I did something similar to this just back in January with the character I was running at that time. The motivation here is similar, I’m responding to questions and comments at the Beamdog Forum. But I thought it might be interesting again because so much has changed with capability. And specifically, I like photo realism which does not seem to be prefered by most gamers! So hopefully this will help with some questions about what all the AI is capable of.
I’ll qualify this with the comment *I like* GPT Image 2.5. It really may not be the best renderer for certain other tastes. But for this purpose, it is the only renderer I will use.
We’ll start with this image. It is a scene players of BG2 should recognize, rescuing Mazzy from the Shadow Lord’s jail. This is in my prefered photorealistic style. I would say it doesn’t quite look like a photo, some of that may be the presence of a fantasical elf and halfling. Or it may be the “Medieval Fantasy” qualifier I use in a addition to “Realistic Photo”. The same exact description and reference images switched over to “anime” style.This time described as “Graphic Novel”.
Now let’s do something similar with a familiar character and piece of art.
This of course is just the game asset, Imoen’s portrait.Here I used the original art as the only reference, and told it to enhance to high definition in the original style.For this one I just changed the descriptor to photo-realistic.Still using just the original game art as a reference, I used my more usual description of Imoen the mage/thief. Obviously I’ve made her a little more impish and fun loving (which I think matches her in game personality). And I put her in gear she can actually *cast spells in*. I would mention that in my write-ups I give her a more natural hair color, and I lose the scar over the eye (with healing and restoration types of magic, I don’t think anyone needs to live with a scar they don’t want) and the funny hair braid things (I don’t get it, and I like a more natural look).
Now I’ll take a quick look at the character I’m currently running. Brademante has several of her own models I use as reference. They’ve all been built from each other so we get some consistancy of her look, and I can easily switch between how geared up she is and front/back views.
This is Brademante’s most geared up and battle ready model for late in SoA. I usually skip the helmet for presentation, but those who’ve followed along know she was often seen in a helmet in BG1.This is that model in a scene, with “Baldur’s Gate style artwork”.“Graphic Novel” style.“Anime” style.“Photo Realistic” style.
And I’ll finish with this, a couple images I included in my current run as Aerie was telling her own origin story.
I believe my style cue here was “colorful fantasy art”, I was trying to make it different “as a story Aerie was telling” as opposed to the current game reality.
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