Need help with portraits.

[Guest James]

Any idea why some of my custom portraits wont show up? I downloaded a pck and half of them show up and half of them don't...

 

Also

i was wondering if anyone had a link or could tell me how to change npc portraits with custom pictures....or even how to add them so they show up in game. Do they have to be Bit map?

[Mike1072]

Custom Portraits:

 

The measurements for player portraits are 38X60 pixels for the smaller portraits (8-bit color runs faster but it can be up to 24 bit color), and 110X170 pixels for the larger portraits. To use a custom portrait, place it in the Portraits directory (in the install directory for the game) and add an S to the end of the small portrait name and an L to the end of the large portrait - otherwise the two names must be identical. The names must be 1-7 letters long, maximum - so the filename with the S or L added to the end is no longer than 8 total characters. The portrait files must be in BMP format.

 

For example:

XXXXXXXS.bmp for small (38x60, 8-bit)

XXXXXXXL.bmp for large (110x170, 24-bit)

The ones in your portrait pack that don't work probably don't meet those requirements. To edit NPC portraits, you can either re-assign them using a savegame editor like Near Infinity or Shadowkeeper, or just copy your portrait to the 'override' (or 'portraits', if you prefer) directory, renaming it to match the NPC. In BG2, the portrait names for the default NPCs are NnpcnameL.BMP (210x330), NnpcnameM.BMP (110x170), and NnpcnameS.BMP (38x60), where npcname is truncated to 6 characters* if necessary. For example, Jaheira's BG2 portraits are NJAHEIRL.BMP (used for epilogue), NJAHEIRM.BMP (used for character record screen) and NJAHEIRS.BMP (used on sidebar and in dialogue).

 

*For some reason, Haer'Dalis and Viconia are shortened to HAER and VICON. Edit: And Sarevok's is just SAREVOKL.BMP, etc.

[Caelellowynn]

It is also possible some are in .jpg format. I've had that happen before. Like over at the CoM portraits site if you save off of the index page the default save is .jpg while clicking on the portrait and saving at its destination the default is .bmp, both have the correct pixel count. If that is the case it should be as easy as opening it in a photo editor and then saving it as a bitmap image.

[Cross]

I'm having problems with this too. I'm running on OSX and I've been trying to make a custom portrait using Adobe Photoshop Elements. I'm meeting all the requirements, such as the width and length and making the .bmp 24-bit. But the portraits don't show up in BGII. If it matters, I only have a few mods installed like Dungeon-Be-Gone and the Tweak Pack.

 

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[Cross]

You know, nevermind. I actually just had to restart Baldur's Gate II. Apparently, if you put a file in the portraits directory and then exit out of custom portraits and go back in again, yes, the file will show up. But it won't work. You have to restart the program for the file to work. Crazy.