Here is a quick little tutorial for custom portrait guru's!
 

Each portrait is 210 x 330 pixels.  The smaller in game UI portraits are 76 x 96 pixels. 

You have to have two separate files for a custom portrait.  You can name them anything you want but they must end in either a _ or plain old space then the letters lg (for large pic) or sm (for the small one).  The primary file name must also obviously be the same so they match together.  So Bob_lg and Bob_sm will work together but if you name them Bob_lg and Bobby_sm you will have issues. 

Additionally on format....  yes, PNG files work, and the in game default pics are in fact in PNG format.  I have only tried using 72 ppi images so I don't know if that is restricted feel free to experiment but that is really plenty.  Also yes, custom portraits already work even in the beta.

 

File path (at least for Steam) is:  steam/steamapps/common/Pillars of Eternity - Public Beta/PillarsofEternity_Data/data/art/gui/portraits/player/(female or male)/

 

Obviously the public beta part will drop in the real game.  Ordering is pretty simple... Male portraits appear in game before female and they are ordered based on alphabetical order in the folder.  All default portraits either start with the word male or female so finding your custom one in the list should be easy.  Here is a pic of one I threw together in a hot minute just to show it in game.

 

 

 

 

Also board mods could we get a sticky for this since I expect many beta players will want to know how is done?

Edited August 19, 201411 yr by Karkarov

I didn't think I'd need to know how to use this for the beta but there are like... so few portraits. And they're not very representative of the different peoples of Eora. I'm glad I've got mine ready to go!

I imagine there will be more portraits in the final. They probably haven't drawn all the ones that will be available yet.

I'll throw up a zip or album of the Baldur's Gate 1 portraits resized to PoE specs here a little later. Have to go shopping, so it'll probably be an hour or two.

Thankyou so much for sharing this information. Definitely sticky if at all possible .

Thankyou so much for sharing this information. Definitely sticky if at all possible .

No prob Balgin, I am sort of a portrait nut so I had to figure out how to make it work.

Here are all the Baldur's Gate 1 portraits, resized for Pillars of Eternity. Feel free to rehost.

 

Baldur's Gate Portraits

Here are all the Baldur's Gate 1 portraits, resized for Pillars of Eternity. Feel free to rehost.

 

Baldur's Gate Portraits

 

I don't have the beta but I hope there is a way to change the NPC's portraits as well...so far I am pretty unimpressed with the PE portraits...seems a big step back from any of the IE games.

I always thought the Baldur's Gate portraits were kind of crap to be honest; way too cartoonish. The Justin Sweet, Icewind Dale portraits on the other hand are some of the best I've ever seen in any game. Regardless, thanks for doing all of the hard work to resize and rename those BG portraits. I'm sure somebody will get use out of them.

Larger portraits than the standard 210x330 work just fine, I've used mexapixel-sized portraits without any issues. I made sure the aspect ratios for the images are the same as in PoE; the game might lose the aspect ratio, crop them in some way or add black borders otherwise, but I haven't tried that.

Edited August 19, 201411 yr by Caerdon

 

Thankyou so much for sharing this information. Definitely sticky if at all possible .

No prob Balgin, I am sort of a portrait nut so I had to figure out how to make it work.

 

 

As am I .

Just bumping this for those who want to give custom portraits a run.  Would rather it not get lost in the 100 other beta threads.

I wish it doing this dident force you to make files, To bad you cant just click somthing in the game and go stright to your picturs folder. :/

Thread stickied, for now.

Thread stickied, for now.

Thank you kind Kitty Cat.  You are the bestest.

Going to post a link to a portrait review I made so if someone feels like creating custom portraits for the world to use, they can focus on areas where there's not currently a whole lot of them if they wish:

 

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/66981-portrait-review/

 

Who knows, maybe devs will also read it and use it to focus their portrait work later.

Portraits for Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Icewind Dale II are available in my signature.

Portraits for Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Icewind Dale II are available in my signature.

 

 

Needs more Fonzie.

Portraits for Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Icewind Dale II are available in my signature.

 

Why not any for BG2? haha j/k

How hard would it be to set up the portraits to be like in IWD2?

 

 

Like this, big picture in inventory, portrait in the ui. I mean the inventory picture will need to be big enough to scale as the inventory is going to be full screen.

 

edit: damn but the UI art(texture) looks so much better then the one in PoE.

Edited August 27, 201411 yr by Sarex

edit: damn but the UI art(texture) looks so much better then the one in PoE.

Actually no it really doesn't.  It is blatantly low res and looks pixelated.

 

That said this is easy to do with custom portraits.  You just start with a very large image, make the "large pic" a full body shot, then make the "small pic" just a focus on the head and shoulders.  Here is a concept image I just tossed together to show what I mean.  Original image I used in the top right, and the portrait and status screens are pasted in as well.

 

 

 

 

 

Actually no it really doesn't.  It is blatantly low res and looks pixelated.

 

It really does, it has much more character then the PoE one, which just looks plain.

This is Fantastic!

 

edit: damn but the UI art(texture) looks so much better then the one in PoE.

Actually no it really doesn't.  It is blatantly low res and looks pixelated.

 

That said this is easy to do with custom portraits.  You just start with a very large image, make the "large pic" a full body shot, then make the "small pic" just a focus on the head and shoulders.  Here is a concept image I just tossed together to show what I mean.  Original image I used in the top right, and the portrait and status screens are pasted in as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That's a seriously awesome portrait. Did you pull it from some collection? Source?

That's a seriously awesome portrait. Did you pull it from some collection? Source?

Uh it is from some phone based app card game actually.... It is called Legend of the Cryptids.  Let me see if I can find the image again.

 

Here is a link to the actual artist's Deviant Art page:

 

 

This is Fantastic!

Thanks :D