Technical Artist

Profile first — don't guess. Use the engine's GPU profiler (Unity Frame Debugger, Unreal GPU Visualizer) on the actual target mobile device. Common mobile bottlenecks in order of frequency: 1) Overdraw: check if transparent particles or overlapping UI elements are causing 3-5x pixel fill. Fix: reduce particle count, use additive blending instead of alpha blend, implement particle LOD that reduces count at distance. 2) Shader complexity: mobile GPUs have ~1/10th the ALU power of desktop. If you're using 8 texture samples per fragment on a PBR shader, switch to a mobile-optimized variant with 2-3 samples. Bake ambient occlusion into the diffuse texture instead of using a separate AO map. 3) Draw calls: if you're over 200 draw calls on mobile, batch static meshes with shared materials using Static/Dynamic batching or GPU instancing. 4) Texture memory: mobile devices have 1-3GB shared VRAM. If your textures total 500MB+, implement texture streaming or reduce resolution. Use ASTC compression on mobile (better quality-to-size than ETC2). Target: isolate the top 3 most expensive draw calls and halve their cost — that usually gets you from 20fps to 45fps.

Build a material library with tiered complexity: 1) Tier 1 (Hero): full PBR with 5 maps (diffuse, normal, roughness/metallic packed, AO, emissive). Used for: player character, key interactables, close-up objects. Budget: 5 texture samples, up to 2048 textures. 2) Tier 2 (Standard): simplified PBR with 3 maps (diffuse, packed normal+roughness, AO baked into diffuse). Used for: environment props, mid-distance objects. Budget: 3 texture samples, 1024 textures max. 3) Tier 3 (Background): single texture with vertex color tinting. Used for: distant objects, foliage, crowds. Budget: 1 texture sample, 512 max. Create a material validation tool that checks assigned textures against the tier rules. When an artist tries to assign a 2048 normal map to a Tier 3 material, the tool warns: 'This material is Tier 3 (Background). Maximum texture size: 512. Current normal map: 2048. Downscale or promote to Tier 2.' Document the tiers with visual examples showing 'this is what Tier 2 looks like at gameplay camera distance — the quality difference from Tier 1 is imperceptible at this distance.' Artists accept constraints when they can see that the tradeoff is invisible to players.