AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic

I recently reinstalled my NWN all the haks and the current portrait pack. When I went to log in, I could not see the portraits for any of my characters that were from the Amia pack rather than the base game. Do you have any clue what I may have done wrong?

The latest portrait packs are apparently just new stuff. Which is annoying, because I wanted everything I lost. But understandable, because the files would get large for people with third world internet. I don't know how many seperate packs there have been. If I understood correctly, Tormak still has all the original files available. I wouldn't mind seeing Kalliniel's face, if it's still uploaded somewhere.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=57657&hilit=portrait

The first link contains all the portraits.

I appreciate the feedback, but I don't think I stated my trouble clearly. Since making my first post, I opened the portraits in a image manipulator program and managed to find two of the three I was looking for in my rushed search. However, when I try to go in game, those three characters show white squares instead of my portraits.

Do you think they could have lost the connection and I need to have them reassigned?

Hahaha! Want to laugh at me? I had named the folder portrait instead of portraits, as in plural. I just fixed that and I can see their portraits again.

Well, not the goblin, it seems his portrait isn't in the pack. Must have been in another pack I had downloaded for a old server I used before I learned of Amia's greatness.

IronAngel wrote:

The latest portrait packs are apparently just new stuff. Which is annoying, because I wanted everything I lost. But understandable, because the files would get large for people with third world internet. I don't know how many seperate packs there have been. If I understood correctly, Tormak still has all the original files available. I wouldn't mind seeing Kalliniel's face, if it's still uploaded somewhere.

The full pack has everything that was given to me by Dahlia originally pluus every update I've done, so if it was in there at one point, it should still be there. I only add (unless told to remove).

Oh. I was reading that link wrong when I downloaded them originally. The latest old packs are at the bottom, hence the larger size.

I was also somewhat confused as to why there are old packs available if the content is the same.

It must be that I actually never submitted Kalliniel's portrait. That's irritating!

I keep all the old packs despite the content being the same just in case something goes wrong in an update. Then I always have every version to "roll back" to.

ChrisP wrote:

Hahaha! Want to laugh at me? I had named the folder portrait instead of portraits, as in plural. I just fixed that and I can see their portraits again.

Well, not the goblin, it seems his portrait isn't in the pack. Must have been in another pack I had downloaded for a old server I used before I learned of Amia's greatness.

Amia portraits -really- should go in the override folder, IMO. Bit disconcerting to see a pic you cropped and edited end up on a completely unrelated character. I mean, I'm flattered that you like it, but...I'll still ask you nicely to pick something else

NinjaClarinet wrote:

ChrisP wrote:

Hahaha! Want to laugh at me? I had named the folder portrait instead of portraits, as in plural. I just fixed that and I can see their portraits again.

Well, not the goblin, it seems his portrait isn't in the pack. Must have been in another pack I had downloaded for a old server I used before I learned of Amia's greatness.

Amia portraits -really- should go in the override folder, IMO. Bit disconcerting to see a pic you cropped and edited end up on a completely unrelated character. I mean, I'm flattered that you like it, but...I'll still ask you nicely to pick something else

I just want to say publicly, I find it extremely poor taste and rude to use someone else's custom portrait. Someone spent time looking for /their/ character, and by doing so, you might as well make it one of the generic NWN heads. Bottom line, it's bad taste, please don't do it guys. If you need help finding a portrait, ask me.

edit: and just to emphasize my point, Derk and I once spent like four hours looking for character portraits together. People put time into this, don't be a thief.

TheGoddessOfAmazing© wrote:

... stuff I agree with.

+1.

If you want to be a swell and awesome person and avoid the temptation to lift someone else's portrait pack, you can install the Amia portraits into your Override folder, instead of your Portraits folder. They'll work and show up n game exactly the same, but they won't be available to select as your characters' portrait during character creation.

Be an awesome gal / fella! Don't step on other peoples' mojo!

TheGoddessOfAmazing© wrote:
If you need help finding a portrait, ask me.

Just emphasizing this! I really will help you!

...I only agree with all that (the stuff above the last post!) when the custom portrait is actually yours. If you find the picture on the Internet, you can't really say a word about someone using the portrait you "made" for your character. I have tons of character portraits that I've taken off the Internet, but I don't put those in the portrait pack. The only one of mine that I have in there is the custom portrait of Zelly that was done by Draco specifically for Zelly. I mean, I saw someone use my old portrait for Yas'da (old drow bard) and felt momentarily sad, but I certainly didn't get upset or say a word to them because I had originally "stolen" it from its original creator.

