Plasma Ball

Hey, does any one have any ideas on how to make a realistic plasma ball effect? You know the globe that has all the sparks in it and when you touch it they go to your hand. I want to do a similar effect to this for a video.

you could animate paths from a central point out to edge of a sphere. Track a mesh to the paths ie. dupliverting them along the path. Add a wave modifier to the paths for wiggle and composite with a glare node.

I rendered out a 600 frame PNG sequence with an alpha channel. It is of lightning moving from a center point out to the edge. You may be able to use that as texure inside your ball. Remember to activate the “PreMul” button if you use this texture map.

http://www.sharecg.com/v/33649/Texture/Lightning-In-Circle-From-Center

Perhaps someone else will chime in with the plasma side of it.

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A quick video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKMgRQKqDgA

And a still from it:

There is certainly lightning in there but also fat fingers of plasma that snake around the surface with a halo around the contact point of a curlien(?) effect too.

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Thanks for the ideas. I was thinking of using paths too. Thank for the animation Atom, This will help.

What about a particle field of really thin hair/grass, just a few strands then add movement with wind etc.