Pokémon GO

Niantic

Pokemon GO is a GPS-based creature collecting game from Niantic. I helped as a technical artist with shaders, tools, AR, and UI.

Sky Update

I revamped shaders on the world map as a part of a sky update. The project originally started as a hackathon with an engineer but eventually got rolled into a full update. The sky shader was updated to be a simplified version of physically based atmospheric scattering. Previously there were only day and night color modes for the map, but I updated it to blend to sunset colors as the sun gets low and have separate color schemes depending on the weather. I also added the sun to the water reflection. To iterate on the look and feel, I created tools to batch render screenshots at various times of day / weather and to simulate a timelapse.

AR Shadows and Lighting

I prototyped improving the lighting and shadows for Pokemon in AR+ mode. I experimented with computing a light color from the input camera feed to help it blend in with the environment and updating the Pokemon BDRF shader to use the light color. I also made a shadow effect that approximates AO by rendering an orthographic depth texture for the Pokemon.

Mega Evolutions

I was the primary technical artist for the initial version of Mega Evolutions. I designed and implemented the Mega Evolution raid egg, implemented the mega evolve vfx sequence, and updated assets throughout the game to support the mega evolutions feature.