remains quite a few talented fans out there more than willing to make custom sets for the new game.

 

Providing a way for players to tweak the portrait in-game would be a great touch.

[mstark]

Artists renditions, and a massive selection, would be wonderful .

 

I'd also love if they did something along the lines of each character "portrait" being a set of images, a full body image, a zoomed portrait image... to be used in different parts of the UI.

[teknoman2]

if they make indeed BG style portraits for the game, i hope they make many and most importantly many that are not used for npc's. i really did not like the fact in BG that all the portraits you could choose from, were used for some npc and he would get another portrait if you had used his as yours. they should have an selection of portraits npcs do not use, from which to choose your character's

[JediMB]

I'd like a poll option for "Both."

 

Would be nice to have the option for either a customized 3D portrait or a 2D image either provided by Obsidian or added by the player.

[Wighnut]

I loved the portraits in BG2. I dont necessarily need too many customization in that regard.

[eselle28]

if they make indeed BG style portraits for the game, i hope they make many and most importantly many that are not used for npc's. i really did not like the fact in BG that all the portraits you could choose from, were used for some npc and he would get another portrait if you had used his as yours. they should have an selection of portraits npcs do not use, from which to choose your character's

 

Given that there are only 8 companions and that one of the backer rewards was being able to include a portrait in the game, I think it's safe to say that there will be non-NPC portraits available. There aren't many times that I criticize BG or BGII, but this will be one of them: that was a terrible design decision and made me really annoyed until I figured out how to import third party portraits.

[Hormalakh]

I'd like a poll option for "Both."

 

Would be nice to have the option for either a customized 3D portrait or a 2D image either provided by Obsidian or added by the player.

 

Both would always be the best option. But we live in a world with limitations on money and time.

[Infiltrator_SF]

2D, absolutely. The portraits made by an artist create a much, much better feeling of a character than some bland 3D model.

[The Guilty Party]

3d models can be nice (I thought they fit well in Dragon Age), but for a game like this, I feel 2d portraits can be made to match the art-style of the world better.

[Cannibal George]

2D, absolutely. The portraits made by an artist create a much, much better feeling of a character than some bland 3D model.

I agree

 

i still remember every face of the BG2 companions because the portraits made them feel more real.

3D Portraits always look a bit artificial

[JFSOCC]

based on the description, I voted for baldurs gate, but If you could give me a visual example of NVN2, I might change my mind.

 

I also would very much like the option to import my own images for portraits.

[Jarrakul]

My vote is for Baldur's Gate, for two reasons. First, those portraits just have so much more character than the 3d rendered ones. It takes some serious rendering to approach the artist's hand, and I don't think PE has the resources to implement rendering on that level. Second, the ability to import your own portrait is just crazy awesome. It's a rare day indeed when I play Baldur's Gate with a stock portrait (Icewind Dale, on the other hand... I love those portraits).

Also, I get a lot of my character inspiration from art, so it's sometimes nice to import that art directly as the character's portrait.

[TrashMan]

I'm not sure if this has been answered and this question came up in another thread (Beard technology). I wanted to get everyone's opinion: would you like to have your portraits show up as they did in Baldur's Gate (an artist's rendition) or as they did in Neverwinter Nights 2 (as a 3D model)?

 

Please tell us why in either case. In my case, I've detailed my own pros and cons.

 

Baldur's Gate portraits: Limitless customization. Ability to truly make your character look how you want them to. Inability to change the portrait when wearing different headgear or armor, or showing injuries. (Could use layered images to fix this however)

 

Neverwinter Nights 2: Ability to change portrait due to injuries, different armor, etc. Easier to make animated portrait (head looks around, makes faces, portray emotions, etc). Will never be as detailed as artist's rendition. Limited by polygon count can make faces look blocky. Takes longer for devs to implement.

 

For serious?

 

You are limited by the starting portraits and by what you can find on the internet. So the underlined doesn't really hold water...not truly.

Making a custom portrait is basicly modding. Which is no different from downloading a hair mod for skyrim and similar, to get the exact look you want.

 

The 2D portrait import is far simpler to do tough, so it gets points for that.

 

Personally, for a game like PE I prefer 2D portraits. Detail face morphs and face modelings are a waste of time and resources given the perspective.

