A few weeks ago, I tried my hand at Riot Games’ first person shooter Valorant. I’m pretty terrible at it. But it’s still fun and I enjoy seeing how they’ve updated the genre. But a few days ago, I had an experience that made me stop being a player and switch immediately into game developer mode (sorry if you were on my team). While in a Valorant match, someone was using the Spectrum skin. And the finisher’s shader effect really surprised me.
If you don’t play Valorant, you might not know some of those terms. I’ll touch on those briefly. Then we’ll move on to the shader.
Valorant Explanation
Valorant is a free to play game. Being a first person shooter, there are guns. 17 all together (plus a melee weapon). One way Riot makes money from the game is by selling “skins” for the guns. These skins modify the visual appearance and audio effects of the guns (though the main functionality stays the same for fairness).
You can see if fairly extensive (though I don’t believe it is exhaustive) list of skins over at Valorbuff.
Certain skin lines have a “finisher” that occurs when you make the last kill of a round. Things like the player exploding in a rainbow explosion, teleported by aliens, or burned by a dragon.
Got it? If not, don’t worry about it. The explanation isn’t super important. The shader itself is what really caught my attention. Let’s get on to that.
Valorant Spectrum Skin Finisher
The finisher that I found in Valorant comes from the Spectrum skin line. This line was made in collaboration with Zedd, an electronic musician, and high-ranking Valorant player. It features some of his music alongside some flashy visuals reminiscent of a DJ at an outdoor festival.
The shaders impact on the environment around it is what fascinates me. The brightness on everything goes down, though the hue still stays the same (for the most part). There is also a glowing neon outline around the edges of nearly every object. And over time, the hue of the neon changes a little.
Describing the shader doesn’t do it justice though. Just take a look for yourself. Here is some in-game Valorant footage demonstrating the Spectrum finisher.
At the very beginning of the video, it demonstrates the gun itself without the finisher. When the gun is inspected, the agent taps their finger against it to the beat of the music. Fun little addition.
Conclusion
Since I came across the Spectrum shader during my Valorant game, I’ve been pretty hooked on it. I think it’s just gorgeous. Imagine an entire game using something like this. At a later date, I’m going to be recreating this shader. Might be fun to experiment with an entire scene using this effect.
Small disclaimer here. I’m unsure if this is actually a shader (as I only recently got into HLSL and learning how to write custom shaders). At this point, it is just an assumption. I’ve reached out to Sean Marino, the associate art director for Valorant to see if I can discuss the a bit of the technical side with him. If I hear back from him, I’ll certainly let you know.
What do you think of the Spectrum finisher shader from Valorant? Have an idea on how it’s being implemented? Have another shader you’ve obsessed over? Let us know in the comments below. I’d love to hear what you have to say.
