How to Make Portraits in FFXIV

In patch 6.1 FFXIV introduced a new feature called Portraits. These function very much like the Group Pose (gpose) feature enabling you to take pictures of your character, but with limited backgrounds and action poses.

Portraits are most commonly used as the display picture on your Adventurer Plate, which is another feature that was added at the same time. If you want to learn more about setting one of those up for yourself you can read what you need to know in this post here.

What Are Portraits?

Portraits are pictures of your character you can take in a similar style to Gpose. They can then be displayed on your adventurer plate and at the beginning of Crystalline Conflict matches in PvP.

How to View Your Portraits

Your Portraits window can be found in the menu under Character > Portraits.

You can also drag it to a hotbar or set up a direct keybind for it under System > Keybind > Shortcuts.

You can also use the command /portrait.

How to Change Your Adventurer Plate Portrait

You can choose a portrait to display on your adventurer plate by right clicking the portrait and selecting ‘apply to adventurer plate’. The portrait currently displayed on your adventurer plate has a distinct icon to the left of it.

The portrait applied to your adventurer plate does not update in real time to reflect your current appearance; it will always display exactly how it was when you set it up. If your portrait shows you wielding an axe then it will always show the axe even if you change to another job like White Mage or Bard.

Displaying a Portrait Before a PvP Match

The portrait that displays at the beginning of a Crystalline Conflict match is called your ‘Instant Portrait’. In order to properly display, an instant portrait must match the gear you are currently wearing.

If for example you set up a portrait of you waving at the camera in a bathing suit and then load into a match wearing heavy armor, the pre-match screen will show a default pose (standing closeup) portrait of you in the armor.

If you use different glamours on different jobs this means you’ll need to save an instant portrait for each job.

To set your instant portrait right click a portrait and select ‘Use as Instant Portrait’. The portrait currently set as your instant portrait will have another distinct icon to the left of it, and will have an exclamation symbol if it doesn’t match the gear you’re currently wearing.

You can also link portraits to gear sets so that it applies the designated portrait as your instant portrait when you change to that gear set. Keep in mind that if you ever change that job’s gear set in any way you’ll still have to go in and update the portrait with your new look in order for the instant portrait to display in PvP.

This can be pretty tedious since updating a gearset immediately unlinks the instant portrait and you have to go set it up again. I know portraits are still in the Beta Version so I hope they tinker with this interaction to make it more user friendly.

Creating Portraits

The little plus icon in the bottom left of the Portraits window allows you to create new portraits. By default the name of a portrait is the name of the emote or pose your character is doing in it, but you can change the name to whatever you want.

Editing Portraits

It’s important to know that you CAN have actions taken against your account for violations made using portraits. As amusing as it may be to design a suggestive portrait, some players have already seen suspensions for using this tool for things falling under the list of Prohibited Activities in Final Fantasy XIV. Specifically, people have gotten dinged for obscene/indecent expressions.

It’s likely that suspensions or other actions are a result of other players reporting these adventurer plates or portraits when they see them, and there are privacy settings to limit visibility to friends only or to just yourself. However, if your adventurer plate is visible to everyone (the default setting) then make sure the picture doesn’t cross the line into being indecent.

Similarly, any portraits you set as your instant portrait will be seen by everyone in Crystalline Conflict matches you participate in, so be mindful of those portraits as well.

Editing Portrait Design

Much like adventurer plates you can choose from a list of preset designs to get a quick feel for what kinds of design options exist.

Below the presets are the individual design elements you can control. Click on the display list buttons to the right to preview all the options including ones you haven’t unlocked yet.

Clicking on one will also tell you how to obtain it, whether it’s from a vendor, quest reward, or an achievement.

Editing Character Pose

You have a more limited selection of actions than what you may be used to in gpose. You can’t use any job specific skills for example, other than the PvP limit break action, which is included as part of that Job’s Framer Kit, purchasable in the Wolves’ Den for Trophy Crystals.

There’s also a dropdown list of expressions you can choose from, mixing and matching them with the poses.

Similarly to your character window or the dressing room window, you can hold left click to turn the camera around your character, or hold right click to drag your character around the frame.

The feature gives you decent control over your character’s positioning with the ability to angle the head and gaze using the buttons underneath the portrait. These are ‘Face Camera’ and ‘Look at Camera’ respectively.

There’s some lighting controls as well, allowing you to change the ambient and directional lighting. For directional lighting there are two sliders. At 0,0 the light will be in front of your character in the center.

Moving the first slider up will swing the light up above your character and behind them. Moving the first slider down will swing the light down to your character’s feet and behind them.

Moving the second slider up will swing the light to your character’s left side and behind them. Moving the second slider down will swing the light to your character’s right side and behind them.

This means that +/-180 look the same (light behind you) and If you want the camera directly above/below/left/right then you’re looking for the midpoints at +/-90 on the appropriate slider.

Turning off ambient lighting makes directional lighting more noticeable. For example, here is blue/green light at 0,90 (hitting the character from his left) with ambient lighting turned all the way down.

Underneath the portrait are sliders for zoom and rotation that you can also make use of, but keep in mind that your character’s face must be visible to save the portrait. Trying to save a portrait when it’s not results in an error telling you the character’s expression is not in frame.

Finally, while the portrait will be a still photo of your character, special weapon effects will be animated. If you want to add some flair to your portrait you can use something like a relic weapon, ultimate weapon, or crafted extreme weapon for that extra shine and sparkle.

What’s your favourite part of the portraits feature? If you’ve discovered any tips and tricks for creating cool effects be sure to share them down below!