Adding Custom Portraits

[WinnieThaPujols]

Disclaimer: I did some extensive search on the boards, but, two problems:

a) The MVPEdit solution doesn't work (I'll explain later)

The FAQ section of the site (that included the tutorial) is broken!

I want to add some more Cardinals into the game, aside from those from the Total Minors Portrait pack. I tried messing around with getting John Rodriguez's face into the game. I found Rodriguez's portrait/audio ID, it's 6405...(I'm using Ultimate roster update.)

I've been a fan of Irfanview for a while, so I was pleasently suprised to see that it could handle the FSH files that EA deals with. I made a John Rodriguez portrait in Photoshop, then opened it in Irfanview and saved it as a FSH file. It allowed me to save a texturename, too, so I called that "6405" as well, mirroring the file name. I tried importing the 6405.FSH (with texturename '6405') into the EA Graphics Editor...it seemed to work OK. In fact, when I browsed and found it, it had stars on it! Not that ugly red fish or whatever it is.

I booted up MVP...but whenever I click on John Rodriguez, the game crashes. Uh-oh. Must've done something wrong.

I did some search on the forums, and saw that you can attempt to do it in MVP. It says to click on the portrait area of the player page in MVPEdit. This doesn't work for me! When I click the "No Picture Found" text, it's as if nothing happens. Apparently something should pop up, asking if I wanted to update my files? That doesn't happen.

FAQ is down, and I tried to do some homework. No luck, though. Help!?

[xiberger]

You need to right-click the "No Picture Found" field in MVPedit. That should pop up a new window in which you can define your portrait and the alpha picture. Although I haven't used MVPedit in a while (my models.big is too big for gfxpak), I'm pretty sure that's the way to do it.

[cybernetic]

When the FAQ was up the tutorial on making .fsh files for portraits was for the 2004 version of the game and doesn't work for the 2005 anyway so it wouldn't help you even if it did work

[WinnieThaPujols]

You need to right-click the "No Picture Found" field in MVPedit. That should pop up a new window in which you can define your portrait and the alpha picture. Although I haven't used MVPedit in a while (my models.big is too big for gfxpak), I'm pretty sure that's the way to do it.

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That doesn't work for me. Nothing happens when I right click the field..

[xiberger]

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That doesn't work for me. Nothing happens when I right click the field..

Ok, that's strange... Anyway, as you have mentioned above, after importing your portrait with EA Graphics Editor, it crashed the game. I think this is because you created it with IrfanView. Try FshEd and it should work. With FshEd you can add essential attachments to your file without which portraits don't work in the game.

Just download one of Hory's excellent portrait sets and take a look at his files. Make sure yours contain the same attachments ("name", "metal bin", and "binary attach") and everything should be fine...

[WinnieThaPujols]

Well, still not having any luck. I opened in in FshEd, and, needless to say, I have no ****ing clue what any of this means.

Man, this sucks!

[xiberger]

Well, still not having any luck. I opened in in FshEd, and, needless to say, I have no ****ing clue what any of this means.

Man, this sucks!

Just email me your portrait (and alpha) and I'll do it for you. Don't forget to tell me which ID you want for it...

[big shmooz]

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That doesn't work for me. Nothing happens when I right click the field..

The reason why it is not working for you is pretty simple. You have more than 3000 files in your portrait.big file.

The reason why simply using irfanview to import is not working ingame is twofold, 1) because you did not create an alpha bitmap & 2) because you did not compress the fsh file.

I posted somewhere exactly how to do a portrait properly. You need to use a combination of irfanview, then fshed (to make the alpha combination with the fsh) Then you need to use fshtool to open the file. Then import the bitmaps that fshtool made into the portrait.big using mvpedit. Make sure you have a portrait.big with less than 3000 files. Then your portrait will work.

If you want to use your current portrait.big for your game, simply back it up & insert the default original temporarily in order to do the above step. Then save the .fsh file that will appear in the mvpedit folder to a different location on your hard drive BEFORE CLOSING MVPEDIT. (OTHERWISE WHEN YOU CLOSE IT, IT WILL ERASE THE .FSH FILE)

Then compress the .fsh file & insert it using eagraph to your portrait.big that you backed up. Then delete the original portrait.big & put back the one you are using to the frontend folder from the place you backed it up to.

That's it, you're done.

[WinnieThaPujols]

Well, after an (exhausting) conversation with Hory...I got it to work. God bless him!