Official Tomb Raider Blog

[E3 Ambassador Blog] Evolving an Icon: Lara Croft 2.0

Author: Marco - Allgame: Tomb Raider, Italy

Lara Croft is one of the most famous and enduring characters of the video game industry. With her iconic beauty and her bright personality, the acclaimed archaeologist has been living in our computers and consoles for almost 20 years. As time passed, we witnessed a multifaceted evolution of Lara Croft’s character and model, not only from a narrative point of view, but also from a technical perspective.

Indeed, the technology behind her character dramatically changed, first from edges to curves, then from curves to fine details. With improved technology, even the smallest details can make a large difference, and technology has come to play a key role in the entire creative process. This is certainly the case with Rise of the Tomb Raider.

After the series was rebooted in 2011, Lara’s model was re-designed according to her new storyline. Even when maintaining the iconic traits of her classic model, Lara needed to have a younger and inexperienced look - her skills yet to be fully mastered and her story yet to begin.  

Starting from an enhanced game engine used in Crystal’s Legend, Anniversary, and Underworld trilogy, Lara was about to face untested waters. Just like the heroine she is, she has taken this new adventure and conquered it. The reboot was just the beginning. Lara realized she is a survivor and has accepted that the world is much more than what she can see. She lost her friends, and a part of herself as well. On the island, she said farewell to the naive academic student she used to be.

                                 Image created by Rayna Ryukuro

In Rise of the Tomb Raider, Lara is on the cusp of a new adventure. Carrying with her the scars which marked her physically and mentally, she sets out to understand the secrets of immortality. Her personality grows stronger, but her love for archaeology and esotericism is still unchanged.

Conveying the changes that Lara has undergone is a great challenge for the development team. Lara’s personality has evolved, and her physical appearance needs to reflect this. The character design team at Crystal Dynamics has set out with a singular goal: making Lara a believable and relatable character by showing her humanity and emotions through the use of sophisticated technology.

Thanks to Crystal Dynamics and Xbox, I had the chance to attend E3 2015 in Los Angeles. I also had the opportunity to meet many of the talented developers from Crystal Dynamics and Microsoft, and interview Brian Horton, Game Director on Rise of the Tomb Raider. I asked him some questions about the technology behind Lara Croft’s design, focusing on her evolution as a character throughout the story. You can find the interview in full below.

Marco: After the franchise was rebooted, the team revealed their intentions to work hard on Lara’s personality from the very beginning, in order to make her more relatable as a character, thus showing her humanity, and her weaknesses as a part of it. Since most emotions can be communicated with non-verbal signs, I truly believe facial expressions are an important matter to focus on. In this regard, I would like to ask, what kind of work did you lead about this aspect of her character? Also, How did the new facial mo-cap technology - and Camilla’s ability - change or improve your work?

Brian Horton: It’s been a laser focus of our team to improve our facial animation from Tomb Raider 2013 to Rise of the Tomb Raider. We completely rewrote facial animation pipeline to be a blend-shape based system, what that means is the artist can sculpt each and every pose of her face, adding not only the broad shape, but also the wrinkles and the small details. All these things work together and create very complex facial animations. And obviously, we have in Camilla Luddington a fantastic actress, and we wanted to bring as much core performance into Lara Croft as we could, so now we are using a newer technology where you can have thousands of points and data on her face; they get translated through the system and onto our model. So, subtlety and expression, whether it be her concern, or her pain, or her joy, or her distrust…all those things, those non-verbal expressions, we can now read them on the character.

Marco: For narrative purposes, Lara looks younger in her first adventure in Tomb Raider 2013. In Rise of the Tomb Raider, players are introduced to two different evolutions of her character. On one hand, we can see her first approach to reality after the traumatic events she experienced in Yamatai: she seems to be uncomfortable, closed in herself, with her head covered by a hood, just as if her secrets and feelings were kept lock inside of her soul. On the other hand, we can see her finding her vocation to be an archeologist and uncover the Earth’s mysteries. In both scenarios, she still looks young, but her eyes, her face, her clothes send a brand new message and show her distress or her empowerment.

What kind of appeal do you want her to have on players? How should they look at her and what can they expect? Will you focus on Lara’s introvert and silent side or on her confident and bold one?

Brian Horton: We believe the first trailer showcased a very interesting dynamic of Lara Croft uncomfortable with the idea being questioned by someone, even challenged by someone, that maybe what she saw in Yamatai wasn’t true. So, there’s a stress that she’s feeling, and the tapping of her feet and the squeezing on the chair…some people have interpreted that as a weakness or as a disorder, and the way we’ve interpreted that was anticipation to get out of the situation and just go on her adventures. So, the concept of her being agitated or affected emotionally by Yamatai - it’s true, she has seen trauma and those feelings are real - but what we’re more interested in is her destiny to be the tomb raider, and to see her start to embrace how she feels more like herself when she’s out in the field, experiencing these things, searching for the world’s secrets, than she is confined in a room, in a society that she doesn’t feel connected to anymore. She feels more home being away from home.

