There’s many posts about it, but they are back from 2007, when Unity 1.6 was “the never version”, now we have Unity3D 4.6, so there has to be a way. I ought myself Unity Pro. I have so called “Image Effects” on Unity, one of the being glow. I can apply this on camera only (only then it has any effect), but it glows everything, what I need is only certain items to be glowed. Idea?
Glow may not be the one you are looking for. Take a look at these instead:
http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/script-Bloom.html
http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/script-FastBloom.html
http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/script-BloomAndLensFlares.html
Each of these has performance and flexibility differences so you can choose what is correct for your style.
If you haven’t already, it may be a good idea to enable HDR on your camera. You will probably get better results with HDR. Let me explain.
HDR allows pixels to be brighter than the non-HDR maximum. This can happen two ways: reflections and emissions. Objects in bright lights (or with high specularity materials) will reflect light and cause pixels to become bright and the image effect will make the area glow. If you want to make things glow of their own light then the material of the object needs to output on the emissive channels.
Here is an example (maybe not the best but it is what I have):
The white parts are actually dark grey with high specularity and are reflecting the white directional light in my scene. The thrusters are emitting their own light because their material has color on the emissive channel.
See these two shaders for some more info:
Fast-Bloom, thing worked really well, by threshold I can activate only parts I need. But still, I need similar effect on Cube_1 and Cube_2, but applying same effect on one camera would make no sense. I read all 5 links, it still doesn’t change a lot. Your mini-tutorial explains on how to change colors to your will, by enabling and modifying HDR and turning color to darker to get wanted effect, but I don’t want to apply “special” effect on an object, I want totally avoid BloomAndLensFlares from affecting an item, and “Threshold” only is not an option. Because I want to affect it, but putting lower threshold makes Cube_1 shine like holy crap, which I want to avoid.
@ 
If you only need it for a few objects, I think you’re better off with using Halos: Unity - Manual: Halo component
You get more control out of it and they should be significantly cheaper than a full screen effect.
If you want to make individual objects glow like they are giving off light then a self-illuminated shader is what you want. That will provide the correct values to be processed by the bloom image effect. A screenshot of what you have and a description of what you want may be helpful.
Ah, yea, Halo, but it works only as circle, my “edges” are not circular or spherical, they’re 3D rectangles (stretched cubes).
Strange question how do I find self-illuminated shader, how do I even notice the difference, is it in Unity3D or I have to obtain it by Asset Store? I can’t find it in Unity.
But here, everything is glowing, what I need is, just some items to glow, not all of them, just particular ones. I’m technically trying to remake this game (with “Developmental Version” of course), to learn more about how Unity3D works with C#. I know C#, but I don’t know about Unity3D.
The self-illuminated shaders are included with Unity by default. To use it, select a material that you want to make glow and change the shader to one of the self-illuminated ones. Just like the right side of the screenshot on this page: Unity - Manual: Self-Illuminated Diffuse
From your screenshot it looks like this shader is already in use on some of the glowing parts unless you tweaked the bloom effect so that lots of objects glow.
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Yea, exactly that! Thank you!
Edit after a week - The photo you provided in your link, is exactly what I want to achieve, but mine doesn’t shine. (it rhymes )
Ugh, it didn’t quite work. Or I’m too stupid, but, I applied this effect on material, I’ve given material texture with bright place, and it doesn’t shine.
I am also looking for nice 2D effects like glow (but also other effects) in 2D
I took a look at particle systems and I could make a fire effect with it, however particle systems are not the best thing for walls. Can someone point me to something how to make such nice effects?
Please note that I don’t have unity pro.
I might be reading this wrong, but would point lights be your answer?
Well I am looking for more than just lights: effects like glow etc…
#bump
I have just made a research on this.
I am just deeply dissatisfied with what can be achieved with camera postprocessing.
I have tried some solution and all of them led to increase They just led to increase in batches by some 50% and caused flickering when moving camera from a distance towards the object.
The best effect I got with placing additional mesh with particle/additive shader on it.
No flickering and no performance cost.
