What kinds of reference imagery did Ultima VI artists use when creating the walls in Ultima VI? We have official answers now!
I needed good reference images for the type of stone brick wall we see in ultima VI. My custom texture at left doesn't feel right, and I need good reference imagery photos, to give me an idea of how to improve my custom-hand-painted textures.
The other two walls are easier: the tan and red seems to be yew-timbered wattle and daub/plastered Tudor half-timbered walls (and the red timber is probably English Yew wood.) And the other cobble-stone wall is probably dry stone. As a side note, do you think the peach yellow color on the wattle and daub walls was for VGA color scheme reasons, or did English cottages use something for whitewashing buildings other than plain white quicklime? is there historical justification for the Ultima VI timbered walls being non-white?
I'd give 10 peering gems to have a photo dump of the actual reference images the artists used for designing these textures, going down a crazy rabbit hole trying to get Age Of Singularity to have the weight of historical accuracy.
Below are some of my hand-painted textures at a resolution of 128x128 that I've been making for Age of Singularity for the structures and props.
W.C. suggested using some of the textures in the freeware Ken's Labyrinth.
On the FB UDIC, K.K. suggested generating some textures using ponzu.gg:
Generative tools are getting better and better, and these are cool examples. I don't object to generative imagery for textures in theory (I think it's a handy tool and use it all the time for concepting locations and objects and characters, training data ethics being another topic), though I've had limited luck with textures using that method. For a final texture I would not object to it if I could find a model that does it well, but right now I'm enjoying the process of creating my own textures and learning pixel art, as it increases my ability to discern and appreciate the work of others as well. Whether it's learning dog breeds, or tree species, or pixel art techniques, I've found the more I learn about these topics, the more I enjoy reality.
But when it comes to getting reference imagery, I tend to think of generative imagery as a secondary source, rather than as a primary one. There's also something I concern myself with that I might call the "Art Facsimile Principle." Basically, for reference imagery I always want actual photographs of real-world things because I know that once I try to interpret these things to create my own textures, there will be a loss of information and realism, but I want the foundation to have 100% information first. I want every filter to be a visible and intentional one. Even when I'm creating magical machinery or a creature from my imagination, finding real anchors for various aspects, heightens the result I think. Unless there's a specific case where I intentionally don't want a grounded reality, I default to reality. It also gives me confidence if i'm recreating something weird and a reference image that, "Hey, it may look weird, but it's definitely actually there."
I find real reference imagery for real-world props I 3D model as well, and I always look up their outer dimensions as well and make spreadsheets. It's slow but ensures that the "concept drift" I experience, is only one step removed from a base reality, and it reduces the likelihood of unintentional variations from reality. I always encourage using real reference imagery for this reason. For the movie Godzilla 2014, the visual effects supervisor, when presented with a chunk of the completed Godzilla skin, always told his artists "Now show me your reference imagery." It's just a way of saying, start with a baseline of reality so any variations are intentional and not accidental. I find this is faster and produces higher quality results with less need to "fix" things later, so it's actually utilitarian in purpose.
When I started properly learning 3D modelling in Blender around 2013, I believed it was "pure" to NOT use reference imagery and to try to create 3D models from memory. But first of all, the scale of the parts, and the colors, just felt "off" - like a photocopy of a photocopy. I realized that using reference imagery is easier, and the results feel more accurate. I came to a big realization: if i'm recreating the concept from memory, I am already using reference imagery - but it's reference imagery that's been morphed by a thousand life experiences and brainwave malfunctions. This can be good for very specific types of "pure expressive art", but unless you specifically are trying ot make something feel "kind of wrong but in an emotional way", just get the freakin' reference imagery. I'm trying to make a medieval bee skep here, not make a philosophical statement about reality. For my purposes there is enough fantastical elements in the game that having that grounded base reality, makes the chosen deviations from it, more potent.
The whole idea is a lie anyway; even if I'm creating "from memory", it still came back to something real at some point. And every time you have an experience in the real world, that mental image of the objects you interact with, gets more grounded and realistic as you study it. Are you "cheating at art" just by having more life experiences?
So the idea of "I want to do it purely from my mind" is silly because you're just placing an arbitrary cutoff date on the data feeding into your brain - that cutoff date being right before you actually started creating the thing. Why do that? It's not "more pure", it's just arbitrary. Study real reference imagery of anything for a year, THEN draw from memory, and guess what - you'll still feel it's "pure" and yet it'll be much better quality. At least that's my take on that. So hopefully that helps explain why I want to find real and grounded reference imagery for these objects. I really think it makes projects better in every way. Don't think of reference imagery as a straight jacket but as an amplifier for your creativity.
Anyway, back to brick walls.
D.P. linked to the following real-world references as well:
But then, 'Manda Dee, original Ultima VI artist, said:
The first version wss VGA, and there are only spaces for 256 colors (with some not modifiable because the color system required them to be the standard 16 EGA colors).
We had a wide variety of monitors, and they were callibrated to show the right colors. But, at the time, we had CRTs, cathode ray tubes.
The phosphor on the screen surface wear out, They seemed to lose their capacity to produce red first. So, rather than let the game look sickly and greenish on the screens of people with more worn screens, the palette was shifted to “warmer” hues, meaning reddish.
People with new CRTs would just see everything a bit more cream-colored, which wouldn’t do any harm. Some of the references were paintings of the Anne Hathaway cottage. At the time of the paintings, it was rather dilapidated, but somehow the brick and hair-and-sand impregnated whitewash mess became a soothing nearly pinkish ecru. The walls were brick because Stratford has iron rich clay fields.
So the material for the walls is not wattle and daub. It’s quicklime with goat and cow hair, and sand mixed in, over red brick.
😀
There were originally several sets of walls, with different timber hues, including a golden-yellow-ish yew set, and variant pieces like arched Y-shaped braces at the corners. There wasn’t enough room on the disks and they were cut.
The beams that were kept were the reddish brown ones. These would be oak.
It would probably be treated with a creosote and tar and mercury mix that prevents insect infestation— toxic as heck, so it would be illegal today. Oh, and flammable, as in “Globe Theater” flammable.
The white with gray walls were partially inspired by the *shell* of the London Bridge. It had been sold to some guy in Arizona in 1971:
Those would have been a striking blue moonstone. 🙂"
This was fantastically helpful, and I cannot get enough of these insights!
Here's the original fb UDIC post.
