Northern portraits.

[IHV]

Hi,

My idea is to make new portraits for Northern culture, its manily selfish reason since Rohan and Dale are 2 of my favourite factions

Two things that drove me on this road were:

1. I didnt like the portraits where the face was fully covered with helmet, meaning i didnt really feel anything for that general, it had no person behind that picture.

2. Since i am playing behind widescreen, my plan is also to make portraits for widescreen format. Its quite easy actually and works great.

Atm i have roughly 60 portraits myself and with some nice portrait mods out there im probably getting close to 100 different faces should i get permission to use them.

Here are 3 samples of what i have done. You can also get an idea of what an northern man looks in my oppinion.








Rohan Starting roster:
Probably will change a few things here and there (tweek) but overall it will look like this, probably the faction that will look closest to the old roster. Screen taken from ingame, unfortunately it is still little bit stretched but very close to original format now. Probably try and make it more accurate.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Eriador starting roster.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Dale starting roster

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I am manily doing it for my own use but i cant see a reason why i shouldnt share it.

I also have few questions for experienced modders.

1. Is there a way to make hair look old/grey and yet lessen the amount of hair, compared to the young look. Overpainting the hair will have an opposit effect, old fella seems to have more hair

2. As i understand i need to have 200 portraits per culture, meaning if i end up around 100 i just duplicate each of them?

3. Does the order of which they are inside folder have anything to do with the chance of it beeing picked for general?

Thanks for assistance, should you lend any.

P.S For those interested, estimated ready status is end of february, after some testing, tweaking, desired changes etc.

[Alekhine]

Great work!!
I'm not an experienced modder ,so i can't answer 1. But 2: yes, you can replicate them (in fact I think there's only about 50 portraits in vanilla) and 3: no, it's completely random.
I also have a question: what are you going to do about the backgrounds?
EDIT: If I recall correctly, if you put less than 200 portraits the engine will pick the medieval vanilla ones

[IHV]

I also have a question: what are you going to do about the backgrounds?

Hmm, i have 2 acutally for now, the one you see behind the samples and this one:

[Withwnar]

They look great. +rep

Do you mean that you would make two sets: widescreen and normal? That's a good idea. Though I must confess that I have been seeing stretched portraits for so long now that I don't even notice the effect. But I do notice oval shaped palantiri.

I don't have a full understanding of portraits but...

2) You can replicate them but I don't think that you need 200 in total.

3) I don't think that it is entirely random; for starting generals it does not seem to be. Some characters (e.g. Aragorn's heir in Eridaor) get the same portrait every time, without using custom portraits. I recall reading that some kind of algorithm is used by the game to choose a portrait, possibly based on their name and/or something else. Searching/asking this in the Scripting forum will shed some light I'm sure.

[Jake Armitage]

go there: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=502357
you may download a list where you see the corresponding tga numbers for every culture. the files are in the first post

this is the general guide for making portraits: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=346170

[IHV]

Is there a way to change the "old" look from age 50 to age 60 or 70?
50 is way too soon realisticly for a man to look that old.

EDIT: Added Rohan starting roster preview.

Question: In vanilla Third Age generals always get the same random portrait out of the poole, how is this done?
Atm i just added custom folders for each named general at starting roster and edited desc_strat, im just curious how it is done originally?

[Withwnar]

It seems like you do need 200 then, otherwise southern_european (Dwarf) ones could be used instead. Maybe this is because there are 200 southern_european ones.

[francis86]

is that robert(bob maybe for english people) from a game of throne haha

[Alekhine]

Cool.
By the way, I think there's a line in the descr_campaign_db.xml in the data directory that modifies the age where the look changes to "old", but I've never tested it.

[Kiliç Alì]

1. Is there a way to make hair look old/grey and yet lessen the amount of hair, compared to the young look. Overpainting the hair will have an opposit effect, old fella seems to have more hair

2. As i understand i need to have 200 portraits per culture, meaning if i end up around 100 i just duplicate each of them?

3. Does the order of which they are inside folder have anything to do with the chance of it beeing picked for general?

1 - Don't know
2 - yes you'll need 200 portraits per culture. You can duplicate them and IIRC vanilla currently uses a set of 50x4 prortraits. the same number will identyfy the same portrait for yong\old\dead character.
3 - Yes. I never tested this carefully, so don't know the order, but a character in descr_strat will have his portrait depending on the order the character appears in descr_strat. Campaign_script respects the same order, but you can alway use custom_portraits for spawned generals and captains (yes, also captains ).

Finally, some tips: all characters can have a custom_portrait in descr_strat, except for admirals. But if you use a custom_portrait for a princess appearing in descr_strat and in the family tree, you'll have a strange bug - the game will use the wife portrait, but bigger, in the tree, and the custom one in the agent's list.

Characters spawned via campaign_script cannot have custom_portraits, except for generals.

It seems like you do need 200 then, otherwise southern_european (Dwarf) ones could be used instead. Maybe this is because there are 200 southern_european ones.

indeed. You can use lesser, but you'll have to delete the dwarven ones - wich sounds evil

[Withwnar]

But if you use a custom_portrait for a princess appearing in descr_strat and in the family tree, you'll have a strange bug - the game will use the wife portrait, but bigger

So she gets bigger after becoming a wife. Got it.

Good points there Kiliç.

[IHV]

Added Eriador and Dale
The old fellas look so "sharp" due to the fact that game makes the portraits a lot foggier so they would look somewhat better in game.
I'll also make them look old at age 65 if that is possible. Or i'll leave the old look out at all, not really pleased with it anyway

[Alekhine]

Wow! I really like the Eriador and Dale starting roster. +rep.
Did you manage to change the age where they look old?
And, by the way, do you plan to release new dwarven portraits too?

[IHV]

I'll see after this is done, which will be within next 2 weeks, havent really had time past 2 weeks so its been nearly halted.

[Mhaedros]

Are you sure some of those arent copyrighted?

[IHV]

Are you sure some of those arent copyrighted?

No idea, they all from internet or from Lord of the rings trilogy, exactly like the ones in vanilla Third Age.

[Mhaedros]

OK. I just recognize a few of those from movies/tv series

[Vice]

Any word on how close you are to being done if you don't mind me asking hehe?

[IHV]

Any word on how close you are to being done if you don't mind me asking hehe?

Without the "old look" its done, old is somewhere halfway, but i think same time next week ill upload it.

[SexyGingerKid]

Ha Robert Baratheon