Marco: Speaking of clothes, I’m always impressed by the deep attention to details for Lara’s costumes and equipment. Could you explain the creative process behind them? Let’s talk about the jacket she wears in the first CG trailer of ROTTR, for instance: did you get any inspiration from some real jacket to replicate the materials it is made of and the effect that time, natural elements and wounds has on them? How will water affect Lara’s clothes, for example? Will it make her movements heavier?

Brian Horton: It’s a good question. There’s 2 outfits that we featured in the CG trailer: there was one grey jacket that was a more of a winter jacket and then there was the green jacket - which I think is the one you’re referring to - and has the bandages in it. And that is the jacket that we designed to be something that she acquires later in the game: it is improvised, it is not fitting, she augments it to make it fit her, and it becomes a part of the idea that, no matter where Lara goes, she can find a way to adapt. So, if you wanna think about it from a conceptional point of view, that jacket is an adaptation to her environment and to her situation. She goes to Siberia, like we saw in the Microsoft demo, she’s coming with a red, down jacket, climbing gear, and she’s very prepared. But in classic fashion, nature is so overwhelming that avalanche overcomes her and we see her then brought back down again and having to survive. So, we try to find clothes - to answer your first question - in the real worlds, and I will go and buy garments and will bring them into the office, and will find out “Were these the right materials? Is this the right fit?”. And we’ve even been brought cosplayers like Jenn Croft to even evolve that further, or they can take something that we’ve done a design on and that we didn’t have maybe the outfit in real life, and then seeing the distress she was able to put into it also is very influential, and we put that into our cover. So, I would say we’re very much influenced by garments in the real world.

Marco: I’d like to learn something more about the research you and CD made in order to design Lara’s gear, as well. How did you study the pieces of her equipment (just like the weapons or her axe) and how were you able to create them? Did you work in close contact with someone specialized on this specific asset?

Brian Horton: We did not, but Bren - our Art Director - worked very hard to find in all the weapons or gear that Lara will have to ensure it had a material quality in the way that the stitching looked and the bolts were on the axe. We sourced real life as much as possible, but we didn’t have any specialists that we worked with per se. I would say that the diagram for the cosplayers we put together was very meticulous. “This is a certain kind of plastic,“ "this is a leather” and “this is a cotton weave”, and we want cosplayers out there to know that these materials are important, not only to the character in the game, but the brief representation of that in real life; you want all of those things to come true correctly. So, that’s why we put that guide together, to express the goals we had for each of the ingredients we’ve here.

Marco: So you’re still looking for realism in the game?

Brian Horton: Absolutely! Authenticity, because we believe grounding Lara makes the fantastic situation she’s in feel that much more easy to relate to.

Marco: While developing Tomb Raider 2013 and after releasing the first screenshots and gameplay videos, many people complained about how Lara’s hair looked. The team greatly addressed this problem and implemented TressFX, in cooperation with AMD. This new technology was made available on PC and PS4/XB1 for Lara’s model in Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition, the latter showcasing an even more polished version.

When did you feel the need to implement the TressFX? How far are you going to push this technology and improve Lara’s overall model? And how will dirt and water affect Lara’s hair?

Brian Horton: We definitely believe the hair technology we developed with AMD was a foundation for the way we believe hair will be rendered in the future video game graphics. And, as pioneers of this - there’s not many people to look at for reference other than films - we have been pushing that technology to find ways to make it even better. And we have been developing techniques to allow us to have more hair but less physics. The hair is now in clusters, so the way hair naturally falls is that hair wants to be next to a adjacent hairs that create shapes. Now, the hair splines can follow these guide hairs and these formerly physics-grown hairs, so it feels a little bit more natural when it moves. That’s one of the evolutions, and in water we now have the “zero-gravity” effect; so, when she goes underwater, her hair will float and it’s important - when it comes out of the water - it will feel heavier and feel more clumped and obviously look wet and darker, so all these things, including snow and the snow accumulated in the hair, that we’ve been incorporating into our technology.

Marco: I believe that dealing with the design of Lara Croft’s model must be just as exciting as challenging. She is one of the most famous video game characters; as such, high expectations are on her. Everyone sees her as a strong and independent figure, but she has an iconic beauty too. Did you have an inspirational model (be it existing in real life or just fictional) to refer to? How do her inner and outer beauty balance themselves?

Brian Horton: When it comes to Lara, we believe there’s no one person in the world that can be Lara Croft. She is an invented character but, in the goal to make her more believable, we made reference to the real world, so on one hand we have Camilla Luddington: she is the actress that brings voice to Lara and emotion to Lara, so it infuses her personality into her model, not exactly, but her personality has to come through.

And the visual looks model we made when we made Tomb Raider 2013, we worked in close collaboration with Visual Works on the CG Model, the high-res model, and we believe we’ve got all version of the game this feeling that we very much like that model and that was an inspiration we had, as well, to try to close down the variety because we had 2013 model, Definitive Edition model, and all these versions. We’re trying to come up with what we believe is the correct characterization of who Lara Croft is. We’re very proud of what Kam Yu has been able to create for the model for Rise of the Tomb Raider.

