Courtesy of Netflix
Spotlight
February 27, 2026
Reimagining Previs and Layout for KPop Demon Hunters with Unreal Engine
KPop Demon Hunters is more than just a film—it’s a cultural phenomenon.
Not only is this animated original the most popular Netflix film ever, with over 236 million views, but its soundtrack made history as the first to have four simultaneous Top 10 songs on the Billboard Hot 100.
The project, produced by Sony Pictures Animation, combined fast-paced action, dense crowds, and concert-scale lighting in ways that were hard to evaluate with traditional layout and previs.
Key creative decisions depended on seeing how action, lighting, materials, and effects worked together with a cinematic lens, not in isolation.
To answer those questions earlier, the Sony Pictures Imageworks team needed a way to visualize a more complete creative intention at the start of the pipeline, which led them to Unreal Engine.
Not only is this animated original the most popular Netflix film ever, with over 236 million views, but its soundtrack made history as the first to have four simultaneous Top 10 songs on the Billboard Hot 100.
The project, produced by Sony Pictures Animation, combined fast-paced action, dense crowds, and concert-scale lighting in ways that were hard to evaluate with traditional layout and previs.
Key creative decisions depended on seeing how action, lighting, materials, and effects worked together with a cinematic lens, not in isolation.
To answer those questions earlier, the Sony Pictures Imageworks team needed a way to visualize a more complete creative intention at the start of the pipeline, which led them to Unreal Engine.
Getting to final pixel-level visuals faster
KPop Demon Hunters centers on an all-female K-pop group, HUNTR/X, that secretly defends the world from supernatural threats.
In a story packed with wild fantasy action, one sequence set in a bathhouse marked a turning point for Sony Pictures Imageworks. Here, our heroes are ambushed by water demons while confronting the Saja Boys—a new rival boy band whose members are also secretly demons.
“The fight sequence in the bathhouse blew my mind, because we were really able to dial up the materials—make everything feel wet and reflective and foggy,” says Jason Baldwin, Real-Time Supervisor at Sony Pictures Imageworks.
Courtesy of Sony Pictures Imageworks
This marked the first time the layout team at Sony Pictures Imageworks used real-time volumetrics, creating a dense, steamy bathhouse atmosphere with soft, diffuse lighting that filters through the billowing clouds of vapor.
It’s in this eerie environment that a chaotic, high-stakes brawl breaks out, presenting the team with the challenge of crafting fast, frenetic fight choreography in a heavily atmospheric setting.
“One of our layout artists, who was new to Unreal Engine, blocked out the main action in about a week,” explains Adam Holmes, Head of Visualization at Sony Pictures Imageworks.
With that initial block-out, the team was able to present complex fight choreography, creative camera moves, and all the visual effects of swords exploding demons, showcasing a true sense of the scene's cinematic vision.
By being able to see lighting, materials, atmosphere, and camera working together so early, the team was shaping the emotional tone of the sequence. The wet sheen of tile, the density of steam, and the fast-paced camera work amplified the tension and spectacle, bringing drama and immersion to the fight. Ultimately, the early visualization served to elevate the sequence’s final artistic impact.
“To see all of it just come together with something approximating very close to the final render at the layout stage—and just set it up quick like that—blew my mind,” says Baldwin.
It’s in this eerie environment that a chaotic, high-stakes brawl breaks out, presenting the team with the challenge of crafting fast, frenetic fight choreography in a heavily atmospheric setting.
“One of our layout artists, who was new to Unreal Engine, blocked out the main action in about a week,” explains Adam Holmes, Head of Visualization at Sony Pictures Imageworks.
With that initial block-out, the team was able to present complex fight choreography, creative camera moves, and all the visual effects of swords exploding demons, showcasing a true sense of the scene's cinematic vision.
By being able to see lighting, materials, atmosphere, and camera working together so early, the team was shaping the emotional tone of the sequence. The wet sheen of tile, the density of steam, and the fast-paced camera work amplified the tension and spectacle, bringing drama and immersion to the fight. Ultimately, the early visualization served to elevate the sequence’s final artistic impact.
