Lightning FX - Procedural Lightning for Godot 4 (2D and 3D)

Procedural lightning for Godot 4, in 2D and 3D. Jagged, branching bolts with a white-hot core and a coloured glow, that crackle, strike again and fade, and light up your scene as they land. One node, one line:

$Lightning2D.strike(staff.global_position, enemy.global_position)

Pure GDScript and shaders: no textures, no particles to tune, no plugin to enable.

Everything a game needs from lightning

• Strikes: a bolt between any two points, for spells, storms, traps and turrets.
• Chain lightning: chain([staff, goblin, orc, troll]) jumps through every target at once.
• Continuous arcs: set a source and a target node and a living arc runs between them (tesla coils, tethers, beams, a wizard holding a spell). It follows the nodes as they move.
• A flash of light with each strike, near where it hits: a PointLight2D in 2D, an OmniLight3D in 3D, so the ground and the characters light up.
• Real lightning behaviour: branches that fork again, restrikes (the bolt flashes a few times before it fades), and a new shape many times per second for the crackle.
• A struck signal for your sounds, damage and hit flashes.

Five looks, and every setting yours

Storm (blue), Arcane (violet), Inferno (orange), Toxic (green) and Holy (gold) in one click, or your own colours. Then tune the width, how jagged the bolt is, the detail, how many branches and how long, the flicker, how long a strike lasts and fades, the restrikes, the core, the glow and the soft halo around it. Everything is in the inspector and works at runtime.

Made for real games

• 2D and 3D with the same API: Lightning2D and Lightning3D. In 3D the ribbons always face the camera, and a glow environment makes them bloom.
• One node can draw every bolt of your game: bolts are drawn in world space, wherever the node sits.
• Fast: the shapes are built only when they change, and a frame just sets their brightness. 10 continuous arcs and 12 chain bolts on screen at once cost about 1.5 ms per frame in 2D.
• Clean, commented code, split into small files: the shape, the looks, the 2D node, the 3D node and one shared shader.

What is inside

• The addons/almios_lightning_fx folder: the Lightning2D and Lightning3D nodes, the shape builder, the five looks and the shaders
• A 2D demo: a mage casting chain lightning through three golems, crystals holding an arc, and a storm
• A 3D demo: a wizard tower, training dummies, two tesla coils and a storm lighting the field
• README with every setting, tips for common uses and how it works

Compatibility

Godot 4.3 and later (tested on 4.3 and 4.7). Forward+, Mobile and Compatibility renderers.

License

Use in unlimited personal and commercial projects. Please do not resell or redistribute the pack itself.

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