Portrait Packs

Discussion in 'The Temple of Elemental Evil' started by Gaear, Oct 5, 2009.

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  1. GuardianAngel82

    GuardianAngel82 Senior Member

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    Separate packs seems like a good approach. If there's a limit to the number of portraits, presumably we can switch portraits between the packs themselves.
     
  2. Gaear

    Gaear Bastard Maestro Administrator

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    Here we have a IWD portrait in its original aspect ratio:

    example.jpg

    Not surprisingly, the ToEE aspect ratio of the 'big' portrait does not agree with the IWD aspect ratio, so we have to crop the IWD portraits in some way to make them fit ToEE. We can do this in one of two ways: crop only the height and maintain the width, or pan and scan.

    example 2.jpg

    Here is an actual game size render of crop-the-height only:

    example 3.jpg

    And here is an actual game size render of pan and scan:

    example 4.jpg

    Bear in mind that IWD displays its portraits at a significantly larger size than ToEE. Pan and scan gets you more up close, but you lose some of the impact of the picture (just like watching a movie on TV). Which do you think would look best for ToEE?
     
  3. Sitra Achara

    Sitra Achara Senior Member

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    I'm in favor of maintain width and crop height. At least for that picture :)
     
  4. wizgeorge

    wizgeorge Prophet of Wizardy

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    I use Adobephoto and I make mostly the facial aspects like the ToEE ones. Unless they got nice boobs, then there's some cleavage. Nothing to ruin the teen ESRB rating tho. The IWD stuff needs cropping and resizing, but they look nice when you're done.
     
  5. Lightsfantastic

    Lightsfantastic Member

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    For those of you struggling to do your own photos but can't afford or understand Photoshop, try Paint.net. http://www.getpaint.net/ Much more intuitive than GIMP.
     
  6. maggit

    maggit Zombie RipTorn Wonka

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  7. Gaear

    Gaear Bastard Maestro Administrator

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    Thank you Mr. Maggit.

    Well I'm talking about the big portraits here specifically (the smalls and minis can really only be faces in all practicality), so the boobs and cleavage will always be there on your character sheet anyway but never in the comabt queue.

    Speaking of boobs and cleavage, does anyone have a good source for Royo? I've done some searching but I come up with scattershot collections mostly (and a lot of it sci-fi). I think I'd like to start with good source material if possible, as we have no way of knowing what the existing packs like those on SP started life as. They may be fairly wrung out by now - e.g. originals cropped and scaled down for use in BG and then re-cropped and re-scaled down for use in IWD and then re-re-cropped and re-re-scaled down for use in ToEE four or five years later.
     
  8. Sitra Achara

    Sitra Achara Senior Member

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    As far as I know, it doesn't support alpha channels - ToEE demands one.
    Also, no batch commands (which make life a whole lot easier).
     
  9. wizgeorge

    wizgeorge Prophet of Wizardy

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    The Royo steelwraith collection, BG and Iwd are still in the SP Toee section. I've got them all in MyDocuments. The Royo collection is great, Toee compatible and ready to install. I've been using Royo04 for Fruella for years. Royo03 would be great for Meleny. Really nice pics
     
  10. Shiningted

    Shiningted I changed this damn title, finally! Administrator

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    I'd say maintain height and width, since seeing the background etc is more a part of the big versions.
     
  11. Lightsfantastic

    Lightsfantastic Member

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    Ah but it does. I could never get my portraits to work using GIMP and no way was I buying photoshop just to get my own portraits for ToEE but this is very easy.

    Make three pre-sized .JPG's of your chosen portrait (big, mini, and small sized.) Open "CustomPortrait_BIG" Smiley face pic, under the Layers tab hit "Import from File" and choose your big .JPG. Under the Window tab there is a box for a Layers window that when activated will show both the smiley face and your .JPG; as well as some controls. Select the smiley face and hit the "X" or "delete" key, then Save As, filename.tga, and the big pic is done. For the Mini and Small ones you will have to reduce your presized .JPG's by one pixel on each side after or before deleting the smiley face; just grab the top, bottom, and sides (I always delete the smiley face after I do this re-size to make sure I get it right.) For the grey mini and small portraits go to the Adjustments tab, click "Black and White," then Save As filename_grey.tga.

    Takes maybe five minutes per pic from sizing the .JPG's to entering them into the portrait.mes and portrait folder. No Photoshop needed... and best of all it's free.
     
    Last edited: Oct 8, 2009
  12. wizgeorge

    wizgeorge Prophet of Wizardy

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    I noticed the packs CTB did are available for download from the Negative Energy thread. It still works. The Royo, BG and IWD stuff is in there. Big file, like 60MB, but there's lot of pics in there.
     
  13. Emirkol the Chaotic

    Emirkol the Chaotic Proud Polytheist

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    Can the various portrait packs being discussed be made part opf the FE, presumedly as a drop down or option bar?

    FE then can change the portraits automatically, while booting the game, according to the users choices.

    This way we can have a good number of various portrait packs available at a click.

    Even if it were possible, I believe changing portraits in the middle of a game, in this particular FE scenario, shouldn't be allowed. Chose your portraits one time, per game, per se.[
     
  14. Necroticpus

    Necroticpus Cthulhu Ftaghn!

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    Just dropping in to say that I really couldn't care any less about the portraits. I'd prefer more time spent on streamlining things that already exist or perhaps more custom storyline or new models/skins or really just anything having to do with any other aspect of the game, except for maybe the font size and color. I would be happy if the class name was in each portrait box, like fighter, cleric, barbarian, wizard. etc.
     
  15. Gaear

    Gaear Bastard Maestro Administrator

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    Well we have two voices of support of crop-the-height only, so I think we'll go with that in general.

    @EtC, I don't believe that what you're suggesting is really practical, particularly since Agetian has already created a system for adding things in the form of add-on packs.

    Different portrait packs would not work much of the time across a single game, simply because the different packs will likely contain different numbers of portraits, and if you've already got a PC with a portrait assigned that points to a portrait that doesn't exist in another pack, you'll either get a crash or at least the ugly white mouse pointer. You can't re-choose your portraits mid-game.

    BTW, feel free to upload the Scryler portraits at any time and we'll work them up for you, since we're on this kick anyway.

    @Necroticpus, I think having a class name in a portrait would be a bad idea because different players might want to use different portraits for different classes.
     
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