problem when importing portraits is anybody able of helping me, please? I wish to make my personal set of portraits, since I plan to re-play the game with different parties when Liv's last version is ready. The point is that everything goes fine if I just copy and paste my wished portraits over the ones that may be downloaded elsewere, like Sorcerer's place, and that I don't like, but the game quits to desktop if I impot my custom set of portraits on a fresh portraits.mes file, both one by one or using the option "2" offered by the "portrait wizard" or modifying the portraits.mes file with the Protos Editor available here. The game locks and after 10 seconds it quits to desktop. Many different messages errors shows up when using the editor: this is a sample of the script that I'm using to import all portraits at once: Code: ADD PC D&DDevis_BIG.tga D&DDevis_MINI.tga D&DDevis_SMALL.tga D&DDevis_SMALL_GREY.tga D&DDevis_MINI_GREY.tga ADD PC D&DGimble _BIG.tga D&DGimble_MINI.tga D&DGimble_SMALL.tga D&DGimble_SMALL_GREY.tga D&DGimble_MINI_GREY.tga I am doing anything wrong?
One more thing: I just spent some time writing manually the names of the wished tga portraits in the portraits.mes file. As I already told, the game QTD but I was asking myself: do I need to use the portrait wizard to delete some old images before adding new ones? For example, if I'm tired of the HUF_0510_b_ranger.tga portrait, should I use the wizard to delete it and then import a new portrat or should I simply fill the 510, 511, 512, 513 and 514 strings with the names of my wished tga file, for example "archer_big.tga, argher_small_gray.tga" and so on?
Its been shown in the past that the most common reason for portrait CTDs is an incorrectly made portait. They MUST have a white alpha channel underneath the portrait. Some people have said they can't manage this with whatever art program they're using. The portrait names in portraits.mes must match the actual portait names exactly. I see an error with yours with "D&D Gimble _BIG.tga." -- no space should be in there. I wouldn't use the portrait wizard at all. Just do it manually and eliminate the middle man. You could name the portraits you created to match the existing ones you want to replace and thus not have to fiddle with the .mes file, or you can make new names as long as portraits.mes reflects those names exactly. Retain the string numbers, as you shouldn't arbitrarily add new ones here and there beyond the string range detailed in the custom portraits readme file. Remember, as it stands, you won't get more than 42 portraits no matter what you do.
"Its been shown in the past that the most common reason for portrait CTDs is an incorrectly made portait. They MUST have a white alpha channel underneath the portrait. Some people have said they can't manage this with whatever art program they're using." I always resolved this problem copying and pasting my images over existing ones, so that the format proprieties are preserved. "I wouldn't use the portrait wizard at all. Just do it manually and eliminate the middle man." The middle man? I don't understand. "You could name the portraits you created to match the existing ones you want to replace and thus not have to fiddle with the .mes file, or you can make new names as long as portraits.mes reflects those names exactly. Retain the string numbers, as you shouldn't arbitrarily add new ones here and there beyond the string range detailed in the custom portraits readme file. Remember, as it stands, you won't get more than 42 portraits no matter what you do." I know the matter of 42 portraits and I know that the game has some blank slots for them before reaching 42: 4 or 5, now I don't remember. I don't know how to fill them. I made a test and renaming my files like the ones that I want to replace looks like the only way that actually works. The problem is that, in this way, I'm "deleting" the old paints, so if a NPC uses the image of a PC, if I replace them I mess up NPCs portraits. For example, I've seen that Liv used one of the half-orcs portraits for the party of the revenge plot and the blonde girl in the first line (a ranger) is used somewere else in the game. Instead, writing new names to the portraits.mes should preserve the old portraits, but the game QTD if I do so, and I don't understand why! The file name perfectly matches the one that I write in the protos.mes and the file is one taken from the Icewind Dale portraits set.
What are the file sizes of your BIG, SMALL, and MINI portraits respectively? The middle man is the portraits wizard. You don't need it. You don't really know what its doing. If you do all the work, you know what you have and haven't done and can problem-solve from there. There are 5 fillable slots for expansion. They are in sequence immediately following the PC portraits and before monster portraits. Clearly you're doing something here that the game doesn't like. Stick with filling the 5 enumerated fillable slots or replacing old ones. You can replace PC portraits without too much risk, as only a few of those are used for NPCs.
"What are the file sizes of your BIG, SMALL, and MINI portraits respectively?" 16 million colors; 130 x 150; 53 x 47; 42 x 37; around 77 KB; 10,3 KB; 6,6 KB. "There are 5 fillable slots for expansion. They are in sequence immediately following the PC portraits and before monster portraits." How do I use them? Is it enough to add lines, file names and proper numbers? "Clearly you're doing something here that the game doesn't like." I would like to understand WHAT I'm doing that the game don't like. An important question: the file names must include some specific keyworld or have a specific lenght or may I call them just A1, A2, A3, A4 and A5?
Have a read of this document. It's the original expose' on how to do all this stuff by Troika's art guy.
in theory, it is what I tried to do, but it always failed, maybe for bad tga format. I discovered the following things: - I used the portrait wizard to quickly import 5 portraits with the option 2 and the script file. I made 5 copies with different names of the sample file contained in the archive together with the PW, then I copied and pasted the wished images over the sample files, to preserve the file proprieties. Using other TGA files may mess the game up. - after decreasing to greyscale some images, bring again the palete up to 16 million colors. - to have clear mini and small images, don't resize the original one so that it partially fits into the small images, but just copy it and paste it on the small tga file so that the character's face only goes to fill the small.tga file andon the exceding surface of the image is automatically cutted away. Then you may copy and paste the small.tga file into the mini.tga file. It would be more clear to show than to explain.... Then I just renamed the wished portraits with the names of the ones that I never use. This is a sample of the result.
