#86 Anno 1800: Shadows of Beauty
How the developers of Anno 1800 made sure their game never looks flat.
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#85 Cyberpunk: Broken Edges
Fascinating use of POM Decals to blend two geometries together to create a broken edge.
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#84 Being a Tech Art Detective
My talk about my ways of finding out how tech art stuff is done in game.
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#83 Cozy Space Survivors
A post-mortem and breakdown of several tricks I did for my own game.
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#82 Underestimated Glow
In-depth look into the glow and lens flares of GTA V.
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#81 Deus Ex - Alpha Terrain
An interesting way of blending terrain with opaque geometry.
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#80 Splishy Splashy
Analysis of different water splashes and drops in Jedi: Fallen Order.
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#79 Pokemon - Rapidash
A wonderful way of getting volume and nice silhouettes by using a stencil buffer.
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#78 The Divine Fire
A way to make every geometry burn without any custom extra work.
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#77 The Four Vertex Volume
A brilliant idea to deform very simple geometry to give it a volumetric look.
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#76 Layered Explosion
A look at the detailed explosions of Battlefront II.
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#75 The Unreal Stencil Dragon
A project I did as example for my tech art course.
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#74 Simon's old VFX
Breakdowns of my old VFX I did in 2009 and 2017.
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#73 Tech Art Learning Materials
I gave several courses about rendering/tech at and made my materials public.
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#72 How to create VFX Textures
My GDC/ADDON Talk about how (not) to create textures for VFX.
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#71 Mafia II - Hat vs Hair
How to prevent the body from penetrating cloth and hats.
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#70 GTA V - The Wormy Fountain
Different techniques for water fountains in GTA V.
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#69 River 2k19 Edition
I show my procedurally generated river based on tech from Horizon Zero Dawn.
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#68 Zelda - The Bling Offset
Genius ideas how to make items visible in high grass.
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#67 VFX in RIME - Water Edition
My talk at Unreal Fest. This time I talk about the water in RiME instead of my waterfall.
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#66 Cool Stuff with Textures
My talk about what you can do with textures apart from using them as color.
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#65 Stylized VFX in RIME
My talk about VFX in RiME: Fire, Smoke and a Waterfall.
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#64 AC: Black Flag - Waterplane
How they prevent water from being rendered in the boat.
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#63 The Joy of VFX - Pintable
3 approaches to make a fancy "pin table".
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#62 Cutting Torch
Comparison between geometry slicing in Alien Isolation and Wolfenstein.
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#61 Top Down Trees
How to display motion with only a few sprites for top down trees.
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#60 Diablo 3 - Wings of Angels
The amazing tech behind Tyrael's wings and how they got transferred from 2d to 3D.
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#59 Blubb! - Fish Tanks
Several solutions of adding fish to games like X:Rebirth, Batman and Warcraft 3.
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#58 Alpha 1 - Top 5 Use cases
Create solutions to add more detail to your models by using Alpha1/Test.
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#57 Diablo 3 - Spiderweb
A realization why spiderwebs didn't look cool in Sacred 2.
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#56 Fallout 4 - Explosion(s)
One of the coolest tricks for making a long-living explosion.
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#55 What is Color Banding?
An explanation about colors and why one can see "bands" of them from time to time.
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#54 Fallout 4 - Wasteland Eyes
A look into different techniques to add eye(balls) to characters.
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#53 Geometric Lensflares
Using geometry with vertex colors instead of textures for nice lensflares in X:Rebirth.
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#52 Sacred 2 - Fake Mirror
How we used a mirror and an engine bug to generate nice cave entrances.
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#51 Rei Ayanami - Inner eyes
Using an optical illusion to generate a "follow" effect for pupils.
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#50 Hyrule Travel Guide
Several cool tricks from Zelda Wind Waker written by Warby and extended by me.
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#49 Render Hell 2.0
An illustrated overview about the rendering pipeline with cute animations.
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#48 Fake Interiors
Different approaches for faking interiors in Assassins Creed 3, Saints Row and Bioshock Infinite
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#47 Diablo 2 - Parallax
A look into the impressive "perspective mode" of Diablo 2 which gives the 2D world a 3D feel.
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#46 Lara's Hot Secrets
In-depth look at the torch in the Tomb Raider game.
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#45 Handmade Normal Maps
Dynamic lighting thanks to hand made normal maps for pixel art.
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#44 Tree vs Palm
Different approaches for vegetation rendering of (palm)trees in Oblivion and Enemy Territory.
