Hints of the Upcoming High Resolution Artwork

These are a few hints about the upcoming High Resolution Enhanced Client Artwork, taken from Twitter and UO Stratics:

Jeff Skalski, Ultima Franchise Producer on Stratics
We’ve added a new designer, increased our art outsourcing spend, and continue to expand our EM program. All needed to deliver on what we have planned this year.

JP “GrimmOmen” Harrod (UO Artist, Lead CG Supervisor):
New Expantion (sic) (Stratics)
In response to a question about the art outsourcing:
Art Outsourcing is when you hire additional artists on a temporary basis to help out with completing art tasks.

In response to a question about the extent of the artwork update:
Right now we don’t have any plans for doing an animation update for high res… BUT… I am working on our pipeline to support that should we decide to go that way. But as huge a undertaking as environment art is, animations are several steps above that in complexity, so I wouldn’t expect anything in that direction for quite a while.

I’d like to think that we’re going to eventually do everything as well! But I’m not a subscriber to the “all or nothing” school of thought. The animations will not be as noticeable because they are constantly moving.

An answer to a question about particles:
Yea, Bleak has really been on me about particle FX. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I made a significant improvement on the chain lightening effect. It doesn’t look any different, but its not a resource hog anymore. But FX is *also* on my list and I get a near weekly reminder from Bleak that I need to get on that.

Fyi on art assets by Grimm (Stratics)

In response to how they will compare to other artwork updates, specifically KR:
(Posted March 28, 2012)
Well, the new high res tiles are going to have the same feel (and in some cases be indistinguishable) as the classic client, as opposed to a completely re-invisioned look like we did with UOKR. This is so UO in the EC client doesn’t loose the “UO look” that classic client players have come to know so well. So converting the 2D graphics into 3D has a LOT of wins associated with it. And really goes a long way to bringing UO into a more current pipeline development scheme, which has been what I’ve been working on for UO since I started on this team 8 years ago.

So visually, it’s going to look like UO, just higher resolution.

In response to a question about more detail on dragons:
You are correct about the dragons, but I don’t know if we did anything to the sparkles.

In response to a question about higher resolution in general:
The only updated resolution you would be seeing so far is the terrain changes we made a while back. We haven’t started rolling out any of the high res environment art, and animations aren’t even on the docket yet..

In response to a question about why the artwork from Kingdom Reborn was pulled in favor of the lower-detail graphics:
Well, there’s a lot to answer there. Basically, we reverted to a lower resolution to fix some stability issues we were having at the time. The change was not taken lightly, as it was back breaking work.

In response to a comment about animation tweaks:
I have a lot- and I do mean A LOT of pokers in the fire. These pokers cover environment, FX, AND animation stuff. Actually, I’ve started the process on something for animations, but you guys won’t really notice the difference except for a lot of animation bugs getting fixed. This is a long process, but I’ve been working on it in the off hours. So a lot o stuff is getting worked on, you will most likely see several small updates, then hopefully a whopping one… followed by another whopping one. And I’m not even talking about the things going down in the regular course of the UO publishes and stories. So I’m very(e10) busy… LOL

In response to a comment about the increased budget for art outsourcing being spent on finishing the house tiles:
For the most part, yes. But I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get some extras in!

RELEASE HIGH RES TEXTURES (sic) (Stratics)

In response to a question about timing (housing tiles):
No,no,no. Nothing that long. But you’re right in that it’s a long process. No guarantees, of course, but I think well be able to get them in by this year.

A comment was made that time should be taking and the artwork should be done right before being released:
Absolutely, we’ve done some really fantastic work with the high res stuff, there are still some engineering and artistic issues we need to sort out, but this is our and Jeff’s point of view, what’s the point of putting I all this work and money if it’s not bang- on? And let me tell you, converting 2D to 3D (and then converting that 3D BACK to 2D) ain’t no walk in the park.

Finally, in a request by Martyna Zmuir to show us some screenshots:
Well, we posted a few shots of some of the new artwork a while back. You’d be looking for something more along those lines?