How to create a laser wall effect in Unity?

TheGabmeister

I'm trying to create a "laser wall" in Unity that's similar to the reference image below. I'm thinking about modeling a plane that has the desired shape, creating an emissive texture for the laser effect, putting a material with Particles / Additive Shader, then using a script to animate the intensity and noise to make it look a little bit dynamic.

I was wondering if it's possible to create a custom shader that automates the process of making a more complex shaped plane look like a laser barrier. The shader would detect the edges of the plane, then apply a brightly colored border on those edges while the middle portion of the plane will look like a tinted translucent wall. This way, it would be very easy to just model the shape then slap a material without creating a different emissive texture for each different shape.

RyanB

You can create an outline pass in the shader though this can look weird at certain angles. 

Like this:
Pass {
            Name "Outline"
            Tags {
            }
            Cull Front
            ...

You can also modify something like this:
https://willweissman.wordpress.com/tutorials/shaders/unity-shaderlab-object-outlines/

TheGabmeister

Thanks for the link. I'll see if I can make something work with it.

YannickStoot

A lighting based approach would work too but can be a little bit heavier for the graphics card. You can do this by using a self-illuminating material on the 'rim' and a transparent material for the 'field'. Then put a glow effect on the camera.