Creating A Lightning Bolt Spell

SuperKash

Hello, my name is Kash and I'm in the midst of developing a game for a start up company and have run into the small problem of working alone LOL I'm trying to create a lightning storm spell that fires a bolt of lightning at a specific time blah blah programming that stuff is the easy part (Im the programmer / designer / 3D modeller atm) LOLOL I'm just wondering if creating a mesh that animates and with a special material placed on it would work better than using a few Line Renderer's (In Unity3D) to make the proper effects... Not looking for some crazy spider branching lightning bolt but maybe just a single or sibling bolts... artistic wise which might look better or what kind of approaches have you seen/used before? If anybody has any info or a point in a strong direction, it'd be grand of yee!

Much love && Namaste!

-Kash

CowKing

You could do this a whole bunch of ways honestly.

Since you said that branching isn't a problem:

• You could use a plane with multiple perpendicular edges, create a gradient map that's not very complex, stretch the plane from point A to B, and in the shader make it so that the edges "jiggle"

• Make a 3D mesh that's boned, stretch it, and rotate each bone based on a few constraints in a script (this could also be done with a billboard I guess)
• This is probably the slowest (workflow) option, but you could do the single plane option, but use cycled or random textures instead (lightning is very fast, so no one will notice much stretching unless there game is running at <10 FPS)

Vailias

cheapest bolt = billboard with animated transparency
Nearly as cheap = mesh with animated transparency

Line renderers will probably work just fine and may give you more control and randomization.