Line Effect Materials

Line effects are animated materials for lines: the wireframe of a shape, its edges, its outline or its contour slices. Switch an object to a line display (Edges, Profile, Wireframe or Contours) and give it a line effect, and every line becomes a strip of moving light: electric arcs, a snaking plasma beam, data packets racing along a wire, a burning solar filament, a dark rift in space.

How it works

In a line display, each line segment of the shape is drawn as a thin ribbon. A line effect paints that ribbon: it knows how far along the segment each point is and how far from its center line, so it can draw a beam that wanders across the ribbon, a bright head with a fading tail that travels from one end to the other, or sparks thrown off to the side. The ribbon around the drawn light is transparent, so only the effect shows. Line weight, set with the display mode, decides how wide each ribbon is and therefore how much room the effect has; heavier lines show more of the detail.

The variants

Five effects are drawn per segment in this way, each with its own colors and settings:

• Tesla: three jagged electric arcs with forks and a white-hot core.
• Serpent: an undulating, color-shifting plasma beam with glinting highlights.
• Ghost: green signal packets with fading trails and glitch flicker, like an old oscilloscope.
• Solar: a turbulent white-hot filament with flares and small jets.
• Void Rift: a dark tear with a bright edge, violet shimmer and drifting sparks.

Five more share a simpler engine with three main knobs (Speed, Intensity and Density) and built-in colors: Plasma cycling through saturated hues, Electric in flickering blue-white, Rainbow in full-spectrum bands, Lava in molten red and orange with yellow bubbles, and Frost in icy blue-white with sparkles.

How to choose

• Sci-fi tech and energy: Tesla or Electric for raw electricity, Plasma or Serpent for flowing energy.
• Data and signal themes: Ghost, which reads as information moving along wires.
• Space and cosmic: Solar for hot filaments, Void Rift for something darker and stranger.
• Elemental: Lava for fire, Frost for ice.
• Festive or holographic: Rainbow.

Start with the shape. A low-detail shape in Edges mode gives a few bold lines, ideal for logos and simple geometric forms; Wireframe on a detailed model gives a dense web that turns any object into a glowing hologram. Contours slice the shape into rings, which suits the flowing effects. Adding bloom in post-processing makes every one of these glow into the space around the lines.