Full weapon design, from Lara Croft’s arsenal of weapons (bows and guns) to those used by the NPC villains.

Our relationship with Eidos Montreal began back in 2016. Having been avid fans of the 2013 reboot and Rise of the Tomb Raider, our team were really excited to be part of this last title in the trilogy. 

Early on we were tasked with some of the Mayan and Aztec environments but then the workflow expanded and we were tasked to sink our teeth into all of the game's weaponry. Eidos Montreal’s art team were clear in their brief: they were after incredible attention to detail to these weapons; they had to be visually impressive with the added layer of depth in their “jungle-ization”. We realized we would need to be more ambitious and creative in these designs, as a high bar had already been set in the first two previous game releases.

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Weapon Concepts

The weapons work flow would first include building these designs from concepts.

The Eidos team provided real-life weapons that they wanted heavily modified to circumvent copyright issues. Our team was tasked with carrying out research on similar weapon types. As an example with the M1911 pistol, we searched for other pistols with similar elements and incorporated them into the concept but made them look as functionally coherent and natural looking as possible. This process was carried through for multiple weapon types such as submachine guns, assault rifles and light machine guns. Our concepts and final renders were all done in line with Eidos’s specifications.

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“Jungle-ized” Versions:

There was an added layer of the jungle-themed modifications to Lara’s weapons. This involved more detailed research from our team, such as how a silencer or a flare attachment would be attached if improvised with scrap items that would be found within the environment like old pipes, bandages, etc. Being mindful of any copyright issues on this stage we only considered a render final when the design was approved by the Eidos art and legal teams.

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3D Modeling Phase

Blockouts were first done for proportions and then approved internally and then by Eidos. The next step would be high-resolution models which were baked into the low resolution models. The specific amount of grime and wear needed to be consistent with the weapons use and jungle-ization. We shared the jungle attachments across different types of weapon reuse. Once both tech and art were approved internally, the final 3D is then sent for approval to Eidos.

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