Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Technical & Gameplay Problems Portraits blacked out

Jaheira’s portrait is all black and removing and adding her to the party does nothing.

Same thing has happened to me at level up with many characters including the protagonist. I have seen it go completely silhouetted and also down to what seems to be half-lit for the portrait. Light enough to make out the major feature but not see the eyes. Both are frustrating as the only way to fix it is to load a prior save.

When creating a new character sometimes the portrait is darker than other times, occasionally the hair will appear more pixelated.

Sometimes fixed by leveling up or releveling

I think I just figured out, in case anyone else has encountered that issue with portraits going dark, or becoming silhouetted. I think what is happening is that the mini portrait is keying off the environmental lighting conditions of wherever you happened to be standing when you levelled up.

So if you are standing in shadow or a dimly lit area, this seems to carry over into the portrait. It happened to me so many times and was becoming very frustrating, so much so that I stopped and took an hour to experiment. By running around and making sure that I was levelling in a fully lit environment I was able to restore my portrait. It's possible that the same thing is happening at camp depending on whether you're trying to respec at night time vs the day, or you know if you level inside a dark dungeon as opposed to outside in the sunshine.

I think this a consequence of trying to have dynamic lighting for the portrait, and might explain some of the odd stuff that happens with the hair too. Not sure if that helps anyone else, but figured it was worth mentioning.

Had it happen again in a fully lit environment, so wasn't that I guess. New theory...

If you level a character but they are not the currently selected character (you click the lvl up arrow for say Gale, while Shadowheart is selected) then the portrait may black out. If you double click the status portrait before levelling to ensure the selected character is the one you are about to level then didn't have the issue.

Not sure if that helps anyone else. Best of luck!

Here are some screens for the issue as I was experiencing it...

Darkened portrait



Normal portrait




It seems to be pretty consistent in that it only occurs when I level. There are two places you can LvL up on the main HUD. Like in the image below If I click the arrow on the status portrait to the lefthand side of the screen then often the character's portrait will go dark. If I click the arrow on the Hotbar beneath the larger circular (current player) portrait then the portrait shows as normal afterwards. I haven't tried it from the character sheet. So far only when I do it from the smaller portrait that the darkened portrait thing happens.



I haven't experience the totally monochrome portrait issue, but it made me wonder if the lighting for the portraits is generated dynamically as like a separate aspect of the portrait, that it could maybe be down to individual graphic settings there perhaps?