Beam Effect
A beam effect renders a polyboarded quad around a central axis. It can be created in the World Editor by using the Beam Effect tool in the Effects Page. A beam effect is similar to a quad effect, with the difference being that the beam rotates about its z axis where the quad rotates about its origin position.
Beam Effect Settings
A beam effect can be configured under the Beam tab in the Node Info window. The specific settings are described in the following table.
|
Setting |
Description |
|
Beam Settings |
|
|
Beam color |
The color of the beam effect. |
|
Texture map name |
The name of the texture map applied to the beam. This texture map is multiplied by the beam color. The alpha channel of the texture map should be zero at the left and right edges to avoid a visible boundary. |
|
Texture coordinate scale |
Specifies the number of times that the texture map is repeated in the vertical direction over the length of the beam effect. |
|
Render with soft depth |
Specifies that the beam effect should account for the depth of geometry in the scene and fade out as it gets close to opaque surfaces. This eliminates hard edges due to Z buffering. |
|
Soft depth scale |
If soft depth rendering is enabled, this specifies the amount by which the difference in depth between the beam effect and the background geometry is scaled. Lower values correspond to a softer fade out. |