Also I forgot to add as a final step to go into settings and uncheck "Use councilor and Leader videos".
I tried editing my post below to add this but it wouldn't let me.

Working for me. The steps involved require a little extra work but it's worth it. The new portraits do up the immersion.
So here's how I did it:

1. Subscribe to the mod.
go into the ingame "Mods" and the choose "browse steam workshop mods". Find the Realish portraits in the lists and click the disk image on the right. You should get a popup telling you the mod downloaded. Exit the game.

2. Go to game install directory and then mods folder. locate "Realish _Portraits". You need to copy this to "Users\Admin(your user name)\AppData\LocalLow\Pavonis Interactive\TerraInvicta" Folder

Don't be alarmed that there no other mod files here. Also note this is always on drive c: even if the game is installed on a different drive. I did not rename the file even though the instructions did not show the underscore in the file "Realish _Portraits" Copy as is.

The mod should work and your good to go.

Vuyek you are correct! I'm such an idiot. I was looking for "turn off animations" in the graphics settings when I should have looked for "turn off videos" The mouse over pop up does say "turn off character animations".
Now let's see if I'm capable of dealing with the white boxes issue. I'll try the 2nd solution since your having luck with it.

and now it works again... using the 2nd method to fix the situation, it is cantankerous, works when it wants to. once you have your save AND you always check to see if the game did not checkmark counselors animated option, you're good to go for another run

ok copy what exactly to StreamingAssets ? everything? or just the characterportraits and characterpotrraits manifest? I did the 2nd solution and it worked until today it just does not want to.

@meg - of course there is option to turn off counselor video animations

I get it to work, but sometimes I get the white squares anyway next time I play. Truly maddenng. Not the mod's fault, it is the game engine is very wacky. So I finnaglt, disable, enable, and finally get it to work. No idea.

I'm totally lost. I have no option in 'settings' to turn off council animations. Is there a file to edit?

Greate mod, it's working fine and musthave. Thx!

yes, back to version 0-4-78, my workaround^^

With the latest beta release (0.4.90) none of the workarounds are working, I have either white box or the game crashes. I tried both ways. Any suggestion?

Figured it out. Putting it here for the next person.
I had to go into the game, into the mod page inside the game and activate, deactivate and finally active again.

Then I got the white screen issue which has been solved below

adding to the post below. I've notice that even though I've subbed to this mod, it is nowhere to be found, in either the \Mods\Enabled or \Mods\Disabled folder.
Where is this mod even downloaded to??

Hi, thank you for the great mod idea.

I've disable the character video, but still not working. I am missing something.
Is there a config somewhere I need to change.

Thank you in advance.

No worries, glad to hear people appreciate it!

Thanks for this mate.

It's the only mod I'll ever use for this game so moving the files and renaming
characterportraits/characterportraits worked a treat!

I disable the character video, but I still get only the normal portraits.

@Pocky Stomper
I considered doing the animations for them, but then reconsidered when I saw how much GPU time it took to do only one portrait. Might be cheaper now or smarter ways to do it but back then I calculated it would have cost me like 500 USD to do all 500 portraits on a rented GPU.

@Acriax You might be able to create animations with this Live Portraits . I haven't tried it yet, but will try this coming week. I'll see if I can make some.

Good mod

I've been waiting for a mod like this to come out before I started playing the game again, and I've been looking, but apparently not hard enough, for I see this has been released since July of 2024! Haven't played for the sole reason of despising the artwork of the councilors, who make up a very important part of the game! Well, guess now I can play again! Thanks!

This should help some, thanks. I really can't stomach the incredibly generic, Second Life-looking vanilla 3D mugshots. Also fun fact: the rather pointlessly animated versions take up 5 GB, just over 20% of the whole game's footprint.

No biggie. Your mod shows what the game could look like. The devs should just hire you and be done with it ;)

Thanks Erehwon! I've updated the description with your fix so that people can see it easier :)

To everyone having the white box issue: copy the realish portrait asset bundle and manifest directly into the StreamingAssets folder and rename them to characterportraits and characterportraits.manifest respectively. Delete or rename the original files. Leave the TICouncilorAppearanceTemplate.json in the Template folder untouched.
The issue seems to be that the game wont use the correct file for the portraits. Replacing the default file with the modded one and renaming it solves that issue.
As an added benefit, achievements aren't disabled because the game does not realize it has been modded.

This is great! So much better than the original hideous looking character faces.

For anybody with the White box issue use @randomhan's advice worked for me.

White box issue

The portraits are just white squares. Anybody else having this issue?

This mod doesn't need anything else in order to function? Also don't worry if people tell you they're too beautiful because really they aren't. They look normal.

Appreciate it!

Might be the best mod for the game! Original models are atrocious and took me right out of the game. Cmdr Ayoade does now look like an alien with a humans skin pulled over her head - but ill take that, as the song goes...

499 out of 500 aint bad.

nice job

ok ,thanks for answer

I considered making a video version of them, but the online tools available right now for such a project costs way too much if one wants to make videos of all 500 characters. And if I were to make use of my own graphics card to generate animated videos of them, it would take literally weeks and cost quite a lot in electricity. So unfortunately static images is all I can do for now!

great mod but a video version would be so much better
but thanks for the quality of the mod

@Acriax, hey! Found a way to fix the white screen.
U must move to"SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Terra Invicta\Mods\Enabled then copy the
"Realish Portraits" Folder to
"Users\Admin(your user name)\AppData\LocalLow\Pavonis Interactive\TerraInvicta" Folder

The final form shall be :
Local disk\Users\Admin(your user name) \AppData\LocalLow\Pavonis Interactive\TerraInvicta\Realish Portraits


I have absolutely no idea how I was able to make this work

@Paul, sorry man, not sure what's going on there for you. I just loaded up the latest version of the game and they still work here.

Q: It doesn't seem to work!
A: You have to disable the councilor videos in the options.
Q2: But i did that and they are just a white screen

thanks for premium aislop

That's right, these are still images.

Question: The vanilla portraits had slight animations to them, I'm guessing these don't, correct?

No worries, I updated the description to make it more clear now :)

i did enable it but i didnt know to disable the councilor

@Sky, does the mod show up as enabled in the mod list, and did you disable councilor videos in the options?

doesnt seem to work for me, they're all 3D still :(

Thanks!

Very cool i dig it