How to make a light beam in Unity?

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I want to make light beams that shoot up from a point, that can be visible from afar, but I don't know how. I'm sort of new to unity so I don't have that much experience so any help would be appreciated. I want it to be something like this: alt text

Answer 1

Answer by rysan007 · 4 days ago

This can be a simple cylinder with an emission and bloom.

In order to make it shoot up into the sky, you can either scale that cylinder on the Y axis, or if you have shader knowledge, you can make the shader itself make it visible as it "shoots up".

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Idual · 4 days ago 0

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Another couple of options that might work depending on the situation are: LineRenderer with a very wide line. A plane or quad rotated to always face the camera. Using a texture could give the illusion of bloom.

The main problem with both of these is that the bottom and top won't look rounded.

Answer 2

Answer by SHARYPOWER · 6 days ago

Hi, I am new as well but I think you have to use Shaders to make it. You could also try Particle System but I think it creates different effect. Google this: unity force field Do something similiar but on the Cilinder not on the Sphere.

Good Luck :-)

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Answer 3

Answer by RomanoMcBride · 4 days ago

If you're looking for a high-performance way to do this on mobile, you can just use a plane with a texture of the beam with a script that rotates (you can use LookAt) towards the camera in combination with a shader with the blend operation set to One One (additive). Then the "light" will simply be added on what's behind which is cheaper than alpha blending and cheaper than bloom (which requires post processing).

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How to make a light beam in Unity?

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