Light beams are only visible if part of the light is scattered by objects: tiny particles like dust, water droplets (mist, fog, rain)… In games this implementation used for tense or dusty environment. Here an example from Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2010;
Click to image for bigger size
I’m going to show to you how can create light beams for your game. You can improve your game graphics with simple 2d sprite and a script.
First of all, you need some ptoho editing tool. I’ll use photoshop for this tutorial.
Beam Texture Creation
1.First, create a empty Photoshop document with transparent background sized 400×500. Then paint current layer with some dark color. I used dark gray.
2.Then create three guides for your lightbeam start point. I’ll use this for spot light so i make start point very narrow.
3.And create a triangle with lasso tool. This will be our beam.
4.Selected gradient tool and select “Foreground to Transparent” preset from presets window.
5.Be sure your foreground color is white. Draw graident from top to bottom of selection.
6.And now drop opacity value from layer window to 15
7.Remove the black layer and save as transparent png to unity folder.
And we’ve a beam texture. Now its time to create asset and materials.
