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Topic: Portraits: a comprehensive player's guide for NWC (Read 1208 times) |
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StarStuff
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Last On: 09/04/08
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This guide should talk you through everything you need to know about creating, manipulating and using portraits, or at least point you to where you can get further details. Inspiration for the contents came from the questions that new and experienced members alike have been asking in the New Player forum recently, and expands on the information contained in the New Player Guide.
The following subjects are covered here:
- Why the interest in portraits?
- More about .jpg portraits
- More about .tga portraits
- Some useful software packages for creating and managing your portraits
Why the interest in portraits?
As a member of Neverwinter Connections (NWC), there are several occasions when you might want to use a portrait:
- For youself. Your profile and your forum posts contain an image that acts as a visual representation of you to the rest of the NWC community. This image is the default "bald guy" until you upload a Dungeon Master portrait to the site using the Browse button in "My preferences". This portrait needs to be a .jpg file.
- For your characters on NWC. These are used to show other people what character you intend to play in a particular scheduled game. It's helpful if the portrait used for the character in the NWC schedule is the same as the portrait that the character will have in the game itself. Again, your characters will look like the default "bald guy" unless you upload an image for each "Proxy" Character using the browse button in "Create a character" or "My characters". These also need to be .jpg's.
- For your characters in the Neverwinter Nights (NWN) game. Although there's a fair number of portraits provided as part of the game and expansions, sometimes they're just not quite right. There are hundreds if not thousands of additional ready-made portraits available on the web, or you could have a go at creating your own. Each portrait consists of five .tga files.
- For NPC's in a module you're building. This is beyond the scope of this guide. Check out the Custom Content guide at NW Vault if you want more information: http://nwvault.ign.com/Files/other/data/1037585865411.shtml.
If you're quite happy with the in-game portraits that come with NWN, and don't mind having the "bald guy" picture for youself and all your characters, you can stop reading now. On the other hand, if you've ever spent hours trying to find the perfect portrait, you might find some or all of the following information useful.
More about .jpg portraits
The portraits used on the NWC site have to follow specific guidelines, as follows: "Your portrait must be a standard .jpg. It must also be 64 pixels wide by 128 pixels tall. The size of the file must be 7k or less." (The file size is 4k for the Dungeon Master portrait.)
Here's a (sadly now broken) link to a site that has the portraits from NWN and SoU already converted for use on NWC: http://dazzle.selwerd.nl/nwportraits/. Follow the instructions at the top of the page, and you're sorted. (I kept this in in case the site is ever updated.)
If you want to create your own .jpg's, here are a few pointers:
- Format. Note that the extension ".jpeg" will not work, so if you have a picture in JPEG format with that extension, just rename it .jpg. Other file formats such as BITMAP (.bmp) and TARGA (.tga) are not accepted, so you'll need to use some form of image editing software to turn the picture into JPEG format first. (Refer to the Useful Software Packages section for details.)
- Image Size. You'll probably find that the image you're using isn't exactly 64x128 pixels. If your image is larger than the required size, you can either crop it to fit, or you can resize it. If you decide to resize, keep the proportions constant to stop the image looking squished or stretched, and set the width to 64 pixels. If this makes the image less than 128 pixels long, you'll find that on some pages your portrait has a white bar underneath, and on others it will be stretched to fit. You can get round this by adding a bar of your own to the picture to make it up to 128 pixels. You can add one at the bottom that looks like the site's paper background, or you can change the colour of the bar to blend in or contrast with the portrait. You can even split the bar so that half appears at the top and half at the bottom.
- File size. In order to get portraits below 7k, just use the "Save for Web" option, or try saving the portrait at a progressively lower image quality until it's the right size.
If you don't follow these guidelines you'll get an error message when you try to upload your portrait. (You may get an error message anyway, depending on the state of the server at the time!) If, having made sure your file is the right format, size, etc, you still get an error message, go and double-check the place where the new image is supposed to be appearing. The old image may still be displayed because it is in the browser cache, so refresh your browser and you may be pleasantly surprised to see your new portrait staring back at you. If, however, the portrait hasn't changed, try uploading it again. If it's still not working, post a request for someone to take a look at your file in the Help & Suggestions Forum.
