Technical Artist / VFX Artist

As a Technical Artist / VFX Artist, I serve a bridge between artists and developers and provide solutions to keep high fidelity visuals while maintaining good performance.

Environmental & Atmospheric Shaders

Large scale and world building tech arts are complicated but crucial. The appropriate technical solution can greatly improve frame rate and performance, while providing immersive experience.

Miasma Wall

This is a massive, persistent environmental hazard the player can encounter in Homestead Arcana, blocking the player to discover the locked areas.

  • Rendering Optimization: Resolved critical CPU-bound performance drops by redesign a heavy, mesh-based environmental hazard into a highly optimized 2D Shader Graph implementation.

  • Advanced Shader Logic: Developed complex parallax mapping and alpha clipping logic using baked normals and mask textures to simulate volumetric 3D depth on flat planes, successfully shifting the rendering burden to the GPU.

  • Dynamic Material Behavior: Engineered distance-responsive shader parameters that react dynamically to player position, enhancing the game's atmosphere while maintaining strict frame-rate budgets.

Volumetric Cloud System

This volumetric cloud system aims to allow environmental artists to place and tune cloud effects in levels easily.

  • Cross-Platform Volumetric Rendering: Architected a highly optimized, stylized volumetric cloud system using custom ray-marching algorithms with noise textures, maintaining strict performance targets for both PC and console releases.

  • Custom Volume Control: Developed a post-processing framework that renders camera-facing fog layers within specific boundaries, granting art teams precise control over atmospheric thickness and color profiles.

  • Seamless Environmental Blending: Implemented depth-fade to smoothly transition volumetric effects near opaque geometry, ensuring cohesive integration with the game's stylized art direction.

GT Grass

The GT Grass is a real time rendering grass, which is designed for stylized anime art style environment. You can customize the grass into different styles with the painting tool and the material properties. It uses Geometry + Tessellation as the technical approach to rendering the grass, which allows the user to paint grass on any surface. The painting system procedurely creates triangle geometry, then the grass blades are rendered via geometry shader. Custom vegetation textures are supported.

Asset Store Link: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/vfx/shaders/gt-grass-230939

Gameplay VFX

I’ve been creating gameplay vfx for projects like Sworn, Homestead Arcana and Ballistic Brew within Unreal and Unity, using Niagara System, Material Graph, Shader Graph, Particle System and HLSL.

Gravity Cannon

  • Gameplay-Driven VFX: Engineered a dynamic projectile effect for the Gravity Cannon using Niagara System and Material Graph, specifically designed to visually communicate complex electrical and gravitational-pull mechanics.

  • Advanced Material Logic: Developed custom Material Graphs utilizing noise textures, refraction, and distorted masks to simulate a turbulent electrical field with high visual readability. Combined with custom mesh with radial uv made in Blender.

  • Emitter Control: Bridged material logic with particle execution by implementing Dynamic Parameter Controls, allowing the Niagara System to drive animation directly and enabling rapid iteration without rebuilding the shader.

Energy Shield

  • Custom Mesh: Prepared a custom shield mesh with hexagonal fragments in blender with simplified UV in order to make animation in Niagara System.

  • Material Animation: Crafted uv animation with the custom mesh in the material, giving the player a sense of safety.

  • React On Hit: Subscribed to the OnHit event in Blueprint to the change parameters in the Niagara System to provide a robust feedback to players.

Enemy Death VFX

  • Gameplay Cue Integration: Engineered a tier-based enemy death VFX suite by developing three distinct Niagara Systems (Small, Medium, Large) triggered via Unreal Engine Gameplay Cues, providing instant, class-appropriate combat feedback.

  • Visual Hierarchy & Readability: Implemented custom material logic to darken destroyed enemies, successfully reducing screen clutter and ensuring players instantly recognize remaining active threats.

  • Dynamic Environmental Polish: Integrated custom Decal Actors tied to the death events to spawn "burned ground" effects that seamlessly fade out over time, enhancing combat immersion while maintaining strict rendering performance budgets.

Cinematic & Gameplay Sequencing

I was responsible for cooperating with animators and VFX artists to make cinematics in Sworn, where custom Timeline tracks were developed to improve the team efficiency.

  • The Challenge: The standard Unity Timeline lacked the specific gameplay hooks required to seamlessly trigger complex gameplay logic, renderer control, dynamic VFX, and sound events during high-fidelity cinematic sequences and boss transitions.

  • The Technical Solution: Engineered custom Timeline Tracks and Playable Behaviors utilizing Unity's Playables API. This allowed designers, artists and developers to sequence custom gameplay data, material overrides, and particle system spawning directly within the Timeline editor.

  • Cross-Disciplinary Impact: Served as the technical bridge between Animation, VFX, and Engineering. By creating these custom clips, the multidisciplinary team could tightly choreograph combat and cinematic events without requiring custom scripts for every sequence.