Request for portraits overhaul

[astartes906]

This is some ideas for improving the diversity of ck2 caracters for more immersion :

First idea :
Having a line in caracters description that set what kind of portrait they use

Spoiler

508244=
{
birth_name="Wendy"
female=yes
portrait=old
birth_date="749.12.25"
attributes=
{
2 3 5 8 9 }
traits=
{
10 58 179 73 75 77 83 85 95 88 93 97 }
religion="catholic"
culture="frankish"
dynasty=10295392
dna="belbcjjabab"
properties="ee0ggk00000"
fertility=0.600
health=10.000
employer=508170
host=508170

With this kind of command for include it:
if birth_date is before 950.1.1 then portrait=old

In that way we will see our ancestors with the clothes they wear when we played them, instead of modern clothes.
This means that caracters with old clothes (or early clothes if you prefer) will at some moment be mixed with people with normal clothes but it should not be an issue right ?

Second idea :
Have caracters hairs set by culture rather than ethnicy
With here some exemples (using Better Looking Garbs and Portrait Realignment Pack mods)

Spoiler

1. norse face with western culture ( french for example) 2. turkish face with cuman culture 3. mongol face with cuman culture

Spoiler

arab culture with western face (a descendant of a basque mother and a berber lord for example)

Spoiler

western face with celtic culture

Spoiler

greek culture with western face

Spoiler

norse culture with western face (anglo saxon child with both anglo saxons parents but educated in norse culture for example or german lord who settle in a norse county and adopt its culture)

This could add a lot of portrait diversity and be more realistic, i'm bored of seeing some turkish caracters with nomad plait when they are french culture and have no blood relations with any turkish lord.

Third idea :
Add religious clothes, haircuts and beards to caracters frames depending of their religions.
This is really the number one thing i want to see included in ck2.
This will differentiate for example a norse pagan caracter from a christian norse caracter with for example adding golden crowns to catholic kings, turban for muslims caracters so a turkish sunni lord will be different of a tengri turkish lord or deer hat for suomenusko crowns.
I don't really know how to explain myself in english but i hope you understand what i mean, because i haven't the skills to provide you visual examples.

Fourth idea :
Adding more steps in caracters aging.
0 to 3 years old : baby frame
3 to 14 years old : actual child frame with hair and eyes colors visible
14 to 20 years old : actual "young" frame with less or no beard ( it makes me laugh to see a 16 years old boy with an enormous beard)
20 to 30 years old : actual "young" frame
30 to 45 years old : actual "adult" or "middle" frame
45 to 55 years old : actual "adult" face with greyish hair
55 to 65 years old : actual "old" face with greyish hair
65 and more years old : actual "old" frame

Spoiler

1. vanilla adult face 2. adult face with greyish hairs 3. old face with greyish hairs 4. vanilla old face

This could improve the caracters faces without many work : just a filter to apply to all haircuts for greyish hairs and a filter for child portraits for hairs and eyes color.

Hope some dev will read this thread and seriously think of adding these ideas to ck2.

 

[nkibilko]

There should definitely be changes to how clothing and hairstyles are chosen, but giving everyone the same western european base face is the worst "improvement" ever. Never understood that mod. It doesn't take much to know that human skin tone, head / face shape and features can vary greatly from region to region across the planet

But it would definitely be cool if hairstyles and beards were dependent on culture! I'd like maybe some overlap though... say someone with greek genes but italian culture.. Being able to use any hairstyle or beard from the mediterranian or iberian portraits

 

[shulima]

All I want from portraits right now is for the Norse to stop looking like inbreds one step from liver failure.

 

[Robert II]

All I want from portraits right now is for the Norse to stop looking like inbreds one step from liver failure.

Isn't that what Scandinavians look like?

 

[astartes906]

Never understood that mod.

Yeah me either.

All I want from portraits right now is for the Norse to stop looking like inbreds one step from liver failure.

This is not really the goal of this topic.

 

[phaceman]

+1
This is so needed. Given portraits are the only visual that defines much of what CK2 is about, it is well overdue.

 

[Flamestalker]

Never understood that mod

Yeah me either.

Its an old mod from the days of the old Mediterranean portraits, many people didn't like the first few portrait packs (mostly the Russian and old Mediterranean portraits) but still wanted use the assets they paid for so this where this mod came in. Nowadays it isn't really needed anymore as the overall portrait quality has increased greatly.

I've been a user of the mod for years but I've never used many of the portrait options available, I dont see why you would want to change the Celtic, Norse and the more modern portraits but the option is there for those that still do. I currently use a heavily modified version of the Ironman version, I only use the improved Western and Arab pack, the Ethiopian/Nubian pack and the old Finno-Ugric pack as I dont have their official portraits yet.

 

[Lord_P]

I want to add my stamp of approval to this thread before Paradox moves it to the rubbish bin... I mean the suggestions forum.

 

[EviLine]

I just want Iberian females to look normal. Now they are paler than Norse.

 

[Daronaollard]

I really like this. I am very fond of the portraits because they add diversity and extra immersion to the game. With an overhaul like this though, it would be amazing. No character could possibly look the same as another one which would make the game very interesting. At least in my opinion.

