Help with Baldur's Gate 2 cutom portrait

Azurial · Post by **Azurial** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 7:22 pm

I've seen how these people were able to make themselves their own portrait. I was hoping I could post a portrait of myself, and someone could make that into a portrait for BGII. Basicly make it look like I was wearing armor, change the background what have you.

Then tell me how they did it, so I can do it myself with the same picture. My goal is to be able to make my own portrait, not to use one someone else made. However I've looked up several tutorials and never get it to work with my own pics. This is why I was hoping someone would try with my pic, then explain what they did so I can try it out. I have Paint Shop Pro 9.

Thanks for the help.. uh hopefully, heh.
(Goal was to use the second picture)

http://www.geocities.com/gannonslair/james2006a.jpg
http://www.geocities.com/gannonslair/james2006b.jpg

Astafas · Post by **Astafas** » Tue Feb 14, 2006 8:05 am

None of your pics has a good enough quality, unfortunately, you need a better resolution. I recommend you look at the tutorial at Karwal's site: [url="http://www.karwal.dk/portraitportal/"]http://www.karwal.dk/portraitportal/[/url].

Astafas · Post by **Astafas** » Tue Feb 14, 2006 8:19 am

I currently play with two custom made pics, myself as an Half-Elven Blade and my wife as an Elven Avenger. Both are made pretty much according to Karwal's guide (although I have a few tricks of my own as well) in Photoshop CS2. They are slightly dark in order to compensate for the brightness your pics get in BG2.

Azurial · Post by **Azurial** » Thu Feb 16, 2006 3:18 pm

Well thanks! I only have a webcam, so the resolution will be a problem for me I guess. Anyone have any suggestions? Like what sort of camera to buy or what have you? Position of my head. I'll still attempt the portrait with my current pics, and then when the product is finish maybe do some sort of texture to blend the grain away. Atleast then I'll have some practice until I get some better pictures.

Thanks for the tutorial link, I'll keep you posted on how I'm doing.

Astafas · Post by **Astafas** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 2:18 am

Why not simply try to borrow a camera, or have a well equipped friend take the photo? I use a SLR, but any camera with a high resolution will do, of course.

Try to get a background that is easy to remove with the Magic Wand or manually, you will want to create your own.

The trick to succeed with custom potraits of this kind is to use layers - you have to learn how to use layers! With layers, you can try, change and redo as often as you want until the result is good. Then you flatten the image and do your last fixes. I often use up to 20 layers in a single portrait.

Always work with the largest portraits (210 x 330 pixels), use WinBiff to extract the original ones from BG2.

Azurial · Post by **Azurial** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 5:44 pm

Borrowing a camera is not a bad idea at all. I think I might go and do that. Layers don't seem to be that hard at all. My question is where do you get those cool armor sets? Do I need to extract the images from the game some how and edit them so I have all the background, clothing resources I need?

I'm doing an assasin type character and am wondering whether or not anyone has armor resources befitting of the Shadow armor. Also any other neat little accesories that might help.

Finally thanks for the help, and can I borrow your camera? lol JK on the latter man. Seriously, thanks for the help.

Astafas · Post by **Astafas** » Sat Feb 18, 2006 5:11 am

You need to extract the NPC portraits of BG2 (largest version, 210 x 330 pixels, use WinBiff) so you can copy the (pieces of) armors. In my shown portraits, I used Keldorn's armor for my wife and Mazzy's for myself. You can enlarge, reduce, duplicate, invert, distort, color and otherwise change them in hundreds of ways... As for background, I prefer doing my own nowadays.