That said, if you're that worried about people "stealing" your portrait, do what I did with Zelly's. Make a separate set of portraits with the same name solely for the purpose of adding them to the portrait pack. Put your good copy in your portraits folder and adjust the other ones as follows:

Make the (name)_h.tga and (name)_l.tga files blank or put an eyesore of a watermark over them, and leave the (name)_m.tga, (name)_s.tga, and (name)_t.tga with the right images. This will undoubtedly convince them not to use your portrait in character creation when the big image in the potrait selection screen turns out to be a lot different than the little one showed. And it still allows your character's portrait to come through properly in the party bar, the chat screens, and when examined.

The only people affected by doing it that way are DMs who look at your character sheet and have also downloaded your custom portrait, so I think they'll forgive you.

I echo Jes' sentiments.

Every time I see a "please do not use" devoid of credit to the artist, it wrangles my nuts. It's one thing if you didn't know who the artist is and can't find out, it's another when the image is taken off Deviant Art (or whatever) and no credit is given, but all ownership is claimed.

I don't claim anything like ownership, and I certainly don't call people out when they use portraits I've made. (I say 'made' because I usually Photoshop pre-existing images to get them to look how I want, sometimes fairly extensively, and then convert them to the proper size and format. I'm not talking here about something that's just DL'd from some mass-distributed portrait pack on NWVault; using that stuff is clearly way less of an issue.) It just bothers me, is all. There's a whole Internet's worth of interesting character art out there, you can make your character look like literally anything, with just a couple of well-phrased Google Image searches. Why would anybody have to go and make their character look exactly like mine? Why would they even *want* to? Maybe I'm the weirdo here, but I wouldn't ever even consider using a portrait I knew to be already in use by someone else. I want my characters to be unique.

I only say what I say as a digital artist who's had copyright laws and etiquette shoved down her throat throughout art school. Even a mere photomanipulation or extensive visual edit of another person's work can be copyright infringement if you upload or distribute it beyond your own personal use - unless you credit the original artist. That is why it is never okay to chew someone out for using a portrait that was acquired through Google or DeviantArt or any other gallery site, no matter what you do to the image. Unless you have express permission directly from the artist, you never have any rights to the image, no matter what you do to it to make it your own. That's why no one has any right to throw their weight around when it comes to these NWN portraits. It's just not right, unless the artwork is, legally, yours.

I'm not directing this at you, Lizzie. I'm just clarifying. I've heard more than once that there are players who are rather forceful about the portrait issue. I simply don't agree with people telling other people not to use "their" portraits unless it actually is theirs and the original artist knows it's being used for that purpose and/or has given credit to them, however the artist has indicated a preference.

I'm probably more gung-ho about this topic than can be expected, but you can blame my own creative endeavors (which are all very much protected by the copyrights I'm defending). Personally, I have no problem at all with pictures being used as portraits, even without artist permission. But the images have to have a copyright notice on them if they're uploaded by anyone except the creator. That's why artists tend to make their stance known when it comes to these things.

You know it would really help if the images had the 'Authors' field filled. Just saying. I remember once that I found a really nice image on DeviantArt and when I went to look for the artist months later I had to search for aaages to find them and give them props.

Yeah. It's nice that DA image file names (tend to) be 'Name of art_by_Soandso'.

Portraits are by their very nature character creation resources. They're stuff you download to use on characters you make. Legal issues aside, I think it's extremely petty to be protective of your own character's portrait. Even if it was made by you. If you don't want people using art you've made, you really shouldn't upload it in a context where it's clearly meant to be used. If I download additional crap onto my HD, I expect it to be useful to me - not simply to satisfy your vanity on the off-chance I ever meet your character who may have been archived years ago if you ever even played on my timezones.

I do understand Jes's concerns, and those of others too. But common sense should apply here: if you upload something in a context as specific as a portrait pack, you really have no cause for complaint. You distributed your work to me. If you give it to me, of course I can use it privately. Using it in a small gaming group of friends, which Amia should qualify as, is private. And it's only visible if you already have a copy of the work. Anyone else who might see it are also people you have distributed it to.

And yeah, if it's not even your original work in the first place, what Jes said above applies.

There probably should be a disclaimer about crediting the original author when possible, and about giving freedom for anyone to use your art in the context of NWN portraits, if you choose to upload it to the Amia pack. Would prevent a lot of disagreements.

If you went through the effort of drawing something yourself, or paying to get a commission done for your character, then other people should not be using your portrait. If you found it on the internet or something, and put no real effort other than browsing into it, then I do not care if people use it.

I wonder if I'm not really making myself clear.

I'm not saying you can't use whatever portrait you feel like. Of course you can. It's made perfectly explicit in the portrait pack thread that people adding to it have no pre-emptive claim to anything in it and absolutely zero effort will be made to protect the exclusivity of anything in it. This is good and right and just.

