Tyler Walters - Technical Artist

      Glassbreakers
      Studio: Polyarc
      Credit: Technical Art Director
      Platforms: PC (VR), Quest 2/3,
      Apple Vision Pro

  • Multi-platform optimizations and development workflows
  • VFX
  • Materials
  • Unreal tools
  • Gamelay Systems



Early on in production the team asked me about supporting a mirror in the game lobby. Knowing that we were going to ship on low spec standalone VR headsets, it was clear to me that going with a common render target solution would be costly, low resolution, and flat in appearance.

With this in mind I proceded to conceptualize, prototype, and work with the engineering team to implement an alternative solution that relied on something more akin to a shadowbox, with meshes that extened back behind the free floating mirror, using world positioned masking to encapsulate and show only on the inner bound pixels.
Given that our min spec standalone VR headset only allowed for about 250 draw calls total, I supported the team with guidance as well as hands on optimizations throughout the duration of the project to reach a consistent 72fps. 

One example of this work I took on involved converting a majority of the overhead Champion UI visuals, which were at one point totaling 150 draw calls, and merged these assets down into a single mesh with material logic to land at just 5 draw calls each.  
The art and product teams had a goal to create as much content for the game as possible. To support this, I provided mesh specs, materials, tools, and example assets for the art team to more easily create expressive & performant variants of their work. (Mask models shown above were created by Welly Chang and Mike Jensen)