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#43 Blended Trunks
Blending geometry with the underlying terrain in World of Warcraft, Torchlight and Dungeon Siege.
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#42 Flamethrower
Using a flame ribbon instead of only particles for throwing flames in Company of Heroes.
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#41 Volumetrically lit Smoke
Adding volume to a flat particle by manipulating normals in Company of Heroes.
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#40 Binding of I. - Composition
Learning composition basics with Binding of Isaac.
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#39 Seamless Worlds
Making game worlds "round" aka seamless is quite tricky.
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#38 Lego - Studs
Many small round elements: A nightmare for rendering.
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#37 Dungeon Keeper 2 - Walls
Investigation about the nicely deformed walls in DK2.
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#36 Lego Batman - Crawler
Animating a caterpillar is quite a technical challenge.
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#35 Scribble Cel
A simple way to animate glitter on water surfaces.
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#34 Doom 3 - HDUI
A deeper look inside the UI of Doom and how everything is little polygons.
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#33 Doom 3 - Volumetric Glow
Stunning way of using geometry as glow around light sources.
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#32 Starcraft 2 - Localization
Even the textures are localized in Starcraft 2. Impressive!
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#31 Bioshock - Glossiness
A small dive into glossiness. The comments contain great extra-infos!
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#30 Homeworld 2 - Hyperspace
A super cool effect, how the ships enter a new sector.
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#29 Homeworld 2 - Engines
Multi-Layer meshes give a nice volumetric feel to the engine fire.
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#28 007 Legends - The World
Pre-baked UVs help us to make a "rotating earth" in pure 2D.
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#27 Diablo 3 - Bubbles
Wonderful and rich liquid animations thanks to creative UVs and several texture layers.
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#26 Homeworld 2 - Backgrounds
These backgrounds are not textures. They are meshes!
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#25 Dead Space 3 - Reflections
Observations about reflections in games. Don't forget to check out the updates!
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#24 Metal Gear Rising - Slicing
Some observations about the slice-system from MG:R.
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#23 1943 - Retro Shadows
Fake translucent shadows by just turning them off every 2nd frame.
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#22 Airborn - Trees
These may be the fluffiest trees the world has seen so far, thanks to normal manipulation.
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#21 AC3 - Bouncing Light
Simon discovers bounce light for the first time.
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#20 Sacred 2 - Burning Map
A very nice fade in/out effect replicating burning paper.
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#19 Battlefield 2 - Flag Sound
One of my favorites sounds in BF2 adds a lot without using any visual elements.
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#18 Battlefield BC2 - Smoke
A simple texture overlay makes for huge scale smoke column.
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#17 Sacred 2 - Pulse Shader
Animating pulsing lights by using RGB channels for different timing values.
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#16 Sacred 2 - Crystal Reflexion
Fake reflections by using the last rendered frame buffer.
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#15 Left 4 Dead 2 - Puke
Bouncy puke in a bottle in Left for Dead 2.
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#14 Kid Icarus - Tricks
Several awesome "old school" tricks being observed in Kid Icarus.
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#13 AC3 - LoD Blending
Soft blending between LoDs to prevent a sudden "plopp" when LoD levels switch.
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#12 AC3 - Windows
Flat window shader fakes interior by using a nice bump offset.
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#11 World of Warcraft - Balloon
A genius way of faking a lit translucent volume by using fresnel.
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#10 Deus Ex - Scan Lines
A moire effect gives a nice sci-fi touch to those screens.
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#9 Deus Ex: HR - Folds
A simple way to add movement to cloth without touching the geometry.
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#8 Deus Ex - Occlusion
Some thoughts about occlusion in games.
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#7 Old School Outlines
A simple way to create outlines for 2D/3D objects.
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#6 Divine Divinity - 2D Reflection
Reflections in an old 2D game. Nothing one would see every day.
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#5 Warcraft 3 - Billboards
A simple sprite plus fake shading give the impression of a real sphere.
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#4 Diablo 3 - 2.5D Trees
Diablo 3 uses simple meshes and awesome textures to give an organic feel to its assets.
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#3 Teleglitch - RGB Flickering
How Teleglitch uses chromatic abberation to enhanve the look of its teleport effect.
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#2 Teleglitch - View Cones
How Teleglitch visualizes its field of vision with geometry.
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#1 Fallout 3 - Edges
Geometry decals are used to add detail to broken edges.
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