I'm just saying, why *would* you use a portrait that you know to have been initiated into the pack by someone else? Why would you want your character to look identical to someone else's character, when there are probably literally billions of other portraits you might use? It just seems a little bit tacky to me, you know? A little bit like intentionally stepping on someone's toes. Sort of like if I logged in tomorrow and decided to roll up a character named Joon the Binder, or Zelly Cys'dina, or Mathan Wayne. There would be no rule against it, nor should there be. It just feels like it should be a matter of etiquette not to.

Just to add to Lizzies posts =) in a game where your portrait is really the only thing you can customize to be truly unique, rather then have the same generic nwn head as 30 other characters, why would you want to copy someone else's? I mean, really, if I take four hours to look through art to find a picture that says, "Yes, THIS is Serenia, THIS is how I see her in my head, THIS is how I differentiate her from the limitations of the game" then yes, I'm going to find it rude if you say, "haha thats my character too." Obviously there's no rule against it, and I'm not even suggesting there should be, that's a little too micro-managey, just saying, I personally find it rude.

Since it's not a matter of ruling and policy, I don't see it as a matter of etiquette either. Specifically, I find it somewhat dangerous to advertise a standard that people disagree about and many don't even stop to consider; it stigmatizes people who had no ill intent and makes jerks of those who simply view the nature of the portrait pack differently.

Then again, I don't consider unique portraits that big of a deal, which colors my attitude. I'd rather everyone stick to the selection NWN offers, and possibly download a shared pack for everyone to use. With all the NPC portraits unlocked, there's practically an unlimited number of permutations to use between race, head model and portrait. Granted, not every possibility fits together, but there are still so many cool NWN portraits I never see people use. I've never seen anyone look like Al'Tustra, for example, but that character was perfectly unified with nothing but vanilla NWN resources. I don't really see the point in making sure you're a unique snowflake, when in fact a successful character is a variation on an archetype, and it's not your looks that make you memorable or forgettable. And perhaps more importantly, custom portraits alter the artistic look of the game and fit together poorly. There's nothing immersive about a photograph, charcoal sketch, vanilla NWN portrait, oil painting and an anime drawing having a conversation at Cordor square.

This is just my perference, and people who give more weight to visual cutomization might feel different. I just dislike that there are several layers of social etiquette at work here: if it says there's no individual claim to any of the portraits, then there's no claim and asking people to nonetheless respect one creates cliques of "jerks" and "nice people" based on whether they recognize (or even know about) the feelings of some individuals.

Ok. I am seriously sorry for the can of worms I opened here. I may be a good roleplayer, years and years of PNP gaming, but I am a total newbie to the online gaming community. I don't really know all the ins and outs and etiquette. I didn't read enough and didn't realize that portrait packs are generally downloaded into override folder.

I apologize to whoever I poached the portrait from that I have been using on Turlough. Whoever took the time to find that image and size it for NWN. I didn't even think of it that way, I just thought it was cool.

However, the portrait that I am using on Betha was actually plundered from a portrait pack I had downloaded from an old server I played on. I found it outside the context of Amia and asked Tormak to load it into the pack for me, which he did. (thanks very much Tormak!)

I did not mean to cause bad feelings in this community I love playing in. Going forward, I will be mindful of other peoples feelings regarding protraits out of courtesy.

ChrisP wrote:

Ok. I am seriously sorry for the can of worms I opened here. I may be a good roleplayer, years and years of PNP gaming, but I am a total newbie to the online gaming community. I don't really know all the ins and outs and etiquette. I didn't read enough and didn't realize that portrait packs are generally downloaded into override folder.

I apologize to whoever I poached the portrait from that I have been using on Turlough. Whoever took the time to find that image and size it for NWN. I didn't even think of it that way, I just thought it was cool.

However, the portrait that I am using on Betha was actually plundered from a portrait pack I had downloaded from an old server I played on. I found it outside the context of Amia and asked Tormak to load it into the pack for me, which he did. (thanks very much Tormak!)

I did not mean to cause bad feelings in this community I love playing in. Going forward, I will be mindful of other peoples feelings regarding protraits out of courtesy.

There are no bad feelings from me, and I probably spoke my opinion a little strongly. I'd be more then happy to help you find some great portraits, just pm me some character description.

Quote:

Since it's not a matter of ruling and policy, I don't see it as a matter of etiquette either

It is actually a matter of ruling and policy: Unless it has changed since I left, there was a very blanket "We as DMs will not enforce your petty portrait ownership claims" rule, unless you could prove that you were the one who created the art, from scratch.

I mean, hell, I have my portraits in the portraits folder too. I guess I'm a bad person now according to a lot of you.

I personally find the whole argument completely tacky and I gag every time I get a watermarked picture but I'll still add them. But woe betide the person who comes to me (or a DM, probably) complaining about some dude using their picture. I've had it happen to me, who cares.

