Portrait Issues (split from another thread)

[Angel of Death]

Suck is ...finding a handful of portraits which hasn't been converted the right way by the one who had converted it and now need to go through the entire folder to find out why the portrait screen on creating a character is crashing the game. Siiiiiiiigh.

I have been steadily going through a portrait folder of 20k files for a few days now (working on it on and off) and already removed 2k+ which either had turned up the wrong way or otherwise didn't have the needed white space at the bottom. Think I might be done with it after tonight...but who knows what will go wrong. (::

Good News: Found the portrait pack which are most likely the only culprit...
Bad News: It's not a consistent bug in the PP ... I still need to wade through the entire package, opening up all five tgas of each portrait and check to see whether they're correctly converted or bugged.

[MannyJabrielle]

White space isn't really an issue.  You can use the whitespace to tag portraits with a name or whatnot.

What is causing the offending portrait to crash your system is the file is not saved with the correct compression or bitrate.

You can cut your search down by just examining one size category of the portraits, such as the _h size.  A good chance that when you find a huge size saved incorrectly, the other size categories of portrait will more than likely be incorrectly saved as well.

You could also quicken your search by previewing the portraits in-game.  You could do so in Aenea with the ;;tool portrait command, or in a single player module using Kamiryn's CCOH (although you will need to edit the ccoh's custom portrait's 2da first to include all your custom portraits.

When you come to a bad portrait in game, the image will be totally distorted.  It shouldn't crash your client as it does when getting to the portrait selection screen at character-generation.

[Angel of Death]

White space isn't really an issue.  You can use the whitespace to tag portraits with a name or whatnot.

What is causing the offending portrait to crash your system is the file is not saved with the correct compression or bitrate.

You can cut your search down by just examining one size category of the portraits, such as the _h size.  A good chance that when you find a huge size saved incorrectly, the other size categories of portrait will more than likely be incorrectly saved as well.

Ah, didn't knew that...white space isn't needed?

Is 385 KB the correct file size for the largest (H) portrait? I noticed, when I split up the portrait folder to list by size, it's the most common one. Got a few files larger than that, though. One H file is 1465 KB, another, MPortrait2_H, is 819 KB... *Removes the two to see if the portrait character screen will load without crashing after that*

[MannyJabrielle]

No, don't need the white space to be white.  I've used the white-space section for putting credits into the portrait itself (such as with my "Audrey" portrait out of my one aenea pack.  Wycked tagged his/her portraits in that space as well.

Size... the sizes should be relatively uniform, but can still vary widely.  In my folder, for the _H category, I have a number at 513kb, a majority at 385kb, and one as low as 222kb.  The difference in size comes from the image itself.  My 222kb portrait is a very dark one with a majority of pixels pure black.  Several of my 513kb ones are very colorful and/or complex images.

Your one there at over a meg.... that sounds a little off however, so I would check that one manually in your image editor of choice.

The most likely problem is that the offending file has been saved compressed.  Portraits have to be *uncompressed* tgas, saved at 24-bit.

I am not sure if saving at a higher bit rate would cause crashes, but compressed tgas definitely will.

If you can't preview the compression and bit-rate, a tedious, but easy method to fix your portraits is simply to open them up in your image editor, and resave them at the correct settings.

I'm not sure what image program you use, but most should allow you to save a file type with a given set of save options repeatedly without having to reset the compression and bit rate on each individual file.

[Angel of Death]

No, don't need the white space to be white.  I've used the white-space section for putting credits into the portrait itself (such as with my "Audrey" portrait out of my one aenea pack.  Wycked tagged his/her portraits in that space as well.

Ahh, when I said there was no white space--I meant, the portrait filled out the entire portrait. No extra space at the bottom, my question was if it wasn't necessary to have that extra space since AFAIK it is needed. ^^'

Example of what I mean to clarify:

[MannyJabrielle]

The unused space is needed.  The dimensions for the portraits must be at a 2:1 ratio.

It doesn't matter however as to what is IN that extra space at the bottom, so your picture there should be alright... as long as it's at the proper 2:1 resolution (256x512, 128x256, 64x128, 32x64, 16x32)

[Angel of Death]

The unused space is needed.  The dimensions for the portraits must be at a 2:1 ratio.

It doesn't matter however as to what is IN that extra space at the bottom, so your picture there should be alright... as long as it's at the proper 2:1 resolution (256x512, 128x256, 64x128, 32x64, 16x32)

Ah, I see. Well, it is that. I did however find two orc portraits just now which hasn't the proper format. Still more culprits to be found though...*Dives into portrait folder and PS CS4 again*

Why does people not upload portraits in the correct format to begin with? :V

[MannyJabrielle]

Why does people not upload portraits in the correct format to begin with? :V

Mistakes happen   Especially with larger portrait packs.  I've made that goof myself.

[The Amethyst Dragon]

Useful Link: Custom Portraits Guide from neverwinternights.info

As far as some of your images having larger file sizes, it's not from variety of colors.  Those larger files are saved as 32-bit files (rather than the normal 24-bit ones)...they have a useless alpha channel that's just taking up hard drive and download space.

The guide I linked to above gives the exact dimensions needed as far as what's displayed by the game and what isn't. The bottom doesn't have to be white space, it just isn't shown in-game or in the toolset.

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