Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Technical & Gameplay Problems So.. SH's Test-Build portrait is still a thing ...?

[img]https://preview.redd.it/shs-bugged-...2b45b04ab27547acbc6f468d2e224756181b7659[/img]

Hope the linked image works, but if it doesn't: It looks exactly like the buggy portraits I'd seen in YT-live streams of the earliest patch 8 pre-release versions.


This shot is from the release version and I never had any test-builds installed as I did not participate.

Her portrait looked fine up until the first level up, but once she reached level 2, this happened.




S.

Not just her ...
Astarion and Lae'zel buged aswell to me.

No mods, verifyed files.

Aye, I noticed this too.

Also happened for Karlach for a brief period before fixing itself (Possibly due to leveling up)

So far, Lae'zel and Gale have been working fine for me. Haven't checked Wyll or Astarion yet.

Like I posted over on Reddit (where people pointed out that this is not a patch 8 thing?):

The only time something similar ever happened to me before (and on all sorts of patches/versions of the game) was with Minsc. I've never seen it with *any* other character and never outside of Act III.

What seemed to happen there was if I leveled him up holding The Dead Shot, a part of that bow's string (from his inventory character-model) would somehow be superimposed over his portrait and the portrait itself would show up way too dark.

I never found a way to fix this after it had happened. I tried re-leveling him multiple times, gave up, went back to an older save and tried again. These days I will only level him up without any non-standard gear on his person ... and that seems to work. Oh, and I will also always make sure to make a quick-save before I hit the "Level Up"-button with him...


All that said: Apart from being too dark and having part of an object in it that shouldn't be there, Minsc' portrait was always fine otherwise. He had the "correct" pose and distance from the camera (unlike with SH or other characters), so maybe these things aren't really caused by the same glitch?

S.

Going to repost here what I put on reddit just now:




Update: Went back to the Autosave on the beach (before even waking up SH) and since I somehow didn't pick up enough XP during the Nautiloid-bit, I was still level 1 here. Getting near that chest on a pedestal at the entrance to the crashed ship gives the level up, so I did all that and then leveled up again. And this time SH's (and Tav's) portrait was OK after that.

There are (I think) only two things I did differently this time around:

1. I did not put the Old Floppy Hat on SH that I looted on the beach. She was completely in default gear for the level up.

2. I leveled SH before I leveled Tav (I think the first time it was the other way around).

So unless this is random or caused by something other than player-input, it's gotta be one of these two, I reckon. But what do I know?

One difference I noticed was that the game didn't give me the "loading" icon in the lower right corner of the screen when I went to level SH. It did show that once SH was done and it was Tav's turn to level up. Hadn't even noticed that thing down there prior to Patch 8... is this new? Plus it seems to take a little longer now for the level up screen to go from one character to the next.

Update to the update:

Party's at level 3, I picked up Withers, re-spec-ed Tav with no portrait issues, but SH and Lae'zel did have some.

Lae'zel's pic was messed up after I had re-spec-ed her, but turned back to normal after I leveled her.

SH's pic was fine after re-spec but glitched out after leveling her. I tried all sorts of things with her, like putting a different set of armor on her, re-specing her in underwear or naked, with our without helmets and with different settings for the helmets (show/hide), with or without weapons/shield, etc. Nothing worked. Re-spec-ing her with the messed up portrait didn't change anything - also tried swapping her armor as I think the game will often correctly show the currently equipped armor set on these portraits. And thus an armor swap between level ups/re-specs might trigger the game taking a new character-portrait? That's just a guess on my part, though.

Would be nice to know if there's a sure-fire way to force the game to re-shoot that pic for the portrait. I'm pretty sure it does that on occasion, even when I don't visit Withers, so there's got to be some sort of trigger for that.

And I'm also convinced that while this might not be a new issue, it definitely seems to happen a lot more often with Patch 8. Like I said: I'd never seen this before (other than the Minsc-issue) in over 2000 hours in the game.

I've noticed that at level 4, SH's portrait has been fixed. Which has lasted until level 5.

If this is somehow connected to levels, then it's not certain whether this fix will last, or if another higher level will break any particular character's portraits.

You can also trigger this bug by respec and use of magic mirror

I have no idea if that was the issue, but I can confirm that after I did the "natural" level up from 3 to 4 last night, SH's portrait returned to normal - and that nobody else's glitched out. Besides her and Tav I had Gale and Lae'zel in the party when I did the level up.

Let's see what happens on the next one..

Update:

Leveling up to 4 (with the entire party) "fixed" everyone's portraits. Leveling to 5 (where the party currently still is) hasn't made anyone I've actively used glitch out. Re-specing Gale with Withers while he was at level 5 also didn't mess up his portrait.

