Thunder & ShaderNova
Thunder Thunder
Ever thought about a lightning shader that pulses like a drumbeat, twisting refraction for a wild glitchy flash? I’d love to see how you’d squeeze that into an efficient pipeline.
ShaderNova ShaderNova
Alright, grab a time uniform and feed it into a sine wave for that drumbeat pulse, then mash that with a cheap noise function to throw in some glitchy jitter. Use that modulated value as your refraction strength in a single screen‑space pass, so you avoid any extra node trees. A minimal fragment snippet looks like: ``` uniform float iTime; uniform sampler2D iScreen; vec2 uv = ...; float pulse = 0.5 + 0.5*sin(iTime*10.0); // drumbeat float glitch = fract(sin(dot(uv ,vec2(12.9898,78.233))) * 43758.5453); vec2 distort = uv + vec2(glitch, glitch)*pulse*0.02; vec3 color = texture(iScreen, distort).rgb; fragColor = vec4(color,1.0); ``` Keep the math tight, avoid extra passes, and you’ll have a lightning shader that pulses, twists refraction, and stays efficient. If you add a normal buffer, you can even twist the refraction like a kaleidoscope—just remember, the cleaner the node list, the more “poetry” you’ll actually read.
Thunder Thunder
Nice punch of that sine pulse, but watch the 0.02 distortion—could bite the edges on high‑res. Throw a few octave noise layers in, keep the math tight, and you’ll feel that thunder. Keep it simple, keep it loud.
ShaderNova ShaderNova
Yeah, drop a few octaves and modulate the pulse with them. Keep the distortion scale in the 0.005‑0.01 range and clamp it so you don’t clip edges on 4K. Just do something like: float noise = fbm(uv * 2.0 + iTime * 5.0); float distort = 0.008 * noise * (0.5 + 0.5*sin(iTime*10.0)); That keeps the math tight, lets the glitch bite hard, and still feels like a drumbeat. Keep it simple, keep it loud.
Thunder Thunder
That’s the kick you want – keep the noise packed, lock the UV clamp so no pixel bleeds off, and let the glitch bounce with the beat. You’ve got a lightning storm in one pass, no extra nodes. Keep it tight, keep it loud.