Portraits

[CAPryde]

Hello all. I'm new to FG and still figuring some things out. I have a question about portraits. I understand how to make new portraits appear on an individual machine. But is there a way to load the files on my end and have them pushed out to the players like shared tokens? Or am I correct in thinking that I have to send the files along separately to them and have them move the file into their own portrait folders?

Thanks in advance for the assistance.

[Doswelk]

Found out a way to do it as GM!

go to the portraits folder in your campaign.

copy the intended portrait file in there.

Rename it!

The tricky part is the renaming they need to be in the format id-xxxxx where the first file (id-00001) matches the id-00001 entry in the db.xml.

Ensure you have no extension on the file and it should work!
--------------------------
p.s. "missed" you last night :p

Might have saved the day! (Almost TPK!)

[unluki]

We wanted our GM to be able to show us all each other's portraits, but have been unable to get FG to do so. It seems that no matter what we try, the same 8 original portraits are all that will show up. We're using the 4e ruleset. None of us knows how you can create a picture with "no file extension," unless you meant no file extension included in the NAME of the file, so we assumed that's what you meant. We tried both png and jpg pics, placing them into the GM's folder, but no change occurred as to what was available to the players. Any suggestions?

[Doswelk]

I am not sure I understand the question..

Do you not all get to see each others pictures when you connect up?

The above hoops are what a GM needs to do if he wants to pre-populate pictures to the characters in the db.xml

If a player wants to add a portrait they would just copy the image to the portrait folder, when they connect to the DM the file is replicated to other users.

[Xorn]

Note that as long as a portrait has been selected for a character, when someone chooses that character, the portrait will appear--once chosen for a character it's stored in the campaign database. The images in the Portraits directory are just the choices you can choose. Once chosen the campaign database saves a copy of the image.

For example, I made five premades for a one-shot campaign I'm putting together. I joined my own game as a player, selected each character, and assigned a portrait from my local Portrait directory to them. Then I cleared the ownership of those characters on my host session.

Now when players connect, they will see the premades with the portraits I selected, even though they don't have those images locally.

[Jonny Tenebrous]

Thanks Doswelk. I'm creating my first campaign, using pregens for all my players, and was very frustrated that there was no option for me to assign portraits to the characters I created... especially since I'd just spent a load of time making them all look great in photoshop. Your method appears to have worked. Now I just wish there was a way I could connect to my server (with a full, but not "ultimate" license) like Xorn does to verify that everybody will see the pictures.

[Saravyn]

If you have a Full license, you can run a second instance of the program and connect to yourself (I usually use the local IP address, but I hear you can use the loopback IP 127.0.0.1 as well).

This will have you connect to yourself as a player. Thus allowing you to select portraits for each character, and see the character selection list as others would see it.

I have tested this and can verify that it works :D

[Jonny Tenebrous]

Thanks. That's exactly what I needed to know. Works fine. ~Cheers

[unluki]

We have attempted to try some of the instructions above, but still have been unable to utilize anything but the original portraits. This is SOOOOOOO annoying! :(

[Doswelk]

As a player before you start FGII copy your intended portrait to your portraits inside folder in your FGII\application data folder.

I tend to use png files but I imagine .jpg will work as well.

A GM cannot add portraits without starting a second FGII copy and connecting to the first or using my "hack" further up.

[Griogre]

It should be mentioned most rulesets expect the portrait images to be 63x63. FG will attempt to display them in this size if they are a different size but if it has to resize the display significantly the portrait will not look good, particularly if the image was not a square.

Portraits are one of the few things that come from the client to the host so they must normally placed on the player's computer. A player places his portrait in his portraits folder in FG's application data folder. When the player is connected to the host he transfers his portrait to the host which resends the image to the other players.

FG's data application folder is hidden by Windows by default. You can have your players find it by pressing the Start Button, then All Programs, Fantasy Grounds II, Application Data Folder. This will pop a window with a series of folders. Have your players put their portrait image(s) in the portraits folder. Generally FG only reads this folder on start up so after they drop in the images to see them they will need to restart FG.

A word to the wise, sometimes players use very large images as portraits so if you notice a lot of lag between the player's portrait being passed around you might want to check the image. I once had a player that was using like a 800x600 pixel image that was megs in size. You don't want to be transferring around an file that large just to get a 63x63 image.