Hello,
I am currently trying to simulate the light trails that come out of projectors during night time.
The problem is the client is trying to reach the broadest audience possible so that means low end machines so no complex shaders. Any suggestions on how to approach that?
Examples for the light effect:
For mobile devices I would suggest the following:
Create an image in Photoshop (or whatever program you use), that looks like this effect (White rays on a transparent background).
In your 3D modeling software create a cone (with no top nor bottom) with a start radius of the lamp, which emits the light, and an end radius of … (that’s something you need to test). Then you map the image onto this cone. In Unity you change the shader of the material to “Particles/Additive (Soft)” (maybe you have to test others).
Depending on the image, you can get really nice effects. If you place a light in front of the lamp or use a self-illumination material on the lamp the result should get even better. And it’s a really easy and low cost approach compared to a complex shader.
That’s one approach. Maybe there are still better approaches out there…
You could also search UnityAnswers for “Volumetric Light”.
Edit: Attached screenshot and texture of a short test I made.
You could create a quad and a texture for the effect and then create multiples.
For the top one you could use a cylinder.
Things get more complicated depending on how you want to animate them.
How can i use quad for the effect? I don’t understand your answer.
I am having trouble emulating you used the same results. my light cone appears comepletely solid event though i use the same texture as you. From the import view it seems that the edge is supposed to be transparent.
– Yarden-Raveh1. Did you set the material shader to particles/additive (soft)? 2. Or maybe you forgot to delete the unneeded polygons of the cone? (Front and back) If it's just a seam that shows up try to scale the texture to X: 0.98 Y: 0.98 because some maps create a 1 pixel seam even though it should be completly transparent.
– uexilonNevermind. The texture just didn't fit the UVs. Thanks Anyway!!
– Yarden-Raveh