Questions about portraits and portrait modding

[faiuwle]

1. How does the game assemble a portrait from the portrait string and the culture/graphical culture/age/traits/rank/government of a character? I notice that the gfx directory is full of .dds files, and it seems there is a python module for handling .dds files, or at least decomposing them down into RGB pixels. Is composing the portraits just a matter of layering .dds files on top of each other? How is placement calculated? How do the letters in the portrait string correspond to the numbers on the .dds files?

2. How large is a portrait image?

3. Where are the portrait DLCs stored? Are all the DLC files named culture_gender_faceregion_#? Is it the same for portrait mods that include modded-in cultures?

4. What is the structure of portrait mods? Do they just overwrite the .dds files?

 

[Molech]

Portraits are not just a single image but are "stitched together" from different elements like nose, eyes, cheeks etc. Each element is it's own file that looks like a strip with all the options on one file. There's a guide that explains the files and how properties and DNA combine the elements here. As far as I know the DLC portrait files are in the DLC .zip file.

 

[faiuwle]

Thanks!

 

[faiuwle]

I have a question. I see in my save file values for the base head that are like "v" and "m", but there are only three base heads. How are these to be interpreted?

 

[Nendur]

The base head property is unused.

 

[faiuwle]

Thanks, that makes sense, since you can just infer it from the age.