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Post by tommyg on Apr 1, 2023 14:40:39 GMT -6
Alternate means you keep the original portrait, and you add in a new one. This requires some GS editing. Replacement means you permanently change out the original in game portrait for a new one. This requires no GS editing because in order to work they will have the same name. I found out portrait LBM files can take on almost any 256-color palette, so once I resized/resampled your drawings I lowered the color depth to 8 BIT RLE (256). Because I have always interpreted the character portraits to be single pages of the original book from the opening video sequence- it makes sense that some pages look different than others. Indeed in-game the portraits have slightly different "borders". There are certain index and color values that are special, but I haven't figured them all out yet. Some colors like black act transparent. So, when you are at the normal interface screen (iface in MPQ) the transparent pixels will show up as yellow or white but with a glowing effect, white and yellow being the color of the portrait background. But sometimes the transparent pixels show as the "stone panel" color that is behind the portrait but not normally visible. Other color and palette index colors can make a black leathery looking color show up, kind of like the cover of the book from the game. It could be a false memory, but I thought I remembered on certain Legends of Urak quests the portrait picture could show a "Lords of Magic" logo on the cover of a book style? So, besides the transparent, glowing white, yellow and black pixels hard wired into the game it is open season for how you want the portrait to look. I could try using the color pallet of the original Life Enchantress for example and it might match up better and fix the paleness/saturation issues. I you wanted to use that liwizp09 file right now without GS editing, open up WinMPQ and find the original liwizp01 or even the leader lildwp01 portrait and copy the name so you can rename the file I uploaded. When you hit ADD in WINMPQ select the newly renamed file and it will bring up the file path prompt. Carefully type in PORTRAIT\ or portrait\ depending on the file you are replacing. WINMPQ automatically overwrites existing files with the same name so you don't have to delete the original. In fact, I recommend keeping a copy of the original anyways. If you have any questions or ideas let me know!
Sorry for the slow reply, I've been working on other projects, I managed to get a few of these working ingame using the process, thanks!
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Post by tommyg on Apr 1, 2023 14:41:02 GMT -6
Wow, they are beautiful! Any chance to see my favorite portrait remade sometimes, namely Death wizard champion?
Well if you're looking for a Balkoth Portrait there's one in the manual we can use, this was created by Sierra, not me! But it's a decent pic of Balkoth, I have no idea why they didn't use this one in the actual game for Balkoth, as this seems to fit better.
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Post by tommyg on Apr 1, 2023 15:03:04 GMT -6
Hey! Actually tommyg is the one who created the portraits I just converted them to be ready for the game. So my artstyle would be different than his but I will gladly convert anything he makes, you make or I make or anyone makes into a usable portrait. I'll use some of your ideas and make my own, I will also use some AI tools to also create art in this style just for diversity, then we can pick the ones you like and make final changes you want. I will post some examples soon!
Do you mean with tools like Midjourney and Stable diffusion? It's incredible but a little scary what AI art can achieve now!
A part of the reason why I haven't made any more LOM portraits is down to AI art, it's disheartening as the AI can produce art in seconds that would take me hours. But the tools have so much potential for indie devs, as they are finally able to produce 2D artwork very cheap and quickly. This could play a big role in any LOM remake, for example, every champion needs 10 portrait variations, but it's possible for the AI to create variants based on one input image. So you would only need to draw one unique portrait for each champion, then get the AI to generate 9 other variations based off that one input style/content.
No idea how well this would work, I’ve not used any of the generators yet as they require subscriptions, but as an artist I'm keeping a keen interest. If you wanted to have a go generating AI variations using my originals, I’d be interested to see the results  |
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Post by Gaznak on Apr 8, 2023 9:46:15 GMT -6
Wow, they are beautiful! Any chance to see my favorite portrait remade sometimes, namely Death wizard champion? Well if you're looking for a Balkoth Portrait there's one in the manual we can use, this was created by Sierra, not me! But it's a decent pic of Balkoth, I have no idea why they didn't use this one in the actual game for Balkoth, as this seems to fit better.
No, I'm looking for a Necromancer (Death champion), just like on the screenshot:  impz.proboards.com/post/13183 |
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Post by tommyg on May 8, 2023 17:25:44 GMT -6
Thanks, and I'm glad you can feel the personalities coming through, I tried to capture the essence of each unit in the portraits. I'm considering adding some color to them but not sure whether that would detract from the Lords of Magic feel.
I haven't got round to drawing any more portraits recently though, as I've been working on some 3D Lords of Magic themed artwork, at the moment just the Great Temples but I want to have a go at some character models too.
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