Masterworks

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 :) I collaborated very closely with the engineering and art teams to create impactful visual effects to enhance the player’s experience.

My Responsibilities:

1. Led a team of 2 other tech artists, managing tasks and planning sprints to complete expected scope (and beyond!) in a timely manner
2. Taught myself Unity’s ShaderGraph and VFXGraph systems
3. Converted complex HLSL code to ShaderGraphs
4. Designed highly customizable parallax and holographic shaders for our card display system
5. Created dynamic VFX with plenty of designer variables to tweak for user experience
6. Optimized VFX for mobile viewing
7. Kitbashed VFX to lighten the workload of our artists

Corrupted Shader
- Effect for indicating when a card is corrupted
- UV distort for glitch effect
- As card moves down board, grows in intensity/visibility
- Voronoi for "flashing" effect to catch the player's eye

Awaken Shader
- In-hand shader to indicate a card has awakened
- Double noise pass to create flame effect
- Gradient fade out to avoid hard edges
- Easily customizable shape, color, and intensity

Movement Timer Shader
- Visual indication for time until move, built into the on-board card border
- Flashes if moving means a battle, to draw attention to that area

Inspiration Bar Shader
- Indicates how much inspiration (mana) the player has - Red indicates how much playing a card would cost - Triple mask to section off the three colors - Fade-out for a dynamic, flame-like edge - Designer vars for noise speed, colors, etc

Parallax Shader
- 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 Shader - 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 Shader
- 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

Holographic Shader - First Attempts
- 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

Midnight Hour Effect
- Combined clock asset with kitbashed sparkles
- Animated clock hand to midnight
- ParticleSystem VFX

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