Hologram Shader
This shader was developed for Star Wars Outlaws as part of a hologram system. The goal was to accurately replicate the specific visual style of the holograms seen in the Rogue One movie.
A major challenge was supporting the game’s vast library of assets without creating unique “hologram” versions of every shader, material, prop, character, etc. To avoid this overhead, we opted for a post-processing-style approach. By rendering the hologram source in an isolated environment before the main scene, we could use existing assets and standard cinematic tools – including full lighting and animation – to build the source content freely.
The isolated render outputs Color and Depth buffers, which are fed into the Hologram Shader along with the Depth buffer from the actual game environment. Using these inputs, the shader calculates the final look, handling transparency, scanline artifacts, and world-space occlusion. The final result is then mapped to a billboard at the hologram’s location in the game world.
With this approach, we essentially replicated how holograms work in the Star Wars universe: the “caller” is rendered first and then displayed at the receiver’s location. The shader effectively represents the output of the “holopuck” device projecting the image.
