UE 5.4 - Arcane Hextech

As I am a huge fan of Arcane I wanted to create the Hextech material using Unreal Engines Material editor.
This short project was a great opportunity for me to practice stylized material creation, lookdev and scene creation.
Since Hextech is very abstract and look different in each scene I aimed to create a procedural setup that will allow control over the different parameters for fine tune.

Enjoy :)

Hextech Comp

Hextech Comp Breakdown

Reference and mood

UE5.4 Hextech Lookdev Turntable

Hextech Shader setup,
In order to start I was splitting the task to different elements, Base, Core & Breakup and Rim.
This way I was able to create separate masks so I can use them later

Using parallax occlusion mapping to get some fake depth with some noise, this is the base setup so all the other layers are using the same principle

The core & Core breakup layer

The Rim layer, using Fresnel to have a rim based on the angle of the sphere

The diffuse setup, by creating masks and using name reroutes I was able to have the most control while keeping my shader easy to read, everything is modular so its easy to change and debug things

Some of the parameters I was adding to the material,
Each layer have its own settings while having some global settings too for easy tweaks

Lookdev setup I made to test the shader.
By using the clearcoat shading models I was able to get nice reflections as I used roughness to drives some stylized texture for nice breakup under the main coat

Simple bouncing ball animation I created in Unreal Engine

The scene setup inside Unreal Engine 5.4 with some very basic light setup for the scene and some lights attached to the sphere

Unreal Engine environment

As im really enjoying using the Render graph I created a setup that will allow me to split the different layers such as Environment and sphere for better control in compositing.

It may look complex but it is the same idea for each layer

Unreal render graph global collections I created for quick isolation of layers

Some render layers for example

As I want to reuse this render setup I exposed some parameters, allowing me to select which render layer I want to render, in which resolution, samples count and much more

A contact sheet layout of the passes I rendered as Multilayer EXR for compositing, Including render layer and some utility passes such as Normal, Position and Depth

The compositing script in Nuke with the beauty render

The compositing script in Nuke with the final result

Final Comp