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| « Last Edit: on: Apr 6, 2005, 10:23AM » |
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StarStuff
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More about .tga portraits
Here's a link to a site has some pre-made custom portraits that you can easily download: http://nwn.uforgottenrealms.net/portraits.php.
Neverwinter Vault (http://www.nwvault.com) also has a huge number of Neverwinter Nights custom portraits, but it may take you a while to look though them! (Refer to the Useful Software Packages section for ways to make this task easier.)
This is a forum thread on NWC that contains links to many, many portraits: http://www.neverwinterconnections.com/forums/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewmessages/id/9463/guildid/0.htm
When you have found a portrait you like, you need to download it, unzip (or uncompress) it, and put it in the right place. Each portrait download should unzip into five (or sometimes only four) .tga files, and these need to go into your \NWN\portraits folder. If you don't have this folder, just create it. When you load up a game and try to create a new character, your new portrait should be displayed below all of the inbuilt portraits on the portrait screen. If you like to have all your portraits in your NWN directory you can expect some lag at character creation (as much as 20 to 45 seconds if you have a lot of portraits!) as it takes NWN a little extra time to load all those thumbnails, but you shouldn't experience performance issues in game.
If, after looking through all those portraits, you STILL can't find a suitable one, Bioware has some nice instructions on how to create your very own custom portrait here: http://nwn.bioware.com/builders/portraits.html. Here's a brief summary of what you need to do: Start with an image called "mypic", make it 256x512 pixels, and save it as mypic_H.tga. Preserving the aspect ratio, reduce the size of the image by half and save it as mypic_L.tga, then repeat the reducing and saving until there are five files in all, using the following naming and sizing convention: mypic_H.tga (Huge) = 256x512
mypic_L.tga (Large) = 128x256
mypic_M.tga (Medium) = 64x128
mypic_S.tga (Small) = 32x64
mypic_T.tga (Tiny) = 16x32 Note that whatever name you use instead of "mypic", it needs to be the same for all files belonging to a particular portrait. Also, the files should be saved in the uncompressed TARGA format. When creating the different images, you can start with one of the smaller ones and enlarge from there instead of starting with the largest, but you'll need to keep an eye on the image quality if you do. Also, you can crop the image instead of just reducing it. For example, the largest image (which is used in character creation only) could be a full body shot while the smallest might just be a face or bust shot. Once completed, all five files need to go into your \NWN\portraits folder, as before.
Having gone to all that trouble to give your character a custom portrait, you're going to want everyone in the game to be able to see your character's portrait too, right? Unfortunately, the dreaded bald guy is what your character will look like to anyone who doesn't have your portrait in their own portraits folder! It's standard practice before playing a game to either post a link on the game message board to the place where the other players (and DM's) can download your custom portrait, or to zip the files up yourself and email them out. It's worth noting that other people don't actually need to have the largest size .tga file in order to see your character properly, but it's nice to include it anyway in case they want to use the portrait for one of their own characters in future.
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| « Last Edit: on: Apr 6, 2005, 10:20AM » |
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StarStuff
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Some useful packages for creating and managing your portraits
Here's a list of software packages that other site members have used and found helpful:
For manipulating images
- SnagIt can be downloaded for free on a 30-day trial basis from here: http://www.techsmith.com/products/snagit/default.asp. This is an excellent package for image capture and manipulation. If you want to use it to create .jpg portraits for your NWC characters, use the ‘Fixed Region’ option and set the boundaries to 64x128.
- Irfanview (http://www.irfanview.com) can also be used to view, edit, and convert your files to a size/shape that NWC can use.
- Abobe Photoshop, MicroSoft Photo Editor, GIMP and Paint Shop Pro can all be used to convert files from TARGA to JPEG format using 'Save as'.
