How to edit portrait graphical types?

[SwordArTJBF]

I want to make a mod (specifically a submod for BLG) that changes the faces used by french/germanic/latin cultures to the ones used by western cultures in the vanilla game without Holy Fury and the Spanish/Mediterranean ones added by DLC. Unfortunately, I just haven't been able to find any tutorials on how to do this. there's lost of info out there about making new graphical types and portraits for them, but barely anything about editing existing portrait types to use faces from other cultures.

Can anyone give me in in-depth walk-through on how to replace the faces/portait heads used by a specific culture's DLC with ones from other DLCs/Mods/the vanilla game? and is it possible to mash together various facial features from different graphical cultures? (like byzantine eyes with persian noses)? if so, how would I go about doing that as well?

 

[Bearnest]

I want to make a mod (specifically a submod for BLG) that changes the faces used by french/germanic/latin cultures to the ones used by western cultures in the vanilla game without Holy Fury and the Spanish/Mediterranean ones added by DLC. Unfortunately, I just haven't been able to find any tutorials on how to do this. there's lost of info out there about making new graphical types and portraits for them, but barely anything about editing existing portrait types to use faces from other cultures.

Before you do anything else, try this first: make a mod that contains just the 00_cultures.gfx file, and delete the graphical cultures of the culture you want to change (e.g. the french culture); you'll find something like this:

frankish = {
        graphical_cultures = { frankishgfx westerngfx }

Erase "frankishgfx" so you have

frankish = {
        graphical_cultures = { westerngfx }

(westerngfx is vanilla European, btw). That'd do the trick. Do this with all cultures you want vanilla portraits. Take note that this affects units too. If you want only portraits changed, but not units, I'm afraid is a little more complex.
After you succeed doing this, try your hand at something bigger.

is it possible to mash together various facial features from different graphical cultures? (like byzantine eyes with persian noses)? if so, how would I go about doing that as well?

Yes, it is possible. You'd need to create a new gfxculture, add it to the 00_graphicalculturetype.txt file, create the graphical culture .gfx file in the interface folder (this defines which face parts from which gfxculture you want for your new gfxculture), and add this new gfxculture to the 00_cultures.gfx file to the corresponding culture you want.

I'm painting this in broad strokes. Usually, there's some fine tuning to the position of a given face part, especially when mashing different gfxcultures, as you intend.

 

[SwordArTJBF]

Before you do anything else, try this first: make a mod that contains just the 00_cultures.gfx file, and delete the graphical cultures of the culture you want to change (e.g. the french culture); you'll find something like this:

frankish = {
        graphical_cultures = { frankishgfx westerngfx }

Erase "frankishgfx" so you have

frankish = {
        graphical_cultures = { westerngfx }

(westerngfx is vanilla European, btw). That'd do the trick. Do this with all cultures you want vanilla portraits. Take note that this affects units too. If you want only portraits changed, but not units, I'm afraid is a little more complex.
After you succeed doing this, try your hand at something bigger.

Yes, it is possible. You'd need to create a new gfxculture, add it to the 00_graphicalculturetype.txt file, create the graphical culture .gfx file in the interface folder (this defines which face parts from which gfxculture you want for your new gfxculture), and add this new gfxculture to the 00_cultures.gfx file to the corresponding culture you want.

I'm painting this in broad strokes. Usually, there's some fine tuning to the position of a given face part, especially when mashing different gfxcultures, as you intend.

I've actually been having lots of success with opening the .gfx files for each graphical culture and replacing the head and face parts with those from westerngfx or other vanilla types. This allows me to keep the new hairstyles and clothes added by BLG with the vanilla faces, and it's been working pretty well so far. There are two things I'd like help with it, however.

Firstly, I want to make a new graphical culture for italians that uses the iberiangfx portraits, but has the lighter skin tone of germanic characters. Is there any way I can do this easily? Preferably while making a new graphical culture type for it, so it doesn't effect other cultures using Iberian portraits? Because I tried changing the skin tone in the graphicalculturetypes.txt file, but at the time it didn't seem to do anything.

Secondly, while hair and clothes from BLG have largely been working fine with the vanilla and DLC faces, some of the beards (specifically those from the frankish and south/west slavic cultures) are positioned incorrectly on the characters face. Here are a few examples of what I'm talking about:

How would I go about fixing this for the western portraits? Would I need to edit the image files for the beards? and how would I go about doing it without impacting the other cultures that use these beards?

 

[Bearnest]

Firstly, I want to make a new graphical culture for italians that uses the iberiangfx portraits, but has the lighter skin tone of germanic characters. Is there any way I can do this easily? Preferably while making a new graphical culture type for it, so it doesn't effect other cultures using Iberian portraits? Because I tried changing the skin tone in the graphicalculturetypes.txt file, but at the time it didn't seem to do anything.

I see you're using HIP. If CPR's Iberian characters are not light enough for what you want, then you'll need to modify Southern assets (the ones that render the southerngfx graphical culture) using a program such as GIMP (which is what I use) or Photoshop to change the color.
Changing skin tone doesn't do anything visually, that's just to calculate the skin tone and gfxculture of mixed children (the reason behind a child of English and Mande being Turkish).

Secondly, while hair and clothes from BLG have largely been working fine with the vanilla and DLC faces, some of the beards (specifically those from the frankish and south/west slavic cultures) are positioned incorrectly on the characters face.
How would I go about fixing this for the western portraits? Would I need to edit the image files for the beards? and how would I go about doing it without impacting the other cultures that use these beards?

To fix this, open the gfxculture file you're having trouble with, and move the beard and hair. Example:

            "GFX_frankish_male_hair_behind:p1:h:y"
            "GFX_frankish_male_beard_behind:p4:h:y"
            [...]
            "GFX_frankish_male_beard:p4:h:y"
            [...]
            "GFX_frankish_male_hair:p1:h:y"

To move it, add the displacement at the end of the line:

            "GFX_frankish_male_hair_behind:p1:h:y:o2x2"
            "GFX_frankish_male_beard_behind:p4:h:y:o2x-3"
            [...]
            "GFX_frankish_male_beard:p4:h:y:o2x-3"
            [...]
            "GFX_frankish_male_hair:p1:h:y:o2x2"

That's a lower case letter "O" and it works like a Cartesian plane, so the positive numbers move the asset to the right and up, and the negatives move the asset left and down. This is precisely what I meant with fine-tuning. You're going to need to edit the .gfx file, save it, and start the game every time to see how it comes along, and decide what corrections to make.