[Guide] Animated portraits make easy

[Kliwarrior]

Do you want the nice animation of portraits but cannot mess with maya?

Here is the easy way: reuse the vanilla animation!
Also you can use all the clothes, phenotypes, hair and beards in a more dynamic way.

Prerequisite 1: you have to know a little of Photoshop/Gimp . The more you know, the better!
Prerequisite 2: you have to know a little of portraits modding. There is a great guide made by dskod1 right in the sticky section.

First of all you have to decide which base character better fits. In the following examples I will use the humans. Their animation is breathing and moving eyes. They are great for a custom humanoid race!

Complex part: you have to modify/repaint the original dds . Take a look at the separate parts in the dds, don't move it, otherwise the animation will result.. quite weird . Save it into gfx/models/portraits/myspecies directory with a custom name similar to : myspecies_female_body_01.dds
Every dds will eventually goes into a phenotype.

In the the gfx/portraits/portraits directory (yes, two "portraits" in the path) put this

Spoiler: my_portraits.txt

portraits = {
      myspecies_female_01 = {
     entity = "portrait_myspecies_female_01_entity"   clothes_selector = "mammalian_human_female_clothes_01"    hair_selector = "myspecies_female_hair_01"     greeting_sound = "human_female_greetings_05"
     character_textures = {
       "gfx/models/portraits/myspecies/myspecies_female_body_01.dds"
     }
   }

### add your other female_02, female_03 , male_01 or whatever you want..

}

portrait_groups = {
   myspecies = {
     default = myspecies_female_01

    game_setup = {
       add = {
         trigger = {
           ruler = { gender = male }
         }
         portraits = {
           myspecies_male_01
           myspecies_male_02
         }
       }
       add = {
         trigger = {
           ruler = { gender = female }
         }
         portraits = {
           myspecies_female_01
           myspecies_female_02
         }
       }
     }

### missing code here..  add your pop/ ruler/leader section
}

In the sample I use the default clothes (mammalian_human_female_clothes_01) but I added a custom selector for hairs . You can try using default hairs (human_female_hair_01) before creating your own hairs/beards/scars ecc..

The "entity" parameters does the magic of animation. In fact you have to add into "gfx/models/portraits/myspecies" a .asset file like this:

Spoiler: myspecies.asset

@humanscale = 0.8


entity = {
   name = "portrait_myspecies_female_01_entity" #your entyty/dds ...
   pdxmesh = "portrait_human_female_05_mesh" #...applied to a vanilla mesh
 
   default_state = "idle"
   state = { name = "idle"  animation = "idle"  animation_blend_time = 0 chance = 3.0 looping = no next_state = idle}
   state = { name = "idle"  animation = "idle2"  animation_blend_time = 0 chance = 1.0 looping = no next_state = idle}
 
   state = { name = "sad"  animation = "sad"  animation_blend_time = 0 chance = 3.0 looping = no next_state = sad}
   state = { name = "sad"  animation = "sad2"  animation_blend_time = 0 chance = 1.0 looping = no next_state = sad}
   scale = @humanscale
}

And that's all ! Your animated portraits are ready!!