Where do developers get reference for Environments set in History?
polycounter lvl 11
Hello Polycounters,
I've been playing through the Assassin's Creed games for the first time the last few weeks; making my way through them chronologically (Playing Unity currently) and something that's been bothering me, is just how exactly do Ubisoft artists gather reference material for their Environments?
I understand a lot of it is likely taking images of buildings, from the periods the games are set in, that are still standing or using concept work but there are still areas sometimes that I think "I just can't figure out how they know this is what it looked like."
Maybe I'm being dumb or naive about it all, but I'm genuinely curious as to how they can get such accurate representations without (far as I can tell) much reference? Especially games set in periods before the 19th Century.
I'd love some insight into it, and invite anyone who's maybe worked on an historical title or artists from Ubisoft themselves to clear it up for me, as I've been wracking my brain for a few days now and googling it like mad without much success.
I've been playing through the Assassin's Creed games for the first time the last few weeks; making my way through them chronologically (Playing Unity currently) and something that's been bothering me, is just how exactly do Ubisoft artists gather reference material for their Environments?
I understand a lot of it is likely taking images of buildings, from the periods the games are set in, that are still standing or using concept work but there are still areas sometimes that I think "I just can't figure out how they know this is what it looked like."
Maybe I'm being dumb or naive about it all, but I'm genuinely curious as to how they can get such accurate representations without (far as I can tell) much reference? Especially games set in periods before the 19th Century.
I'd love some insight into it, and invite anyone who's maybe worked on an historical title or artists from Ubisoft themselves to clear it up for me, as I've been wracking my brain for a few days now and googling it like mad without much success.
Replies
Wasn't necessarily meaning Assassins Creed in particular, more as an example of what im getting at!
https://www.theverge.com/2014/10/31/7132587/assassins-creed-unity-paris
Seems a lot of it, as you said, is taken from experts in the field or old documents with a lot of artistic liberties thrown in.
The thing about historic furniture is— the surviving pieces are often ornate pieces owned by the richest of the rich at the time, by the most renowned makers of the time. But what most people used, often called "vernacular furniture", hardly ever survives, much less in museums. If it does survive, usually it's as a family heirloom (which often stay off the record), or in some swamp or well, preserved by anaerobic conditions. Sometimes too, it survives in a craft. So, makers of Welsh stick chairs, etc, carrying on the tradition, in a more or less historically identical way, making chairs the way their father's father's father made them.
Often, not even the most specialized historians know the full extent of the furniture used by the less rich folks; they know about the surviving examples, and they can extrapolate. But who's to say how much is missing from our view.
I can only imagine the same applies for architecture, culture, food, clothing, etc.