“To see all of it just come together with something approximating very close to the final render at the layout stage—and just set it up quick like that—blew my mind,” says Baldwin.
A pipeline that connects Maya, Unreal Engine, and USD
The workflow between Autodesk’s Maya and Unreal Engine was central to Sony Pictures Imageworks’ animation pipeline on KPop Demon Hunters.
“It’s really important to bring our animation rigs that are developed in the Maya pipeline into Unreal Engine, and we’ve created a number of scripts to automate that process,” says Holmes.
Once the team animated those layout shots, they were able to publish them back into Maya and retain all the layout artists’ work.
Courtesy of Sony Pictures Imageworks
This workflow has been taken to the next level thanks to Sony Pictures Imageworks’ burgeoning adoption of Universal Scene Description (Open USD).
By leveraging USD, the process of moving assets between their internal tools and Unreal Engine was faster and more consistent.
“Now, if modeling can publish a thing into our traditional pipeline, we can very easily and reliably take that information, bring it into Unreal via USD, and get it back out,” says Baldwin.
For Sony Pictures Imageworks, working this way has had a dramatic impact on the iterative back-and-forth between the creative tools its artists rely on.
“Our initial export time was six to eight hours per sequence,” says Jonghwan Hwang, Real-Time Pipeline Supervisor at Sony Pictures Imageworks. “But accessing the source code is a big deal—we were able to reduce this down to 30 minutes, and now we’re exporting sequences in five minutes.”
By leveraging USD, the process of moving assets between their internal tools and Unreal Engine was faster and more consistent.
“Now, if modeling can publish a thing into our traditional pipeline, we can very easily and reliably take that information, bring it into Unreal via USD, and get it back out,” says Baldwin.
For Sony Pictures Imageworks, working this way has had a dramatic impact on the iterative back-and-forth between the creative tools its artists rely on.
“Our initial export time was six to eight hours per sequence,” says Jonghwan Hwang, Real-Time Pipeline Supervisor at Sony Pictures Imageworks. “But accessing the source code is a big deal—we were able to reduce this down to 30 minutes, and now we’re exporting sequences in five minutes.”
Scaling characters, crowds, and concert lighting
The team used Unreal Engine’s Control Rig to animate dozens of characters directly in the engine.
“We chose to create Control Rigs inside Unreal because that runs really fast, so we can have multiple characters—up to 20 or 30 if we want, in one scene,” says Lillia Lai, Rigging Development Lead at Sony Pictures Imageworks.
Courtesy of Sony Pictures Imageworks
On KPop Demon Hunters, the three main characters have a custom outfit for each sequence.
Sony Pictures Imageworks leveraged the Blueprint visual scripting system to build a character system that would enable them to swap out outfits and accessories instantly.
This system came into its own when it came to building out large crowds filled with a random assortment of characters.
“We just needed to create one body type and a bunch of hairstyles,” says Lai. “Then we could swap out the hairstyles and clothing in any combination we want, and pair that up with Unreal’s Foliage Mode to quickly populate a whole stadium crowd.”
As its name suggests, Foliage Mode was originally designed to make it easy to propagate plants and trees in Unreal Engine scenes. By applying them to a stadium crowd context, the team had discovered a novel way to repurpose these tools.
Sony Pictures Imageworks leveraged the Blueprint visual scripting system to build a character system that would enable them to swap out outfits and accessories instantly.
This system came into its own when it came to building out large crowds filled with a random assortment of characters.
“We just needed to create one body type and a bunch of hairstyles,” says Lai. “Then we could swap out the hairstyles and clothing in any combination we want, and pair that up with Unreal’s Foliage Mode to quickly populate a whole stadium crowd.”
As its name suggests, Foliage Mode was originally designed to make it easy to propagate plants and trees in Unreal Engine scenes. By applying them to a stadium crowd context, the team had discovered a novel way to repurpose these tools.
