How do I create a glowing light around an object?

Questions & Answers
1

I’m currently learning the basics of Unity and have come across a problem I’m unsure how to solve.

I’m trying to create a tron-style object that has a tube-style light around it, but I’m unsure how to make it glow. I can use a self-illuminating shader which makes the object itself glow which is great, but it doesn’t give off any light. If I add a light to the object it just adds a spherical point light to the center of the object. Is there a way to add light that actually follows the shape of a mesh?

Here are a few images/videos of the kind of thing I’m hoping to achieve:

On this video, I understand the lights from the cubes, but the longer shapes have a glow that seems to follow the whole shape and not just emit from the center.

Many of the lights on this video appear to glow?

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Thanks!

2

Unity Pro includes a [1] postprocessing effect, and there are [several][2] [alternative][3] [variations][4] on the asset store, although these generally also require Pro because to replicate the effect of the glow “bleeding” onto surrounding objects, you need to process the entire image as a rendertexture rather than just a per-object material.
[1]: http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Components/script-GlowEffect.html
[2]: Glow 11 | Fullscreen & Camera Effects | Unity Asset Store
[3]: Glow - Per Object | VFX Shaders | Unity Asset Store
[4]: Indie Glow | Fullscreen & Camera Effects | Unity Asset Store