Volumetric tests or Fun with the math node.

Decided to give myself a little math problem. Can I create a pulsing directed energy beam using just a cylinder and nodes?

Render viewport


Actual model


So, only 34 faces, just a standard cylinder stretched out.

This is based on some math done on a sine wave (obviously), for those interested:


And for the node groups, to make life easier, I converted a sine wave to a 0-1 wave and gave myself a horizontal shift and period control.


Then added an inner diameter and scaled the function accordingly to stay within the 0-1 range of the generated model coordinates


The Voronoi texture was limited to the volume surface using an “equal to” group to test whether the pixel in question was on (or close enough to, I mean these are all floats) the surface of the generated volume


Anyway, no new coding or anything, was just a fun little experiment that I thought might be useful to someone.

and some separated volumes within the same shader.


I like these experiments , but it takes long time to render , volumetrics is very attractive in blender , I west very long time in such things as I was trying to make realistic clouds

This looks really cool! I’ll try doing a laser weapon with this

Super cool Bastiat, nice experiment…!