Croft Manor Art Blog

Tomb Raider: Legend was one of the first games that I played on the new-at-the-time Xbox360. To me, one of the most striking levels of the game was the Croft Manor. Not only did you get to see where Lara spent all of her time away from exploration, but it was also some of the most stunning artwork on the console. Even her home was filled with mysterious puzzles and a web of interactivity. Now, imagine my excitement when I was told that I'd get to work on the latest vision of Lara's mansion... and then blow it up.

Rebuilding the Croft Manor for Tomb Raider: Underworld was an interesting task for many reasons. Her family home is an iconic, recognizable piece of architecture. TR fans are quite familiar with it through a number of games as well as the movies. With this title taking full advantage of the technologies available on the next-gen consoles I wanted to really make some memorable artistic changes. At the same time I had to be very careful not to stray too far from what people expected to see.

I started rebuilding the mansion pillar by pillar and wall by wall while using the geometry from Tomb Raider: Legend as a starting point for scale and reference. Along with a material artist with whom I kept close communication, I began to rebuild the foundation of Lara's main foyer. After deciding on recurring motifs, colors, and textures I applied these themes to create the foyer, the main playable room in Croft Manor, and later to Lara's bedroom and the hallway attaching it to the main foyer.

One notable exception in my process that differs from just about every other unit in Tomb Raider: Underworld is the fact that the mansion already had a designated layout before any game designer ever began to work on it. Additionally, the mansion was going to be used as a tutorial for the player, keeping the puzzles and complexity of structure to a minimum. Because of these factors, I did not work extensively with the level designer and this allowed me to concentrate heavily on the aesthetic appeal. Later, the cinematic team decided to tell a number of important parts of the story in this area and I found myself working more closely with them than I had in the past. The changes they requested turned out to be much easier to make than for those of the design/gameplay department with all of their intricate and grand ideas.

With the main structure of the mansion built I came to the really fun part. Helped along by some amazing, custom-built tools for destruction, I began tearing apart the geometry of the foyer. Imagining the sources and locations of the explosions that would rip this large room apart, I laid down pieces of the forensic storytelling that will allow the player to really become immersed in the environment. Using dark, saturated lighting, heavy fire, smoke, ash, and rain effects as well as layers upon layers of rough, charred textures the mansion really came to life.

Unfortunately, this process also created a large technological hurdle. All of us contributing to the brilliant atmosphere of Croft Manor had to work extremely efficiently in order to keep adding all of these detailed layers. This unit was the largest in memory on the console. Rather than rip out these pieces that added so much to the now moody, high tension, and intensely interesting environment, we raced to be the most economical we could. By developing tricks for dealing with typically power intensive processes, I really feel that we were able to push a whole lot of character into this space while making a very small footprint in the overall memory allocation.

In the end I believe we created a memorable and spectacular destruction of Lara's family home. I hope everyone that plays it has a truly immersive experience.

Jeremy French