2D portraits?

Hello all, I registered only recently but I've been mapmaking for a while. (:

So I've been digging around the WarIII resources, trying to find a way to implement a 2D portrait to a unit.
Has any of you tried this and know a safe and reliable way to do it?

So far, I've found UI/Glues/Main Menu/Main Menu 3D Beta/MainMenu3Dbeta.mdl to be a sprite that when used as a unit model, shows a 2D portrait. Can I use that - implementing it onto another unit as it's portrait model? Think it will display a 2D portrait & the 3D unit model?

Thank you beforehand.

You'd have to fake it by sticking a camera at a 2d plane as a model.

Dang. :/
Has it ever been used before? I'd like to see an example of that, if possible...

It would be highly inefficient. Every frame of the animation would have to be a separate texture file, so you'll end up with a lot of textures that eat disk space like crazy.