For finding and viewing images
- NWSpider previews and downloads portraits from NWVault in one easy step, and is available at http://nwvault.ign.com/Files/other/data/1077275007000.shtml. It takes a while for the spider to get the initial thumbnail library created, but it's well worth it. The instructions are very clear too, and it's free!
- ImageWalker (http://www.imagewalker.com/download.html) is a free program that allows you to view .tga files in a thumbnail format, displaying the file name immediately below the image (just like the standard viewer for .jpg's or .gif's in Windows XP). This makes it very easy to locate specific files, remove unwanted portraits, and (for those who wish to) to move portraits into the \NWN\portraits directory on an as needed basis. This is especially useful for NWC DM's who want to run campaigns using custom portraits but don’t want to ask their players to download all the packs.
- Leto is useful if you want to see .jpg's for all the portraits that come with NWN. (Use Windows Explorer to access the Leto subdirectory "Portraits".) It's also rather handy for manipulating characters
 . Download it here: http://nwvault.ign.com/Files/other/data/1046132033931.shtml.
- NWNExplorer can be used to find which portrait has been used for a particular character, amongst other things, and is available here: http://nwvault.ign.com/Files/other/data/1055545441750.shtml.
Other useful packages
- If you want to decompress files that end in the .rar extension, you'll need to download WinRAR. It is available for free at http://www.win-rar.com/index.php?lang=eng&aid=download or http://download.com.com/3000-2250-10007677.html.
- Also, you might want to use a download accelerator or a download program, like http://www.getright.com or http://www.flashget.com, if you ever want to download any large files: 50-70 MBs can take about 15 minutes or so to download with a high speed connection!
Huge thanks to the following people - your help and suggestions on the forums were quoted or paraphrased in the creation of this guide, and have led to my spending many fun-filled hours playing around with portraits: Balcazar, BigBluePaw, Dane Bramage, Festivus, gemerald, Gruush, J'Dai Voisin, Jenniza, Keenam, Shakira, Stammer, The Black Elk, TymeSage. Couldn't have done it without you.
Even bigger thanks to Tarridus, my partner in crime on this effort, for verifying the technical details.
If there's anything missing from this guide, or - heaven forbid! - if you spot an error, please let us know.
--StarStuff/Tarridus, September 2004.
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J'Dai Voisin
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A helpful tip from the General Forum
Do you have an image that you'd like to make a portrait out of but don't have an skills, time or software? Well thanks to Gorkk from the popular French NWN site La Bibliothèque de Neverwinter, who sent a simple console command that creates the portraits for you. Here are the steps:
1. Place a jpeg into your "portraits" directory where you installed NWN. (C: \NeverwinterNights\ NWN\ portraits\ Mypic.jpg)
2. Start NWN and either start a new game or load a saved one.
3. Start the console by hitting the "~" key in the upper left hand corner.
4. Type "Conv" and then Tab which will auto complete the command "Convertportrait"
5. Add to that the name of your image. For example "Mypic", don't add the extension
6. This will automatically create all the different files needed. Zip it up and share it with the community, you're done.
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Fianthalan
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Last On: 08/31/05
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Hello, I'm trying to get a portrait for my player character in this evening's (eek!) tryout game. It's gonna be my first online NWN, and I guess it shows.
I've been trying to install the NWSpider program. Downloading was a breeze, except...where should I save this program? I've tried unzipping & installing it in the general Neverwinter Nights file but all I see now when I look for it is the NWSpider installer. Where has the program itself gone?
I guess I'm not installing it the right way. There was a brief pop-up saying something something about icons you can use to navigate but it flashed by too fast and doesn't seem retrievable.
(I've tried a site from the New Member's Guide, http://nwn.unforgottenrealms.net/portraits.php because that seems easiest to use. Sadly, that link appears dead.)
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Aldinvineda
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Last On: 08/30/08
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Heya.
Just wondering if there are any recommendations for sites where we can host portraits in a zip file so that our friends can download them. As of now, I usually email them when requested.
Cheers,
AV
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