Cortana Hologram Textures and Materials | Halo Campaign Evolved

It was my honor to create the textures and materials for Cortana in Halo Campaign Evolved. This one took a huge team effort, especially techart, FX (big shoutout to Matt Schaffter and Dan Henley), animation, and of course the cinematics team, among others. Shoutout as well to Rority digital for the face sculpt and early textures before she was a hologram.

I was responsible for the base textures and material shader, and lookdev to create the hologram look for Cortana. There was then a period of collaboration with the cinematic team and FX to bring her to final look in the cinematics themselves.

The material was all built in UE on an unlit emissive shader, where we could control all aspects of the lighting and look within the material. Textures were also painted in Subtance Painter to use with the material in UE.

Holograms in real time are always a huge challenge. And a character like Cortana comes with a monumental legacy to consider, and a lot of opinions about how to approach it. In the end, given the challenges in front of us, I am very proud of what the team pulled together, and how we pushed Unreal for how it could render a hologram in real time. I hope you all enjoy!