Marco: Lara’s character is certainly following a deep evolution, both from a personal and from an aesthetics point of view. If you were asked to look way ahead in the future, how would you imagine Lara? How close would she look to her classic version?

Brian Horton: We believe that Core Design is the touchstone we always come back to, as far as some signature ingredients. All almond shaped eyes, the brown eyes, and M-shaped lips, these are ingredients that we maintain but make more realistic as we evolved her character. We’re always striving to give as much emotion to Lara Croft as possible, so I believe where our evolution will continue is in how she emotes, how she performs, and how shaders respond to light. Do we believe that that skin feels like skin, sweat feels like sweat, and so on? And that moisture under her eyes feels unique and her eyes feel believable, and they have a soul? All those things are how we want to continue evolving our technology, so players just feel like they’re looking at a person, instead of a character in a video game.

Marco: Lara’s growth was also made possible by the heavy losses and sacrifices she was forced to overcome in choosing how to survive. However, she was mainly guided by the need to protect the people she loved, more than by the burning desire of uncovering the truth behind the myth of the island. If now we can expect her to venture alone, in a brand new way, what will her driving motivation be? Why does she want - and need - to understand the secrets of immortality? Is it a way to protect her friends again?

Brian Horton: We believe that Lara glimpsed the idea of the living soul, she saw this and she can’t explain it through science, because she is very much “If I don’t see it, if I don’t understand it, it doesn’t exist”. It’s like a door was opened in her mind, it was opened by a mystery, and she needed to find and believe that there are other secrets like that out there, and it became a driving force for her. It’s why she will travel to Siberia, all the way into the Arctic, on the top of mountains to risk her life, to try to seek a myth. But she believes in myths now, she believes that they’re real, and through archaeology she has found the truth within myths. We believe that’s the spirit of being a tomb raider.

Marco: Among the numerous improvements of Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition, gear physics has certainly been an important focus. We can see how Lara’s axe swings when she walks and climbs, and so does her quiver. What will your next step be in this direction? How do you plan to make Lara’s gear look and react more realistically? Will weather effects influence their performances?

Brian Horton: We have very much invested in secondary animation of the physics within her clothes, so for instance the climbing gear on Lara’s belt will move around all independently. We also have invested in the technology called PSDs. They are deformations to her jacket or her legs based on real movements (if you see my knee, the shape of the jeans varies according to the movements of my leg). So you’ll be able to see the changes in volume and the wrinkle patterns changing on knees, on elbows, and the muscles on her skeleton, so it’s the small details in addition to the motion that we believe we’ll hopefully have a more believable physicality in her anatomy in addition to the motion of the quiver, the bow and the other gear that is on her outfit.

Marco: Beyond her gear, I expect Lara to have some more athletic skills in ROTTR, some of them directly related to the weapon/piece of equipment she’ll be using. Which kind of goal are you trying to achieve in this regard and how do you animate her movements? Will you be using the motion capture technology only? How will Lara respond to the different environmental situations she’s going to experience?

Brian Horton: For Lara, besides the gear, we’ve tried to make sure that her body and animation respond to the environment, for instance in some of the footage you saw Lara walking through very deep snow, and she is straining to get through the snow. We call this “a living Lara.” Lara reacts to the world around her, so - if she’s near a wall, she will touch it - she’s in deep snow, she will struggle against it. These things are important to make Lara feel connected with the environment, as we can make her. That is a number one goal, always: to make sure Lara feels real and believable, and that goes especially to her integration to the world.

                               Image created by Rayna Ryukuro

With the release of new consoles and advanced PCs, new technology was gradually made available to developers, and to players. Behind the stunning visuals which have set new standards, I truly believe the dedication of development houses is what makes games look remarkable.

Lara Croft kept the pace and saw her model grow accordingly. The technology through which she comes to life is the vehicle for an even deeper message: not only will it will help her character reach astonishing definition from an aesthetics point of view, it will be the means to convey her changing mix of human emotions. None of this requires a single spoken word.

Having the chance to meet Brian Horton, together with the numerous talents from Microsoft and Crystal Dynamics, was a real joy for me. I’m also very glad for meeting the international Ambassadors of the entire Tomb Raider community in the world, as well as a lot of other people who took care of us and made us feel at home all the time. I was overwhelmed by everyone’s kindness and openness and I’m really grateful for being chosen as an Ambassador myself for the Italian Tomb Raider community. Also, many thanks to those who supported me from long distance: the readers of my website, all the webmasters of the other official Tomb Raider Fansites which weren’t there, and Tomb Raider fellow fans. I will always treasure this experience, the people I met and all the worldwide support I received. Heartfelt thanks, everybody.

[Transportation, lodging, and E3 badge provided by Crystal Dynamics and Xbox as a part of the E3 2015 Ambassador Program]