Make the emotions impact in Gamers
Naughty Dog
Lauren Garcia served as the Character Shading Technical Director at Naughty Dog from August 2017 to October 2020. During his tenure, he was instrumental in developing and refining the look and materials of characters for high-profile projects like "The Last of Us II." His responsibilities included writing shaders and developing materials for various character attributes such as skin, fabric, hair, eyes, leather, metal, blood, and grime.
Lauren's role involved improving shading code for existing material types and creating new techniques for rendering special-case materials and advanced effects. He also developed user interfaces that allowed artists to easily adjust parameters for common material types, working closely with both the art and engineering teams to advance rendering techniques and content creation tools.
In addition to his technical contributions, Lauren supported the character team in debugging issues, optimizing frame-rate and memory usage, and automating art production pipelines. His expertise in shading and look development significantly enhanced the visual quality and realism of the characters, contributing to the overall success of the projects he worked on.
), the Naughty Dog Skin Shader project aimed to upgrade the outdated subsurface scattering (SSS) approach. The previous method had several errors that caused](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6653b941f1352233efcbac94/85f22d85-b3db-4aca-b01a-e6e4c32a0bac/lgarcia-20190509-0448.png)
NaughtyDog Skin Shader: Co-developed with Hawar Doghramachi ([hd-prg.com](http://hd-prg.com)), the Naughty Dog Skin Shader project aimed to upgrade the outdated subsurface scattering (SSS) approach. The previous method had several errors that caused artifacts and inconsistent outputs for the character team.
NaughtyDog Skin Shader: Our final solution was based on the groundbreaking Separable Subsurface Scattering technique by Jimenez, significantly improving the shader's performance and visual quality. The shader breaks up the face actor into several regions, allowing artists to control pore size and influence the shading equation.
NaughtyDog Skin Shader: This control includes adjusting how much the specular reflectance is broken up and the intensity of the micro detail normals, resulting in a more realistic and finely tuned appearance.
NaughtyDog Skin Shader
NaughtyDog Skin Shader
NaughtyDog Skin Shader
NPC Skin Shader - I developed an advanced NPC skin shader that accounts for various ethnicities by hardcoding BRDF values, encapsulating all key shader parameters and texture samplers. This approach streamlines the production process, significantly enhancing productivity for our artists.
NaughtyDog Fabric Shader: Also the shader relies in different normal map layers to enhance the micro details. First the micro-normals for simulate the different types of clothing: cotton, woven, ect. This micro-normals are heavily tiled across the surface.
NaughtyDog Fabric Shader: Also the shader relies in different normal map layers to enhance the micro details. First the micro-normals for simulate the different types of clothing: cotton, woven, ect. This micro-normals are heavily tiled across the surface.
Naughty Dog Fabric Shader: To capture the intricate nature of fabrics and the unique style required, I enhanced the BRDF by integrating the principles from Sony Imageworks' fantastic paper: Production Friendly Microfacet Sheen BRDF. This upgrade allowed us to achieve a more realistic fabric rendering.
Naughty Dog Wetness Shader: Waylon Brink authored the shader code, and I implemented procedural masks and smart materials in Substance Painter to streamline the process, reducing the cost of authoring for each character. Additionally, we utilized a second UV set to achieve the correct rain directionality, enhancing realism in wet environments.
Emotions, Sweat, and Skin Damage Shader: I developed shader features to enhance realism and deliver dramatic appearances for characters during key moments. We also implemented shader-driven animations to smoothly transition the progression of damage, sweat, and emotional expressions within the engine, creating more immersive and lifelike experiences.
Playing with Emotions.
It all begins with an idea. Neil Druckmann and Ashley Swidowsky were instrumental in guiding me through bringing our character’s emotions to life. Making a character cry or feel deeply is challenging—not because of the technology, but because of the subtle details our brains naturally recognize. It’s the small nuances that make all the difference. I became obsessed with perfecting these, and the video provides a glimpse of what we achieved.
Snow, Burn, and Gore Effects: I contributed to the development of character VFX shaders for various dynamic features, including snow accumulation, burn effects, cuts, fabric damage, and a comprehensive skin/body gore system. These effects added significant detail and realism to character interactions with their environment.
