Those are the UI vfx and tech art I made for the project Vikings Valhalla, developed by Emerald City Games and published by Netflix. The textures were made by me based on designs provided by the art director and the UI team. Some of the effects and animations might have changed before the game was published.
Some lightning effects for the character level up. The background in this menu is a mesh with a screen-space effect so it could support shadows on the UI
I've made a master shader for UI highlight effects where designers could use a single material and just change the image sprite and colors to create different effects
The highlight shader would support a fade in and out animation, where the direction and style would come from the sprite texture
The highlight textures would have their alphas on the red channel. a mask for the noise erosion (or "protected areas") on the green channel, and a fade gradient on the blue channel
The programming team developed a tool to animate Material Parameters that we could use to animate the effects, and this is one example of the highlight in action. All effects on the UI were done with sprites and alpha/scale animations
The highlight shader has one slider to control the level of detail on the animated noise, and other few controls for its intensity and speed
The fade effect can be tested with these sliders, but it would ultimately be controlled by scripts in the game
Ink effect for screen transitions
An example of the screen transition effect being used. It fades out with a simple and quick alpha animation, then fades back in with the ink effect. This was intentional as the buttons need to feel responsive.
This ink transition was also used for "revealing" locked elements, using a different, but similar shader.
The dialogue backgrounds had fade animations done in the shader and controlled by the sprite colors. The sprites were specially prepared for using that shader
Ambiance effects were also done with shaders. Embers were done with scrolling textures, and shader tricks were used to add movement
Smoke ambiance
Fire ambiance