[Mr. Magniloquent]

I prefer the 2-Dimensional artist renderings in a game with a top-down isometric view. Comparibly to actual life, I don't spend a great deal of time looking at my own face. Therefore, characterizing NPCs is a much greater priority. For that reason, artist renderings are better at displaying an NPC's nature and personality. Custom portraits are able to flesh out details of a character much more richly than in-game renderings. I found in in game rendered portaits of Dragon Age: Origins to be far more forgettable than the painted portaits of older games.

[Ywerion]

I'm in for old school, but truth be told I will take anything, Obsidian pulls out.

  So far I had not a single complaint about features they are cooking.

Edited March 5, 2013 by Ywerion

[SunBroSolaire]

Painted avatars for me. I think that's more in keeping with the spirit of the game - painted backdrops, text-based dialogue. The characters being 3D is kind of a necessary concession so armor and weapons can be represented, but I think they should stick to the painterly aesthetic as much as possible.

[ScytheKnight]

I've seen both kinds done well... and done badly.

 

But in all honestly, with the type of game Obsidian is looking at producing I can't really see them doing anything other than 2D portraits as it is part of what made the clasic Infinity Engine games what they are.

[TrashMan]

I prefer the 2-Dimensional artist renderings in a game with a top-down isometric view. Comparibly to actual life, I don't spend a great deal of time looking at my own face. Therefore, characterizing NPCs is a much greater priority. For that reason, artist renderings are better at displaying an NPC's nature and personality. Custom portraits are able to flesh out details of a character much more richly than in-game renderings. I found in in game rendered portaits of Dragon Age: Origins to be far more forgettable than the painted portaits of older games.

 

 

There's 2 reasons for that:

 

1) In-game you could see the actual faces of characters and NPC's during gameplay (if you zoomed) and during cutscenes.The actual face takes the role of the portrait.

In old games all you had was a portrait, so you spent hours staring at it. Of course it will be memorable.

Don't tell me Alistairs face (DA:O) isn't memorable.

 

2) Since they weren't as necessary or important as in old games, the actual 3D portraits were much smaller, to save UI space. If you recall, in the character screen the large portrait took up half the damn screen.

 

 

Given the nature of PE, 2D portraits are the way to go.

But maybe they should take inspiration from Jagged Alliance 2 and make them animated 2D portraits. I loved that in JA2.

[DeathQuaker]

I'd really prefer the capture of the 3D model, personally. I like the portrait to look like the character I actually designed in char creation. In games where you had to pick a portrait, I never felt like any of the available portraits ever looked like what I wanted my character to look like (and of course they don't change if you change your equipment, which is a feature I like), and hunting for a custom to import is annoying.

 

Course if there'd be an easy way to implement either that'd be the nicest compromise, but I'd rather them put efforts into other areas than character portraits.

 

And I'd settle for whatever works best with the interface.

Edited March 6, 2013 by DeathQuaker

[Lephys]

Given the nature of PE, 2D portraits are the way to go.

But maybe they should take inspiration from Jagged Alliance 2 and make them animated 2D portraits. I loved that in JA2.

I don't have any first-hand experience with JA2, so forgive me if this is the same thing, but... what if they were like the old id Software shooter portraits (Doom... Wolfenstein 3D)? Just subtely animated in general, but then, displaying pain and damage-taking animations whenever that character, well... took damage. Also, their face would get bloodied/bruised, etc. to the point of barely looking like your character could even see out of one not-quite-swollen-shut eye when you were below about 15% health-or-so.

 

Ahhh, that would be awesome. (Again, sorry if that's no different from JA2.)

[TrashMan]

It's similar to what JA2 did. You can probably see it on you tube videos.

 

Every time a mercenary talks (and itz's often..when they spot or kill an enemy or something important, when they get hit, or when they comment on something), their portrait is animated. Their lips and eyes move. It's one of hte things that made JA2 mercs so memorable.

 

Steroid: "Stop! A large boob trap is present!"

[FlintlockJazz]

On a side note, which portraits did people like better:  Baldur's Gate 1 or Baldur's Gate 2 portraits?  I always found I liked most of BG1's portraits more than I liked BG2's, for some reason the latter seemed more amateurly (is that a woord?  Do I care?) done.  Proportions seemed wrong and they overdid it with the "braids for everyone!" motif.

Edited March 13, 2013 by FlintlockJazz