How to create lightning

Questions & Answers
1

Hi guys,

Well I want to create gun which shoots by lightning. Now I am trying to understand the approach. Here are some conditions: Length of lightning could be different, a form could be different.
So form could be several textures with alpha channel. But how to implement a different length?
Firstly I thought to use single mesh - “plane”, and stretch it, but it is a bad idea, because the texture will be corrupted.
Then I thought to use multiple meshes - “plane” with textures, build a curve from Vector3 points, and place meshes on them, but it takes a lot time to develop code for me now.
So what you think about it? Is there some other approaches?

2

I would use a procedural generation of the lightning. As luck would have it, Unity provides that for free at Procedural Examples | Tutorial Projects | Unity Asset Store. If memory serves there was a procedural lightning generator there, or at least something similar which you could maybe modify.