Cortana Textures and Materials (Gold Hardlight version) | 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.

In addition to the original look, I implemented some additive elements to target a hardlight look for Cortana while in the Forerunner hologram tech. Since she uses an unlit shader with lighting built into the shader, the target metallic look had to be achieved with a cube map that I captured from the surrounding environment. We also adjusted the overall feel, and of course the color, to target the more intense, solid, hardlight look. Some other touches like an added ring in her iris, and some heavy lifting from FX (thanks Dan), and we made it to what you see in the cinematic.

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!