Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Help Tips & Tricks Update Character Portrait?

It's been a while since I've changed armor, and never really noticed before when the portrait updated. I thought I remembered it changing immediately, but a few days ago I equipped new armor on a couple of characters and their portraits still show them in the old armor. I thought maybe it would update after a long rest, but it hasn't.

I've dismissed them and added them back, but it won't update. I tried a disguise spell since it changes the portrait to reflect your disguise, but when I dispel the disguise the portrait reverts back the old, incorrect one.

I did some searching and found a Reddit post that said that portraits only update when you level up, and if you're at the level cap (which I am), the only way is to use Withers and pay to change class, then re-create your character. That seems a bit much just to fix a character portrait. There has to be a better way to force the character's portrait to update?

a bit much? its 200 gold which is petty cash at that point in the game... if it really matters to you that your armour shows on the portrait then its worth it and if not then no harm, no foul

erm actually it's 100 gold

I'm talking about the whole process of re-leveling my characters back up from 1 to 12 just to update the portrait is a bit much.

Seems like the sort of thing that should be handled by the mirror.

Also, I wish we could create our own portraits with different background colors. Sometimes they just clash too hard. Some alternative angles for the various races to mix things around. Up lighting or downlighting, things like that to give different vibes. Also to have the armor colors in the portrait match whatever dye we used. The hair obviously, but all that other stuff as well, to make the character portraits feel more unique.

I did try the mirror, but they refuse. I just tried it with my character and it works. It's not my character's portrait that needs updating though, but I swapped armor, clicked the mirror, didn't do anything except click confirm and it updates.

I've only dyed my character's armor, and the portrait is reflecting the colors I dyed it. The default color was some weird green and brown color. I dyed it black and red, and it's definitely black and red in the portrait.

Yeah it won't work for any of the recruitable companions, well except for the Wither's hirelings since they have a customizable appearance, but those peeps barely count lol. I'm surprised it's taken as long as it has just to allow for changes to their hair. I can understand the desire to maintain a set visualization for their showcase characters, and to me it'd be jarring to have alternative faces or whatever, but a hair stylist? - we should have had that from the getgo! Because it would have been amusing! Also like a whole year with the Shadowheart hair not updating? That was pretty rough.

I suspect the problem for the Origins is that they all have those pre-rendered portraits, which also aren't like the mix and match portraits that are produced from the Tav/Durge/Hireling avatar choices. Instead the origins have a set background color, set facial expression, set angle, set lighting, set horns etc. I think it would have been a different situation if each of the Origins had a customizable appearance from the very start, then we'd have a situation like Durge where there is a default visualization, without being locked down, but they clearly wanted to preserve the visual as part of the characterization rather than just using the same animations or voice. Each recruitable character has an established face/portrait. Still even with that, they could have allowed us to do stuff like change the palette on the background gradient color or dyes for companion equipment carrying over.

Like sometimes I want Wyll to have Blue for his safety color instead of Red, or maybe I want a Green Gale instead of Blue Gale. Maybe we don't have Karlach or Wyll in the party, in which case I might want Lae'zel to rep Red for her portrait color.

Usually what I'm after is some sort of nice rainbow spread where each character stakes out their own unique color combo for the quick read. Other times I want them all to look like a team repping similar safety colors with the coordination, but the set portrait background colors make that look awkward half the time. Also even for the custom Tav same deal there, where we're locked into similar portraits portrait colors across the board depending on our chosen fantasy race. A portrait preview would have been nice, because they can end up looking pretty different from the avatar. Sometimes things like eye color or makeup just don't even register, also things like being able to flip. Say you want a scar on the left side instead of the right, or the same haircut just with the part on the other side say. Lots of little things they could have done to make each character portrait feel unique to that playthrough.