Triple Feature: Charged Shots and Fickle Billboarding

You don't always solve a problem the way you'd thought you would.

Here we have another one of the bullets the player can fire. The projectile, in its finished form, consists of three…well, four, technically, but you can see the trail effect here…elements.

One is the actual bullet.

Two is the glowy aura thing surrounding the bullet.

Three is another glowy thing (you can see this behind the bullet on the right).

What I wanted was…wait a second, I need to explain what billboarding is first.

Billboarding is an effect that makes an object always face the camera, no matter what angle you're looking at it from. It's commonly used for particles and glowing objects. You can see it being used in the image on the right.

What I want for this charged shot is for the glow surrounding the projectile to be billboarded, but only around its z-axis, so it surrounds the shot at all times. The other glowy object will be fully billboarded, and surrounds the projectile when looking at it from the front or the back.

I tried modifying the billboarding script to get the effect I want, but to no avail. However, I did come up with a different solution.

Instead of making the first glow a billboarded plane, I realized I could use the line renderer effect – this creates a plane that follows a line, and rotates around the line so it faces the camera. Exactly what I was looking for.

Here's the final product.

See you next update.