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Hey guys, I realize that it must not bother most people, but it would be extremely nice if when we can create characters that the 3d model has more than 4 hairstyles, 6 colors that look alike, etc.

I know that from an overhead perspective you cannot really tell how much detail goes into the model but I like to make my characters match what their portrait is and it is always annoying that very often the hairstyles are completely wack or the facial expressions look like a 4 year old drew them (not talking about D:OS, just this genre in general).

Here is an example - let's say you are the art guy making assets for male & female tieflings. Instead of creating 3 horn & hair combination styles for each sex, why not create 10? That would be awesome smile



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"why not create more options?"
i guess budget and time mostly.
Its not a conscious descision of saying "we will ONLY create 3 hairstyles and thats the PERFECT number", it smore "how many can we realistically do for each race"

Joined: Jul 2019
old hand
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I hope we get a boob slider like in star trek online.

Joined: Jul 2019
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I hope it's all done 3D to be honest, while I adore the portraits you can have and such, I always want to make my character look like it. It's just more fun when the "portrait" is rather how your character looks, rather than your character always trying to look like your portrait. If you understand what I mean.

Especially hard when your portrait is full body, then there's even more to match. Maybe the face is fine but you're a warrior, and the picture is holding a staff...etc etc.

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Disagree, definitly want portraits, making my own portraits is half the fun when replaying older games.
RIght now working on portraits for ToEE, making a party of NPCs from my IRL campaign

Joined: Jul 2019
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Portraits are such a nice addition, very important for me as well.

Joined: Sep 2017
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Even in Nwn2, a game that uses 3d portraits they allowed to have custom portraits eventually. I agree that the other way you have a portrait that looks exactly like your character, but as @Nastilon and @Sordak said, you have a limited number of options on character looks, based on disponibility and budget. Portraits allow you to have far more options and you can make your own custom portraits.

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The magic of the Baldur’s Gate portraits is that each one really conveyed a memorable quirk or tell of the characters personality. In many ways this was a crutch for the lack of expressiveness of the 2D player models, something their catch phrases also padded out. The hidden effect is that characters stick in your mind in a quick simple way, before you really even get to know them they are already interesting. When your characters go to battle, even in a modern 3D game you often aren’t connected to the expression of your characters. I like that Baldur’s Gate connected you to your characters even outside of dialogue trees and subplots. Could this be done in 3D? Maybe. It takes a strong artistic vision.

Now I think the main challenge is representing the player character. Everyone is used to character creation that fully customizes a player character to whatever they want. There are 3 main types of players that I can identify, people who want to play a role, people who want to create a role, and people who just want to do weird crud to mess around with the game. I was always a fan of importing my own images as a portrait, but not everyone wants to get that creative.

Picking character portraits only appeals to those who just want to play a role. Sure you can try and project yourself into it, but it isn’t robust. So obviously this is why character portraits have often gone 3D in games like this. To compensate I remember Dragon Age added an expression slider of some kind to help customize the personality of your character, but it was far from robust. A lot of characters just end up looking awkward, and the 3D back then wasn’t so good. Perhaps now could be better, and maybe with optional filters or something you could create a portrait worthy of Baldur’s Gate. It may seem like a lot of work for a small thing, but I’m telling you all it sells it.

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i dont know if i would read so much into the "expressiveness" of portraits, since they are still images.
On that note.
Having Warcraft 3 / Starcraft style animated Portraits, now thatd be awsome.
Of course i cant do custom ones then, but i realy like dthat feature in WIzardry 8, especialy since that game didnt even have character models, it realy let them come alive

Joined: Aug 2019
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Please just keep it the way the predecessors were meant to be, artistic hand-drawed portrait and customizable 3D character model and colors.

There's proof that it will work, just look at either Tides of Numenera, Pathfinder Kingmaker or the two Pillars of Eternity. Art is something that should be preserved in this type of RPGs, since they're more than just line of codes, they're stories and books in which we're able to interact and to choose the course of action according to whichever moral we decide to adopt.

Although, by deciding to keep the portraits, you'll open the market to future DLCs where you'll be able to sell just additional artwork and not just big expansions.

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Originally Posted by Korastemor
Please just keep it the way the predecessors were meant to be, artistic hand-drawed portrait and customizable 3D character model and colors.

There's proof that it will work, just look at either Tides of Numenera, Pathfinder Kingmaker or the two Pillars of Eternity. Art is something that should be preserved in this type of RPGs, since they're more than just line of codes, they're stories and books in which we're able to interact and to choose the course of action according to whichever moral we decide to adopt.

Although, by deciding to keep the portraits, you'll open the market to future DLCs where you'll be able to sell just additional artwork and not just big expansions.


Whatever they decided on will not be changed by this point. The trailer btw is from the actual game, so don't expect this to look like BG 1 & 2, Pillars of Eternity, Kingmaker, act...

It's time to stop comparing it to past games, it's going to be something wholly new. Maybe better.

Joined: Sep 2017
enthusiast
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Originally Posted by Omegaphallic
Originally Posted by Korastemor
Please just keep it the way the predecessors were meant to be, artistic hand-drawed portrait and customizable 3D character model and colors.

There's proof that it will work, just look at either Tides of Numenera, Pathfinder Kingmaker or the two Pillars of Eternity. Art is something that should be preserved in this type of RPGs, since they're more than just line of codes, they're stories and books in which we're able to interact and to choose the course of action according to whichever moral we decide to adopt.

Although, by deciding to keep the portraits, you'll open the market to future DLCs where you'll be able to sell just additional artwork and not just big expansions.


Whatever they decided on will not be changed by this point. The trailer btw is from the actual game, so don't expect this to look like BG 1 & 2, Pillars of Eternity, Kingmaker, act...

It's time to stop comparing it to past games, it's going to be something wholly new. Maybe better.


Completely and utterly wrong the trailer was made by a different company and isn't even rendered in the Divinity Engine thus does not represent the final game at all.
Source https://www.unit-image.fr/film/baldurs-gate-3/

Last edited by Hawke; 24/08/19 11:15 PM.

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