Courtesy of Sony Pictures Imageworks
In addition to populating the stadium scenes with a huge, diverse audience, Unreal Engine enabled the team to explore the effect of full concert lighting on the environment—right from the previsualization stage.
“The only way we could really visualize that was using Unreal Engine,” says Holmes.
The previs artists set up beautiful, jaw-dropping scenes at the beginning of the pipeline rather than the end, giving the creative teams at Sony Pictures Animation and Imageworks more visual options than ever before.
Instead of imagining how a concert might feel, the artists were able to respond to the energy and scale of the performance in real time—adjusting choreography, staging, and lighting to heighten the emotional impact of each song. With this technology, the team to crafted an environment that felt larger-than-life and authentically cinematic from the outset.
“I’ve never experienced that before,” says Baldwin.
Having animated hundreds of lights in this concert scene, Imageworks then created a plugin to export those via USD into Foundry’s Katana and create a close one-to-one match between the Unreal Engine and Katana lights.
“We actually developed a way we could export F curves to preserve the Unreal animation in Katana without baking at a key per frame, which would be thousands of frames and lots of extra data we didn’t need,” says Holmes.
Preserving the original lighting curves helped maintain the rhythm and energy of the concert from previs through final lighting, allowing artists to keep iterating without rebuilding complex animations.
Through these lighting experiments on KPop Demon Hunters, Imageworks could explore and push the boundaries between realtime and traditional lighting workflows.
“The only way we could really visualize that was using Unreal Engine,” says Holmes.
The previs artists set up beautiful, jaw-dropping scenes at the beginning of the pipeline rather than the end, giving the creative teams at Sony Pictures Animation and Imageworks more visual options than ever before.
Instead of imagining how a concert might feel, the artists were able to respond to the energy and scale of the performance in real time—adjusting choreography, staging, and lighting to heighten the emotional impact of each song. With this technology, the team to crafted an environment that felt larger-than-life and authentically cinematic from the outset.
“I’ve never experienced that before,” says Baldwin.
Having animated hundreds of lights in this concert scene, Imageworks then created a plugin to export those via USD into Foundry’s Katana and create a close one-to-one match between the Unreal Engine and Katana lights.
“We actually developed a way we could export F curves to preserve the Unreal animation in Katana without baking at a key per frame, which would be thousands of frames and lots of extra data we didn’t need,” says Holmes.
Preserving the original lighting curves helped maintain the rhythm and energy of the concert from previs through final lighting, allowing artists to keep iterating without rebuilding complex animations.
Through these lighting experiments on KPop Demon Hunters, Imageworks could explore and push the boundaries between realtime and traditional lighting workflows.
Courtesy of Sony Pictures Imageworks
Building a next-gen animation pipeline
KPop Demon Hunters exemplifies how powerful, cutting-edge technologies are revolutionizing the way animation is made.
The project saw Sony Pictures Imageworks revamp its entire CG layout pipeline to modernize various areas, combining a formidable blend of real-time technology and USD frameworks and connecting its departments in ways it couldn’t before.
“We’re seeing that the foundation we laid on this film is enabling current and future projects to be easily 20 to 25% faster and more efficient in the layout and previs process,” says Holmes.
Courtesy of Sony Pictures Imageworks
“We knew what Unreal Engine could do and we knew what we could do, and so we just did it. And we’ve developed an incredibly solid pipeline at this point,” adds Baldwin.
By streamlining the way scenes were developed and reshaping the pipeline, the Sony Pictures Imageworks team was able to focus more fully on performance, scale, and visual energy—supporting the dynamic storytelling at the heart of KPop Demon Hunters.
KPop Demon Hunters is streaming now, only on Netflix.
By streamlining the way scenes were developed and reshaping the pipeline, the Sony Pictures Imageworks team was able to focus more fully on performance, scale, and visual energy—supporting the dynamic storytelling at the heart of KPop Demon Hunters.
KPop Demon Hunters is streaming now, only on Netflix.