 

[Castorem]

If Paradox inserts this into their game, I'll get circumcised or castrated (not sure yet, depends on the number of bugs and the cost), that's how much I doubt Paradox plans or ever will do a complete portrait overhaul. This should have been in the game all along. By the way, great ideas, kudos to you.

 

[astartes906]

Its an old mod from the days of the old Mediterranean portraits, many people didn't like the first few portrait packs (mostly the Russian and old Mediterranean portraits) but still wanted use the assets they paid for so this where this mod came in. Nowadays it isn't really needed anymore as the overall portrait quality has increased greatly.

I've been a user of the mod for years but I've never used many of the portrait options available, I dont see why you would want to change the Celtic, Norse and the more modern portraits but the option is there for those that still do. I currently use a heavily modified version of the Ironman version, I only use the improved Western and Arab pack, the Ethiopian/Nubian pack and the old Finno-Ugric pack as I dont have their official portraits yet.

Thanks for clarifying that point.

 

[CrackdToothGrin]

This is some ideas for improving the diversity of ck2 caracters for more immersion :

First idea :
Having a line in caracters description that set what kind of portrait they use
...
With this kind of command for include it:
if birth_date is before 950.1.1 then portrait=old

In that way we will see our ancestors with the clothes they wear when we played them, instead of modern clothes.
This means that caracters with old clothes (or early clothes if you prefer) will at some moment be mixed with people with normal clothes but it should not be an issue right ?

I like this idea, a lot. This is probably the easiest to implement and the most likely to implement.

Second idea :
Have caracters hairs set by culture rather than ethnicy
...
This could add a lot of portrait diversity and be more realistic, i'm bored of seeing some turkish caracters with nomad plait when they are french culture and have no blood relations with any turkish lord.

This is one I've championed during my time making the last ten or so DLCs, but it's really hard to implement because not all the hairs "line up" 100%. There is definitely a lot of effort made to have that be a reality, but there are billions of combinations that can exist.

A good once-over on the portrait_properties.txt file to make certain combinations more or less likely would be nice. Or, alternately, and I've been saying this for like three+ years now; Make the properties file specific to culture of the character.

Third idea :
Add religious clothes,

This was cut deliberately and was part of the vanilla set-up pre-DLC.

haircuts and beards to caracters frames depending of their religions.

With a good do-over of the portrait properties file, this could easily settle these types of concerns.

This is really the number one thing i want to see included in ck2.

It's pretty easy, if somewhat time-consuming, to mod this by adding the religious clothes into the clothing frame and giving your characters new rules with the properties file.

This will differentiate for example a norse pagan caracter from a christian norse caracter

As of right now, the "Pagan vs. Non-Pagan" set-up with the clothes is actually "Christian vs. Non-Christian" so you can't actually have a Muslim set, etc. While I don't think they'll ever make full clothing sets for each religion, it would be nice if they could add mod support so we could have things like "male_clothes_christian.dds" and so on, including support for merchant clothes (Why should an Indian merchant wear Italian Renaissance clothing?)

with for example adding golden crowns to catholic kings, turban for muslims caracters so a turkish sunni lord will be different of a tengri turkish lord or deer hat for suomenusko crowns.

Careful here, though. Not all kings actually wore a crown commonly, and a very large number of muslims actually wore crowns and hats/caps instead of turbans. To be completely honest, out of the thousands of illuminated manuscript pages I've parsed through - It's very common.

Fourth idea :
Adding more steps in caracters aging.
0 to 3 years old : baby frame

That'd necessitate creating baby images for each culture unless you used a few placeholder images with a few varieties of color. Doable, at least on my end.

3 to 14 years old : actual child frame with hair and eyes colors visible

Assuming the engine could be coded to use the hair/eye color on these images; I could have the art done in a day since it would probably work like the hair and eyes already do; Greyscale with an alpha channel.

14 to 20 years old : actual "young" frame with less or no beard ( it makes me laugh to see a 16 years old boy with an enormous beard)

This could be achieved in portrait properties if the file recognizes good age constraints. However, the actual facial hair isn't a sideways correlation but a "vertical" one in that each piece is separate from one another. The "young" frames are also supposed to represent the mid-20s at the earliest.

20 to 30 years old : actual "young" frame
30 to 45 years old : actual "adult" or "middle" frame
45 to 55 years old : actual "adult" face with greyish hair
55 to 65 years old : actual "old" face with greyish hair
65 and more years old : actual "old" frame

Assuming this doesn't necessitate actual new renders - This would probably be fairly easy (Not a coder, though).

This could improve the caracters faces without many work : just a filter to apply to all haircuts for greyish hairs and a filter for child portraits for hairs and eyes color.

Hope some dev will read this thread and seriously think of adding these ideas to ck2.

Who knows? They do have a new team.

 

[Ca7cher]

I love the second idea. It would bring so much diversity into the court.
If not that, then I would love to see something new happening to the portraits. Everyone just looks the same and it's just all so ... meh.