G3

Plasmocat's "BG NPC Portraits in BG2 Style"

A Gibberlings Three Mod
Authors:
Art by Plasmocat, packaged by cmorgan
On the web: Home page, discussion forum, and preview gallery

Version 5
Languages: English, German, French, Russian, Polish
Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux
GitHub: Gibberlings3/Plasmocats_BG_NPC_Portraits_in_BG2_Style

Overview

This is a package to replace the BG NPC portraits with ones Plasmocat has edited in "BG2 Style". The additional custom portraits are also available for assignment to your Player Character (PC). It contains no additional content, and does not touch your installation.

Compatibility

This mod will allow these portraits to be used as player portraits on any Infinity Engine game (including Enhanced Editions) except the original and Enhanced Edition of Planescape: Torment. For games with BG content, the additional components will be available to replace individual NPC portraits as appropriate.

There are no known incompatibilities with any mod, however any portrait modification mod will overwrite the portrait assignments of portrait mods installed previously.

Bug Reporting

If you should encounter any bugs, please report them to the authors at G3's Miscellaneous Released Mods forum.

Installation

First time installing a mod? Check out G3's comprehensive tutorial: A New Player’s Guide to Installing and Playing Mods.

Special Note for Siege of Dragonspear from Steam/GOG
Good Old Games (GOG) and Steam both package the additional content for Siege of Dragonspear in a method that WeiDU, the tool used to install this mod, cannot access. You must run a program called DLC Merger on your SoD installation before you can install this or any other WeiDU-based mod.

Enhanced Editions Note
The Enhanced Editions are actively supported games. Please note that every patch update will wipe your current mod setup! If in the middle of a modded game you might want to delay the patch update (if possible) as even after reinstalling the mods, you might not be able to continue with your old savegames. Alternatively, copy the whole game's folder into a new one that can be modded and will stay untouched by game patches. It is important that you install the mod to the language version you are playing the game in. Otherwise, the dialogues of the mod will not show but give error messages.

Windows
Plasmocat's "BG NPC Portraits in BG2 Style" for Windows is distributed as a self-extracting archive and includes a WeiDU installer. To install, simply double-click the archive and follow the instructions on screen.

Alternatively, the files can be extracted into your game directory using 7zip or WinRAR. When properly extracted, your game directory will contain setup-plasmobg1bg2.exe and the folder plasmobg1bg2. To install, double-click setup-plasmobg1bg2.exe and follow the instructions on screen.

You can run setup-plasmobg1bg2.exe in your game folder to reinstall, uninstall or otherwise change components.

macOS
Plasmocat's "BG NPC Portraits in BG2 Style" for macOS is distributed as a compressed tarball and includes a WeiDU installer.

First, extract the files from the tarball into your game directory. When properly extracted, your game directory will contain setup-plasmobg1bg2, setup-plasmobg1bg2.command, and the folder plasmobg1bg2. To install, double-click setup-plasmobg1bg2.command and follow the instructions on screen.

You can run setup-plasmobg1bg2.command in your game folder to reinstall, uninstall or otherwise change components.

Linux
Plasmocat's "BG NPC Portraits in BG2 Style" for Linux is distributed as a compressed tarball and does not include a WeiDU installer. Linux users will need to do a one-time install of WeiDU (and a few other adjustments) as described in this great writeup.

To install, run 'WeInstall plasmobg1bg2 in your game folder.

Note for Complete Uninstallation
In addition to the methods above for removing individual components, you can completely uninstall the mod using setup-plasmobg1bg2 --uninstall at the command line to remove all components without wading through prompts.

Contents

The portraits can be previewed in the Portrait Gallery.

PC Portraits: This component allows the PC to use any of the portraits included in this mod.

BG Portraits:

I hope you enjoy using these portraits as much as I enjoyed making them and playing them myself. Thanks to everyone who has provided constructive feedback, both challenging and inspiring me to do better work. I appreciate your support.

This mod started as a personal project because I wanted to use Tutu to improve the BG interface but at the same time really don't like the BG style of portraits. Rather than continue to use pics of completely different characters to hedge the problem, I decided to do a revamp of the whole works.

A few notes on the pics: I completely refaced (literally) Shar Teel and Faldorn because it's just my preference to have better-looking people in my games. I also completely overhauled Coran, making him look more like an elf rather than a mutant human. I collaborated with Domi on this in that she Beta'd my work and provided some pen & ink drawings of elves she obtained from official D&D illustrations. I tried to create a hybrid style that incorporated these old school elements with some of the traits portrayed in the BG2 elves as well, all while keeping his "am I not hot?" personality evident. I gave Alora red hair instead of pink because I didn't want her to compete or become confused with Imoen.

I made two versions of Xzar, one presenting him in the colors he wears in BG and one reflecting the colors he wears in BG2. You can choose which one to install! I also created two versions of Imoen; one suitable for a Swashbuckler, and the other more consistent with Imoen's BG character. You have a choice of one of these as well.

I didn't make replacement portraits for Edwin or Minsc; if you want to use the BG2 versions on a Tutu game, install BG1 NPC and the portraits are there. I did edit the BG Jaheira portrait mainly because I wanted to use it as a PC.

I hope you enjoy using these portraits as much as I enjoyed making them and playing them myself. Thanks to everyone who has provided constructive and appreciative feedback. I appreciate your support. Thanks to CamDawg for providing space for my stuff. Special thanks to cmorgan for making this mod happen, because I don't do my own scripting and wanted to make these portraits available. I'm honored to work with you and grateful for your help.

Plasmocat

Credits and Copyright Information

Disclaimer: I want to be clear that I do not claim to own copyright over any of the material I manipulated for these works. Those photographs and/or paintings remain the property of the original artists. Because of this I do not charge for my work or make any claims of proprietary rights over the material.

Further, if anyone sees a photo portion or a face they don't wish to be distributed, I'm more than happy to pull that portrait from release. If I knew the model or if the person commissioning the work knew the model, I've always asked permission before I shared their portraits publicly. The models whose permission I could get were obtained prior to the release of this mod, whether it was recently or at the time of the commission. However, if a model sees his or her face in this pack and changes his or her mind about wanting to be included, I have no problem removing the portrait after the fact. In any case, for the sake of privacy, I won't identify the models whether they are professional or not.

This mod was created to be freely enjoyed by all Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate 2, Tutu, and BGT players. However, it should not be sold, published, compiled or redistributed in any form without the consent of Plasmocat.

Version History

Version 5 - March 7, 2022

  • Updated French translation (Gwendolyne)
  • Readme: fixed typos and out-dated links

Version 4 - August 17, 2021

  • Fixed bug which prevented the portraits showing up for NPCs
  • PI integration

Version 3 - December 30, 2018

  • Code improvements
  • Player portraits can now be used on any IE game, excluding the original or Enhanced Edition of Planescape: Torment

Version 2 - April 20, 2008

  • WeiDU update to v206, VERSION, README, and removed obsolete auto-update script. Resized existing Imoen Ruffles portrait from 37x57 to 38x60. Added translations for German, Polish, French, and Russian language users.

Version 1 - September 18, 2006

  • initial release