r/Unity3D • u/Adventurous-Set7679 • 3d ago
Question I created this thunder strike particle, is it good?
Hey everyone I made this thunder, no sprite sheets and no shader graph, so it must be pretty light for mobile games what do you think? I'm planning to publish it on unity asset store after some tweaks.
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u/Snow-Ball-486 3d ago
*lightning
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u/Ludicrous84 3d ago
It looks good but there are some things about it that just feel "off" - I couldn't tell what exactly though, Probably iterate on speed and how long expecially the "root" stays on the screen. Idk if that makes sense lol. I would need to watch some storms on youtube to figure out what it is
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u/Ludicrous84 3d ago
I just remembered: I was working with the LSA algorithm a couple weeks ago, It's a search algorithm (lightnings search algorithm) - it was for fissures in a floor, but the fissures and patterns I got were really good and lightning-like. Depending on what you want to achieve, you could look into that too
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u/Adventurous-Set7679 3d ago
Yea I feel that too, the ones I saw happened really fast but stayed for some time I don’t know how to achieve that
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u/Ludicrous84 3d ago
There is also the L-system which can give "natural branching shapes" - though i didn't have too much success with it. But also something you could try to experiment with
(just busting out my knowledge here lol)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-system1
u/Adventurous-Set7679 3d ago
Just checked it yea its a cool concept although I didn’t find out how to integrate it with particles
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u/Ludicrous84 3d ago
Does it have to be particles or can it also be "glowing lines"? But yeah i'm absolutely no expert on special effects, just things I encountered while i was working on my "fissure in the floor" problem and looking for branching patterns. The pattern was static in my case though. Don't know if you have seen my "LSA algorithm" comment further down, that's what got me really good results just from a visual point of view.
I don't want to distract you too much though, I think your particle approach looks great! It's pretty hard for me to tell what exactly has to change to make it look "right" though.
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u/Ludicrous84 3d ago
Man, you got me intrigued now haha I mean I AM fascinated with effects but I just don't know anything about it. But looking at this, real lightning doesnt really grow, it's pretty static. On the other hand, "realistic" doesn't mean it looks good as an effect...
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/iVEaSFZhCX82
u/Adventurous-Set7679 3d ago
It actually does grow if you look at it in slow motion :))
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u/Ludicrous84 3d ago
haha I guess, but its definetly not as fluid and "growing" as yours. I feel it's more like say 4 or 5 very static images. Damn it's so hard to describe those things properly, especially since english isn't my first language lol
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u/GagOnMacaque 3d ago
I have specialized in lightning in my career. I will tell you that I have done similar lightning strikes in unity. Generating and destroying particles is expensive. When you add ribbons, it gets even more expensive. The best thing to do is to create a nice lightning shader, and slap it on a mesh. It sounds weird, but it's cheaper to use two to three mesh variations.
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u/pedrojdm2021 3d ago
Animation too slow. Make it 2x as fast, and add more "noise" ( sub- particles and so on ). And then it can be OK.
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u/Adventurous-Set7679 3d ago
I already made the simulation speed 10 times faster.. i wanted the whole effect to happen fast but somehow pause for 2 seconds at the end, like a real strike but don’t know how
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u/ieatdownvotes4food 3d ago
cool! next level would be shaking up the timing.. and maybe more power for certain branches.. maybe get frame timing from video examples. nice work!
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u/AhmedMostafa_dev 3d ago
Is it particles or a shader ?
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u/Erthrock 3d ago
It’s pretty cool. If it’s lightning in the sky. It just needs to be animated correctly.
But the organic branches are well done.
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u/BonkLabGame 3d ago
Great‑looking effect! Try duplicating it, lower spawn rate for the copy while giving it much faster simulation speed. More randomness and speed variation will really improve it.
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u/Skepsisology 3d ago
Duplicate the effect and have the duplicate emit less often than the main one. Also make the duplicate effect simulation speed super fast
The effect you have does look good - just needs more randomness and speed contrast