3D Artwork Megathread (all discussion here please)

[John Stahlhelm]

Edited Thread title to make it Megathread - SAS

They're ugly as sin and utterly inferior to hand-crafted art for portraits.
Just look at his random advisor portrait I pulled from the wiki:

Just 77x77 pixels and he looks like he means business. My army morale is higher already and I haven't even hired him yet.
Now compare him to this random Vicky 3 portrait from Reddit:

A gigantic playdough man awkwardly posing in the middle of my UI. I want to shove him in a locker. This guy is supposed to rule my menacing neighbors? He can't even wear a jacket without his clothes clipping through it.

 

[gianlucad]

yes for the love of God no taxidermied corpses as portraits

 

[Askorti]

I very much agree, in every game they tried it so far, they looked terrible, even in CK3.

 

[Austregisel]

I will just leave this here, some beaultiful 2d moving portraits.

 

[Lord_Baltimore]

Just thinking out loud here, but what if you had 2D images that matched the style of portraiture of whatever time and place the character is from.
With AI generated images you could probably make a large library of those pretty easily, provided you knew what references to use.

 

[SAS]

My preference is 2d artwork, i really don't care at all for the Victoria 3 leaders/generals. They look way to cartoony and CIV like. I love the HOI IV general artwork

 

[olivenkranz]

I have to say that I like Imperator's style quite a bit, although 2d portraits are more effeicinet for the computers.

 

[Froozigiusz]

I'd actually prefer for them to do 3D portraits, just not flat looking. In older games that contain 3D art, characters are only in text on the screen – not in person (?). This would also push aside the importance of characters aside to just temporary modifiers. I want to see them. I want to witness their ups and downs and static portraits go against all of that.

Maybe fluid Stellaris–style portraits could be a middle ground, but that would also hinder the generation of the dynamic portraits. Not to mention the struggle of making good events with that system while also containing characters.

The only „bad” 3D portrait system I can point at is in Imperator: Rome, and that's justy because of floating hair and wonky position/profile of a head.

With AI generated images you could probably make a large library of those pretty easily, provided you knew what references to use.

Please try to use the frase: dynamically generated images, as AI is just straight up awful to be honest. It could maybe even hold me from playing the title as a whole.

 

[Lord_Baltimore]

Please try to use the frase: dynamically generated images, as AI is just straight up awful to be honest. It could maybe even hold me from playing the title as a whole.

I wasn't talking about dynamically generated images, I was suggesting an image gallery like CK2 and EUIV use. I brought up AI to point out that making an elaborate image gallery isn't as time consuming and expensive as it used to be.

 

[cosmeIII]

Sadly we've seen it in CK3 and VIC3, UI design in general (including portraits) has been lackluster and EU4 has probably been the most beautiful and best UI that Paradox has ever produced. I'm not sure it will live up to the hype in this regard.

3D portraits are easy to randomly generate and much, much cheaper to produce than 2D art. You're basically letting an algorithm do all the work while only providing a few foundations, then you can add some "nicer"-looking custom portraits and assets as you go along.

I believe they will maintain the EU4 no portrait approach (save maybe small 3D faces for the advisors). Can you imagine having to adapt to the changing fashion of the 14th to 18th century for portraits whose characters stay alive only for a a tenth of a game? I'm not seeing it.

 

[Cassilda]

I think that EU doesn't really needs portraits or characters like CK. If they are added, they'll be probably 3D ones as they are easier to generate, but I agree all the work to do with keeping up with cultural fashion all over the globe for four centuries really seems an overkill of the funding that could be used to add more relevant aspect of the game.
That said, I still prefer 2D art, the only advantage that I see with the 3D one is that the 3D one can handle countless of characters without relying on the "generic general/advisor portraits".

 

[Lord Lambert]

I will just leave that here, some beaultiful 2d moving portraits.

I love this. Would be my preference.

 

[Bearjuden]

I agree across the board, the 3D obsession that Paradox is going through has just been...bad. It's looked really bad across the board, without fail. Easily the best character images ime are from HoI4, the heavily stylized oil painting approach; I would rather whatever this game is find a style that fits and lean into that with high quality 2D images instead of copying the same 3D character generator that's produced so many uninspiring images.

Now compare him to this random Vicky 3 portrait from Reddit:

It's actually a dual sin: not only do they look horrible, they take up a ton of visual space and cause cascading problems for UI and UX design. Information you actually want to know has to be shunted off to the side to work around this massive blob that doesn't even tell you anything. I'd be less annoyed about someone high up and at Paradox telling all their teams to use 3D art if I could turn it off for my part. I'd literally rather look at no character at all. At least then the mechanical information of the character I want to know could be laid out more optimally.

 

[Fatherlorris]

I will just leave that here, some beaultiful 2d moving portraits.

I would prefer if they were static, the movement looks a little odd imo.

 

[Testerian2]

A gigantic playdough man awkwardly posing in the middle of my UI. I want to shove him in a locker. This guy is supposed to rule my menacing neighbors? He can't even wear a jacket without his clothes clipping through it.

They are not only ugly, they are USELESS. This is pure decoration, taking UI space and forcing important information out of the screen.

For god's sake, Tinto please - do not go the CK3 route to make simple lists that take several 1000 pixels! It is MUCH better to allow us to SORT them and FILTER them to get the information we want!

 

[Silens]

I know I'm probably a minority here and the opinion is unpopular, but I like the UI of CK3/Vic3 and the 3d art in CK3.

What I don't like is the way they did people in Vic3. They just feel somewhat stiff and wooden, almost unnatural.

If EU5 goes into 3d, they better do it right and properly.

 

[Johan]

It is MUCH better to allow us to SORT them and FILTER them to get the information we want!

I suspect you will enjoy part of our UI then, as every list will be having filters, sort buttons, and a search-field.

 

[Lord Lambert]

I suspect you will enjoy part of our UI then, as every list will be having filters, sort buttons, and a search-field.

I need to know...

WASD for mapmodes or moving the map around? (If the latter can we rebind because WASD are for mapmodes goddamnit!)

 

[Brynjar]

I need to know...

WASD for mapmodes or moving the map around? (If the latter can we rebind because WASD are for mapmodes goddamnit!)

Being able to rebind hotkeys, including wasd, without disabling achievements should be such a basic QoL feature at this point. Unfortunately that is not the standard in Paradox games yet.

In Imperator you could rebind most keys, including, wasd, in the hotkeys.hotkeys file, but it disabled achievements. In Vic3 modifying the file does not disable achievemnts, but does not allow rebindong wasd. I hope project Caesar does better than both those games, ideally with an in game interface which is significantly better than the one in EU4.

 

[MrMcQue]

They're ugly as sin and utterly inferior to hand-crafted art for portraits.
Just look at his random advisor portrait I pulled from the wiki:

Just 77x77 pixels and he looks like he means business. My army morale is higher already and I haven't even hired him yet.
Now compare him to this random Vicky 3 portrait from Reddit:

A gigantic playdough man awkwardly posing in the middle of my UI. I want to shove him in a locker. This guy is supposed to rule my menacing neighbors? He can't even wear a jacket without his clothes clipping through it.

As i see it, the current 3d portraits from CK3 and V3 feel very "Sid Meiers Civilization'ish" for me and we know that Civ is far more arcady than Paradox games.

These 3d models look very goofy and out of place in a GSG that takes itself seriously in my opinion. I'm not sure whether i would go so far and say that all 3d characters are out of place in Pdx games, but the current art-style in CK3 and V3 is something i would not like to see in more games.

I love immersion, i love historical art and characters in these games, and as i said i'd even be open to other forms of 3d characters, but no Civ please.