If it bugs you so much, nothing stops you from politely, rationally talking to the other person with "your" portrait and asking them to change. Gentlemen's agreements are the best agreements. But if they say no: Too bad. Deal with it. And you'll still kind of come off like a douche while you do it, imo.

I mean, really, if I take four hours to look through art to find a picture that says, "Yes, THIS is Serenia, THIS is how I see her in my head, THIS is how I differentiate her from the limitations of the game" then yes, I'm going to find it rude if you say, "haha thats my character too." Obviously there's no rule against it, and I'm not even suggesting there should be, that's a little too micro-managey, just saying, I personally find it rude.

From my perspective, the thing is; you are essentially doing the same thing that you rude from other people. It's clearly not unique if you can find an image of it, so why all the fuss?

You found someone else's work of possibly someone else's specific character or at least specific vision, with specific appearance in mind that they created with their artistry and then uploaded for people to see and probably use (whether they really intended use or not, because there's no stopping it on the Internet.) You are among who-knows-how-many other people who have stumbled across that image and said to themselves, "Yes, THAT is perfect for my character" and essentially, every single person who says that who isn't either the artist or the person who commissioned it, if any, is wrong. Spending a fraction of the time it took to create the image searching for it does not somehow validate your claim to it.

(And what if I do have that same image on my HD from my own searches, that I've pictured it as my character before I saw it was a portrait someone else had uploaded into the pack? Would it somehow be better if I made my own crop of the image and uploaded it for my character, instead of using the one you've already uploaded?)

I'm not trying to come across as hostile, by the way. TGOAA and I have vocal opinions on the opposite sides of this, so I want to clarify that I don't think she (or anyone else on 'that side' of it, like Lizzie) are bad people, just that I disagree and I think it's unfair to make other people feel bad about it.

The few portraits I've sent over to be added to the pack, I did so with the understanding they are out there now and other people might use them - I hope they do, too, if it's the one they find suiting for their character. It's not all just for my enjoyment or I wouldn't upload it, and I don't really subscribe to appearance being exceptionally unique. Nor do I base all of my impressions of a character's appearance solely on their portrait, which is mostly too small to see in great detail anyway, and for me is portrait about attitude and theme as much as features. Other details should be gleaned from the actual avatar, bio, and emotes. That's what creates the uniqueness of the character: the character itself not just their affect.

LetumLux wrote:

I'm not trying to come across as hostile, by the way. TGOAA and I have vocal opinions on the opposite sides of this, so I want to clarify that I don't think she (or anyone else on 'that side' of it, like Lizzie) are bad people, just that I disagree and I think it's unfair to make other people feel bad about it.

I'm going to let myself drop out here, and agree to disagree. I just wanted to say, I didn't mean to make anyone feel bad about using a portrait, and as I stated before, I can see I stated my opinion rather strongly. Last thing I'll say is I would just ask that when you use a custom portrait in the pack, that you consider the feelings of the person who took time to find it to represent their character. <3

and I don't think anyone in this topic who disagrees with me, least of all Letumlux, are bad people, quite the opposite, I respect them and enjoy their rp. I just think there's nothing else for me to say here I haven't already said.

IronAngel wrote:

With all the NPC portraits unlocked, there's practically an unlimited number of permutations to use between race, head model and portrait. Granted, not every possibility fits together, but there are still so many cool NWN portraits I never see people use. I've never seen anyone look like Al'Tustra, for example, but that character was perfectly unified with nothing but vanilla NWN resources. I don't really see the point in making sure you're a unique snowflake, when in fact a successful character is a variation on an archetype, and it's not your looks that make you memorable or forgettable.

A BLAST FROM THE PAST TO FOLLOW!

I am greatly flattered. The unified look IronAngel describes is something I spent a lot of energy perfecting, actually. When I was a regular player, I found great enjoyment and took great pride in making somwhat cool and unusual combinations of the vanilla portraits and head models etc.

Some of you've seen my self-drawn portrait of Al'Tustra, so you know I've could gone down that road, portrait-wise. But for me, a large part of mye pride and joy in creating characters stems from overcoming the creative challenge of combining the standard stuff in cool, unusal ways.

I remeber, I had a rather elitist apporach to this, actually. I think this sentiment was reinforceded by Yossarin's simple lute portrait - I thought it was awesome - but thinking about it now, I'm not sure if he actually added a custom one for those who bothered to download it. I did not.

Anyways. This part of the game, searching for unusal combos ambong the orignial NWN stuff, has given me a lot of fun over the years, I just want to pipe in.

My Cleric of Hoar was pretty much based on the fact that I'd never seen anyone used the tensured head and Desther's portrait. I still remember the joy of discovering that combo.

Good times!

PS! Yes. I found this thread via a random forum search on my own characters. Vanity is what's gotten me where I am.

Kjetta!!!!! Come back to me!!!

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