Vulcan' s Gift

Bring Your Character Portraits to Life

Vulcan’s Gift adds portrait animation support to Total War: THREE KINGDOMS. It automatically discovers and plays PNG frame sequences in the character details panel, allowing natural looping movements such as breathing and blinking.

✔️ For Players

• []Compatible portraits play in a continuous loop at 24 frames per second.[/]

  []Portraits without animation continue to use their original static images.[/]

  []Distributed as a Movie-type pack, so manual activation in the mod manager is not required.[/]

  []This mod provides playback functionality only. Character artwork is not included; a compatible portrait mod is required.[/]

  []Animation applies to the large character details portrait in the campaign. The smaller panel on the left remains static.[/]

  []Uses sequential PNG frames rather than direct GIF or APNG playback.[/]

  []Playback smoothness and panel opening speed may vary with image size, game performance, and UI refresh timing.[/]

✔️ For Mod Creators

No per-character Lua registration or custom playback code is required. Keep the original static image and place the animation frames in the separate animation directory described below.

Original image:

ui/characters/…/large_panel/happy/face.pngAnimation frames:

ui/vulcans_gift/animations/characters/…/large_panel/happy/ani/face_000.png

ui/vulcans_gift/animations/characters/…/large_panel/happy/ani/face_001.png

ui/vulcans_gift/animations/characters/…/large_panel/happy/ani/face_002.png

…

• []Replace

  …with the actual character folder path, matching the original.[/]

  []Replace the original path’s

  ui/prefix with

  ui/vulcans_gift/animations/, then add

  ani/beneath the image’s containing folder.[/]

  []Do not place frames beside the original portrait or in an

  anisubfolder directly beneath its original location. Use the separate directory shown above.[/]

  []Filenames are not restricted to

  happy.png, use

  happy_000.png; for

  norm.png, use

  norm_000.png, and so on.[/]

  []Number frames consecutively, starting at

  _000.[/]

  []A gap in numbering ends the sequence; only the frames before the gap will loop.[/]

  []If no matching

  _000frame is found in the animation directory, the original static image is displayed.[/]

✔️ Artwork Guidelines

• []Keep each loop at 6 seconds or less: no more than 144 frames at 24fps is recommended. A 144-frame sequence runs from

  _143.[/]

  []Longer animations may cause stuttering when opening the character details panel, even on high-end PCs. Staying within 6 seconds does not guarantee stutter-free performance.[/]

  []When extracting frames from a video, export at 24fps. Importing every frame from a 48fps or 60fps video will slow the animation and lengthen its loop when played at 24fps.[/]

  []Use transparent PNGs with an alpha channel. Make the background fully transparent and clear residual RGB colors in transparent areas. Tiny nonzero alpha values can appear as colored speckles or flickering noise in-game.[/]

  []Preserve appropriate partial transparency around hair and clothing edges, and check for bright or dark outlines.[/]

  []Keep the canvas dimensions and character alignment consistent across all frames. Automatically trimming each frame separately can cause visible movement or jitter.[/]

  []Preserve the original game-specific PNG positioning metadata. Copying EXIF alone is not a substitute.[/]

  []Make the transition from the final frame back to the first frame seamless.[/]

Playback runs at 24fps: 24 frames make a 1-second loop, 48 frames make 2 seconds, and 144 frames make 6 seconds. There is no fixed frame-count limit, but higher resolutions and longer sequences increase file size and memory usage.

Include the finished artwork in your own portrait mod and list Vulcan’s Gift as a requirement.