Masterworks

I currently work as a technical artist and engineer on Masterworks of Horror, one of the Advanced Game Projects sponsored by USC Games. I collaborate very closely with the engineering and art teams to create impactful visual effects to enhance the player’s experience.

While I have no formal background in tech art or VFX, I’m very interested in designing shaders and learning more about the VFX pipeline, which led me here :)

Key Skills Learned:

• Self-taught Unity’s ShaderGraph and VFXGraph systems
• Converting complex HLSL code to ShaderGraphs
• Designing highly customizable parallax and holographic shaders for our card display system
• Optimizing VFX for mobile viewing
• Kitbashing VFX to lighten the workload of our artists

Parallax Effect
- Implemented a dynamic three-layer parallax effect
- Used in both an unlit and lit shader depending on card rarity
- Made sure every card will automatically adjust depending on layer count
- Added easy customization between parallax strength, asset scale/offset, etc

Parallax Effect - Development
- Started with a simple two layer effect
- Worked to fix side runoff for a cleaner look
- Experimented with a stencil mask for 3D objects (item cards)

Holographic Effect
- Designed a simple lit holographic shader
- Currently uses a basic voronoi pattern but easily can be customized
- Implemented a simple mask to make any necessary text more readable
- Dynamically changes colors depending on card's author

Holo Effect - First Tries
- Started with learning different types of holographic effects
- Used a simple wave pattern at first before discovering voronoi
- Experimented with readability vs aesthetics
- Tested out a masked spiral background

Crosshatch Shader
- Recreated this sketch effect from Kyle Halladay's hlsl shader as a customizable shadergraph
- Added a 7th partition for a full white section to allow for more detail - Allows designers to pick colors & theming as they wish

Burn Effect
- Kitbashed a simple dissolve shader into the default holographic/parallax shader
- Added custom smoke and ember particles through VFXGraph

Chain Effect
- Custom-generated circles of chains in different lengths and sizes as usable meshes
- Designed custom glow shader that could easily be manipulated with VFXGraph
- Added a fade-in effect to the shader's emission
- Implemented particles and a simple animation to the meshes

Bubbling Ink Effect
- Followed this tutorial to create a generic bubble/ink effect
- Kitbashed the various smoke and bubble particles used
- Shortened and optimized the effect for mobile use