Stock Character/Art Portrait Expansion Project (SCAPE)

[EventHorizon]

Stock Character/Art Portrait Expansion Project (SCAPE)

Some years ago, I spent a couple years scouring the internet for generic portraits to be used for people's player characters in NWN. I wanted people to have more choices in representing their characters which are accessible to more of their fellow players, and so paid great attention to variety, erring on the side of visual quality. The result was a rather fat portrait pack.

I figure the EFU community would especially like a high-quality generic portrait pack because our PC mortality rate is medievally high, and this takes some of the work out of downloading each individual new PC's portrait as they come out. Happy concepting!

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Directions:

The portraits are organized in bundles by theme and gender. So, first you'll see "common folk" female portraits, then "common folk" male portraits, then "nature folk" female portraits, "nature folk" male portraits, etc. This is so you can skip to the most likely theme for your character and then look only at the desired gender's portraits. I also figured that looking through a huge block of all the male portraits or all the female portraits would be mentally cumbersome.

The intended use for this pack is for the user to extract the portrait files (which universally includes all sizes of the portrait, from tiny to huge) to the NWN override and/or portraits folder. If you extract them to the overrides folder, you can see everyone's portraits who uses the pack without loading them on character creation. If you extract the pack to your portraits folder, you will load all the portraits when you reach that step of character creation. If you don't want to load all of the portraits every time, you can hand-select the portrait you want and place it there for when you make your PC.
Those who want to use one of the generic portraits can just find something that fits their concept. This pack is intended to be a generic supplement to the common practice of posting lists of personalised portraits for one's player characters. Those lists often go undownloaded or only selectively downloaded and seen; the portrait pack is something everyone can have access to forever.

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Some notes: There is the possibility that some of these portraits overlap with some portraits you already have, making them redundant. However, (unlike the massive CCPE, from which this pack partially draws) these are all organized with unique names (with components to the file name to categorize them, e.g. "Enox" "Civ" "f" "Arm" "H" ; Enox [portrait pack prefix], Civ [Civilian, the theme], f [female], Arm [some note characterising that portrait], H [the file's portrait size]. So, the file would be EnoxCivfArmH.TGA . Another example is EnoxDrufFeH.TGA (Enox, Druid, Female, Fe[ather]).

I always found options for Dwarves, Gnomes/Halflings, ebony-skinned and elderly humans, and Half-orcs to be woefully slim. So, you will find these categories among others. Hopefully that makes some people happy.

Finally, it is possible for me to update this, as all I would need to do is take the recommended portraits, label them conventionally, and stick them into the same portrait pack, which people can simply redownload, rather than hunting down individual portraits to add. Generally though, I'd rather not, as this should be plenty.

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Here is an index of the categories, in order of occurrence (alphabetical filename order), with female portraits always coming first:

Civilian (The most general)
+Old (For the advanced in age)
+Ebony

Druidic

Dwarf
Elf

Evil (Not always! But they sure look the part.)

Gnome
Halfling (try to spot the difference)
Half-orc (optionally, full orc.)

Knights (Mostly heavily-armoured noble-looking people, but also the rapier/duelist types.)
Magi
Rogues

Easterners

Warriors

Guide to the categories:

Essentially, the categories with class archetype names are likely to have some kind of equipment or other clear tools-of-the-trade, or a pose indicative of that archetype, whereas Civilian portraits focus on simple images of the face, and racial portraits are self-explanatory.

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Installation notes: The Main file is 503 portraits, 138 MB, took me 20 seconds to download on a good connection, and only takes up to a few seconds to load in character creation without any other portrait files. The beginning and end of the SCAPE portraits, in character creation, is marked with an in-game label for your convenience.

(You can find EFU:R's main/personalised portrait thread here.)

[EventHorizon]

Post reserved.

[EventHorizon]

I've been seeing people walking around with these portraits... and it's making me veeery haaaa pyyyyy :D

[EventHorizon]

I've been seeing people walking around with these portraits... and it's making me veeery haaaa pyyyyy :D

[Illuminus]

EventHorizon, You are a saint. Thanks!
 

[Hound]

You should tell people to extract the universal folder to OVERRIDES, not Portraits, so that it doesn't clutter up their char creation.

Might I also recommend having one folder containing all the portraits, and then other seperate subfolders for particular themes that people can then extract to their portrait folder. Whilst I understand the principle of the coding system, it is a bit daunting for the plug-and-play sort of individual.

[EventHorizon]

You're right about the overrides bit Hound! I forgot to include that bit of advice - portraits in the overrides folder show up when you see characters in-game, but not when in character creation. Of course, you'll need the portrait you want for your own character to be in the portraits folder when creating it.

I can create an optional file entailing what you suggest (Edit: Someday I will actually), Hound, with the themes/genders in subfolders - and possibly with image file previews - for those who want to browse and pick through portraits outside of the NWN client.

Also, if you use irfanview, you can look at the portraits in their .tga form (main file), though it might require some savvy to navigate easily.

[EventHorizon]

I've uploaded SCAPE to the Steam Workshop, since that makes it a dozen times easier for users to plug-and-play and receive updates.

[Kinslayer988]

Noice SCAPE was my favorite

[EventHorizon]

With The City of Rings on the planar horizon, I hope SCAPE serves you well in figuring out a new character concept, or putting a face to the one you're ready to roll with!