linerenderer and glow

Unity Engine
1

Hi Folks,

Is there a way to get an alpha on the lines which are drawn by the linerenderer so that you can make them glow?

I tried playing with the opacity settings on both the linerenderer startColor and endColor, and on the material (I tried all the particle shader versions). None of these create an alpha so that when you turn on glow, they don’t glow.

Suggestions?

Cheers,
Paul

1 Like
2

This page from the docs should clear some stuff up. Especially this line:

  • Particle shaders do not modify alpha channel, except for Particles/Multiply which darkens anything that is in alpha.

I’m sure there’s a way to make a particle shader glow (seems like an important feature :wink: ) The LineRenderer works best with particle shaders, but have you tried another type? Maybe self-illum/alpha would look right and provide the glow pipeline you need. I’m just guessing here, Aras will hopefully set us both straight when he sees this :wink: .

1 Like
3

Oops… missed that in the documentation. Thanks! I tried a few other shaders, one that did create an alpha was the simple diffuse shader. The problem with that one is that it doesn’t render the color of the line. So you have a black line with a glow… Not quite the effect I was looking for :smile:

I did a search on the forum and found Joachim telling someone else that in order to get the color you need to use a particle shader… maybe I’ll look at the source and see if I can create my own that has the best of both worlds.

Cheers,
Paul

4

The reason why alpha shaders don’t glow by default: because alpha is already controlling the transparency, and quite often you don’t want that to control glow as well.

Now, if you do want that, then it’s just modifying the shader a bit. For a start, take some of the particle shaders from builtin ones and remove ‘ColorMask RGB’ line. If you want something more complex, then do it in another pass or so.

5

Thanks Aras! I’ll give that a try.

Cheers,
Paul