I did notice that Astarion's (whom I never use at this stage) mini-portrait used in approval-messages was just an empty frame around a black surface. His portrait in the camp-chest menu looks fine, and I didn't check what would happen if I put him in the party, but he *might* currently be glitched.

Not sure if I mentioned this before, but I did try all sorts of things to find a pattern or a "trigger" for this behavior. I quick-loaded a bunch of times and then re-did the whole change class/level up process while changing gear, weapons, hat-settings, etc, etc with SH but I couldn't find any setting that would make a difference.

While this is most probably not random, it feels to me like it's caused by something that's beyond the player's control/input - but that's just a hunch.

EDIT: Party made level 6 last night and while I only did two respecs between that first Withers-session and now, the bug hasn't come back .... yet. Neither during "natural" level ups nor during those two respecs. Should probably add that neither of these two involved SH (it was Karlach and then Gale, both done separately), as Sharty seems the most susceptible to this glitch. At least in my run where she's glitched out at least twice.

*sigh*




All three went bonkers during full party level up to level 11 ... hadn't seen the glitch since Act I in this play-through, so I had hoped it was gone somehow, but... alas..


S.

Someone on reddit suggested that what's causing this is skipping stages between/during level ups. Since I was hitting the space-bar quite often during that level up session last night, I just loaded up my save and went and re-spec-ed everyone with a glitched portrait without ever touching the space-bar.

And... it worked, everyone's back to their normal portrait shots... well.. if we can call Selunite SH sporting her DJ mugshot "normal" .. :P

Though this doesn't necessarily mean that skipping is what *truly* causes this. For starters: Last night when things glitched, I did a full party level up and this time I brought everyone over to Withers and then leveled them one at a time.

I doubt it's the case. Since I never skip anything during level ups and still get it.

Also, I've seen it occur when buffing someone with Longstrider. Literally, their portrait was fine, I cast Longstrider on them and the portrait was borked.

Such an occurance leads me to consider it might have something to do with applying effects to a character causing the portrait to have a chance to be changed to an invalid parameter and thus going to a "Default" setting. Of which "Leveling up" provides the most effects to a character and is thus more likely to cause an interaction.

Either way, the root cause would likely reside somewhere in the portrait parameter being affected by something other than the intended mechanisms (I.e. The character creation options you use when making a Tav/Durge/Hireling things like Wyll getting his horns or Shadowheart dying her hair)

OK... this is truly odd... and would throw a wrench into the whole theory about this being solely related to re-spec/leveling/Magic Mirror-adjustments.

I will say that one difference between patch 7 and 8 I noticed is how long it takes to switch between characters when leveling up more than one of them. Before, I hadn't even noticed the "loading/busy" cursor at the bottom of the right side of the screen when going from one character to the next, but on patch 8, this can take a few seconds. That, perhaps, might have something to do with it too, but I can only speculate here. I don't think this ever happened to me when I only leveled a single character or when using the Mirror - in fact I don't think it *ever* happened with Tav at all. Seen it on SH, Karlach and Jaheira but never on Tav.



That makes a lot of sense and would also explain why it, apparently, isn't "just" level ups and such that can cause this. Probably a slightly "deeper" issue than the level-up- or Mirror-screens/modes. The whole thing about probabilities would also explain the apparent randomness of this occurring. I've literally seen this happen (or not) on the exact same level up/re-spec with no obvious differences between what I did from one level up to the next.

I've had it with leveling a single character (Including just a single level) and I've also had it happen with Tav a couple of times (In my most recent playthrough I started yesterday, it happened to Tav when leveling up to 2 after "Landing" the Nautiloid)

I've seen it on all characters I've had in my party at one point or another (Which has been all the Origins and Tav). I've not really noticed any patterns to whom or when it occurs.

I chose to interpret the “updated” portraits as manifestations of the companions’ personalities. The initial portrait was the class photo where you look nice for the grown ups, but then the photographer says “and now a goofy one, be yourself” so Shadowheart tries to crouch out of frame and Astarion takes his shirt off.

With me it was SH only in that situation - Tav was fine. But it did happen under very similar circumstances, meaning after having picked her up and then collecting the 30 or 40 XP I needed to get to level 2, then leveling both while still on the beach. That first one was easily "fixed" by going back to the auto-save on the beach - only option, really, at this stage as Withers was still lounging around in his crypt.

So maybe this particular point in the story is "susceptible" to this behavior for some reason?

*shrug*

S.

Just here to confirm that this is indeed a visual glitch the team is aware of and they're looking into it
(in the meantime, the companions will have their video call or front camera-style portraits appear occasionally 😅)