Making a Custom Portrait

Introduction

Portraits are the images that display in your character sheet, when examining an object or creature, on the side listing out your party members. It isn't really necessary for the game, but it adds a bit of flavour, especially if you customize it for your character.

Making a Portrait

Portraits must be in the Truevision TGA file format. They have a specific naming structure requiring an ending letter of H, L, M, S, and T. Each name also requires a specific resolution size. See the following chart:

File Name	Desc.	Width x Height	Visible Area
portraitname_H.tga	Huge	256x512	256x400
portraitname_L.tga	Large	128x256	128x200
portraitname_M.tga	Medium	64x128	64x100
portraitname_S.tga	Small	32x64	32x50
portraitname_T.tga	Tiny	16x32	16x25

You'd have to use your image editor of choice to do the resizing. Another tip is that on the progressively smaller images, instead of just resizing the whole portrait, resize a smaller amount and focus the image around the face, cropping the rest of the image away.

Have NWN Automatically create it for you

1. Place a .JPG into your "/portraits/" directory where you installed NWN. (i.e. C:\NeverwinterNights\portraits\Mypic.jpg)
2. Start NWN and either start a new game or load a saved one.
3. Start the console by hitting the tilde key ("~")in the upper left hand corner.
4. Type "Conv" and then Tab which will auto complete the command "ConvertPortrait" (remember, commands are CaSe SeNsEtIvE)
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.

(Thanks to Mystra and Georg Zoeller)

Player Characters

You put your portrait files into your /nwn/portraits/ directory. On the portrait selection screen when customizing your character, the custom portraits should appended after the built-in portraits, in alphabetical order.

Toolset

You need to edit the portraits.2da file to enable the use of custom portraits in the toolset.

You don't need a H version of the portrait, and often you don't need an L either - unless the particular NPC will be added as a henchman, in which case you will need the L version for the character sheet.