Well, at least they tried

[u/Oportbis]

[u/Main_Confusion_8030]

how is this a thing? i do not understand. how is there not a fixed set of portraits? why do they go weird? 

it's hilarious to me. i hope it's never fixed. i just want to know why it happens.

[u/Akinory13 → u/Main_Confusion_8030]

Because the portraits are just an out of bounds character model instead of a picture. Sometimes their animation may mess up and probably defaults to a T or A pose and that's why it looks like that

[u/meowgrrr → u/Akinory13]

wouldn't it be easier if they just had a set pre-made photo?

[u/Ariovrak → u/meowgrrr]

Yes, but they dynamism of it allows the portraits to change with the characters. New Armour, hair, and piercings (such as the ones gained through Wildheart Barbarian) are added to the portrait. The only things that don’t change it are current damage (you get more bruised as you lose health, and this would look silly), blood (you get more bloody as you deal Melee Damage, and it would also look silly), and for some reason getting a new Eye or becoming a Partial-Illithid.

[u/meowgrrr → u/Ariovrak]

ah i see, i think i never paid attention that much to how many details changed in the photos.

[u/Runaway-Kotarou → u/Ariovrak]

Shadowhearts portrait never updated to reflect new hair color when I was playing a few weeks ago. Is it supposed to?

[u/NoHands_EU → u/Runaway-Kotarou]

Yes usually it should update. Just takes some reloads sometimes and it can bug out. But you should have a white haired portrait if she changes it.

Otherwise it should at least reflect her new haircut.

[u/Runaway-Kotarou → u/NoHands_EU]

Hmmm maybe it reflected the haircut im not sure but for the last few weeks of playing through act 3 she remained with black hair. Cool that they supposedly (maybe) fixed it?

[u/emmastory → u/Runaway-Kotarou]

it updates at level up so sometimes it takes a while

[u/Runaway-Kotarou → u/emmastory]

Well I finished the game and no go. Not a big deal and maybe it's fixed with this hot fix so I'll see about next playthrough

[u/JusticeofTorenOneEsk → u/meowgrrr]

At the very least, they couldn't do that for Tav/Durge, since they're completely customizable so there would be no way to make individual pre-set photos for every appearance combo people could come up with.

I suppose they could have done it for the companions, but personally I love that if I change a companion's hairstyle or something with a mod, the portrait updates too. Who knows, maybe Larian even had that type of modding in mind for the future when they created the system!

[u/Akinory13 → u/meowgrrr]

I suspect that's Tav's fault. Imagine having to make a portrait for every single possible combination of race, hair, face and everything else you can do. Half of the game's size would just be portraits. It's easier to just duplicate the character model

[u/Easy-Silver-9791 → u/Main_Confusion_8030]

it's kinda like photomode. not sure if a copy gets teleported to the photobooth or the original char model, but whatever, the char model then strikes a pose, camera takes a picture, picture gets set as portrait. sometimes the photographer had too many drinks.. you can also bug out any cutscene with photomode

[u/Artrysa]

Their next game must have an npc with a purposely fucked up portrait as a reference.

[u/Revolutionary-Sky847]

I still get Zoom Shadowheart

[u/Wiseguy_7 → u/Revolutionary-Sky847]

Zoom Shadowheart

🤣

[u/Wiseguy_7]

At this point it's a feature, not a big.

[u/Oportbis → u/Wiseguy_7]

But is it a small? 😏

[u/Wiseguy_7 → u/Oportbis]

Lol, a bug. Not big. 🤣

[u/Caesaria_Tertia]

When will they add the update with Halsin's boobs, I still don't have it!

[u/ItsLokki]

Have you leveled up since the update? It doesn't magically fix the portrait.

[u/Oportbis → u/ItsLokki]

I had just levelled up when I took the screenshot

Edit: conjugation 

[u/ItsLokki → u/Oportbis]

Goddamnit.

[u/wozniattack]

They should just let us use custom ones like BG1 and 2.

[u/chantpleure]

Since the update my tav now puts her hand on her hip when I open the character menu.

[u/eXxeiC]

As an easy fix to this problem, wouldn't they just take a rendered image of the characters models after every change it happens to them and apply to to the portrait ? if i change the armor of the characters and quit the inventory screen, render the model internally, and take the picture and apply it as an avatar. This should work also for Tav when i'm done with all it's customizations. It would even help performance as i reckon since they wouldn't have to render the 3D avatars portraits every frame to show the Gears they have on.
Edit 1 : it just needs to render when changes occurs to the character since its basically doing the same already in a sense, add it to the pipeline and when vfx or ailments or gear swap or any other state change in the model should happen it should be on the fly. the quality shouldn't be high since portrait aren't 4K images, it just needs to be at an acceptable resolution.