Lightning and Electricity

Generating realistic or highly stylized lightning and electrical arcs is a common requirement in VFX and motion graphics. While you could attempt to draw this frame-by-frame, Oraphim includes a dedicated procedural Lightning node.

Generating Lightning

1. In the Compositor Workspace, press Shift + Spacebar.
2. Search for and add a Lightning node.
3. Pipe the output of the Lightning node into a Merge node. (Note: The Lightning node does not require a background input; it generates the electrical arc procedurally on a transparent background).

Controlling the Arc

When you select the Lightning node, you will see two crosshairs in the viewer.

• The first crosshair is the Start Point.
• The second crosshair is the End Point.

You can click and drag these crosshairs manually, or you can track them to moving objects in your scene (e.g., attach the Start Point to a character's hand, and the End Point to an enemy).

Customizing the Electricity

The Inspector for the Lightning node offers immense control over the fractal math generating the arc:

• Branches: Increases the number of forks splitting off from the main bolt.
• Jaggedness: Controls the chaotic zigzag of the bolt. A low value looks like a smooth plasma beam; a high value looks like chaotic static electricity.
• Thickness: Controls the core width of the beam.
• Core Color & Glow Color: By default, lightning is white with a blue glow. You can change this to red/orange for "Sith" lightning, or green for magic spells.

Animation (Phase)

By default, the lightning bolt is static. To make it constantly writhe and strike like living electricity, you must animate its phase.

1. In the Inspector, locate the Phase parameter.
2. You could keyframe this manually from 0 to 100, but there is a better procedural way.
3. Right-click the word "Phase".
4. Select Expression.
5. A small text box will appear. Type time * 0.5 and press Enter.

This tells the engine to constantly increase the phase value automatically based on the current frame number, resulting in infinite, chaotic animation without requiring a single keyframe.

Use Lightning in a production project

1. Open Composition workspace and select the intended text, shape, layer, animation property, or procedural system.
2. Establish the correct input state first—timing, media link, layer/node enable state, project settings, or source selection as relevant.
3. Apply or adjust Lightning with one clear goal. Change the smallest set of controls needed to reach that goal so the result remains understandable and reversible.
4. Review the complete affected range in context. Scrub difficult frames and also play at normal speed when motion or audio is involved.
5. Save a named milestone before moving into another major operation, especially after graph changes, tracking, AI processing, relinking, simulation, or delivery setup.

Practical guidance

Lightning reads best when path, branching, glow, timing, and scene illumination support one another. Animate the strike duration and inspect bright values for clipping.

A useful test is a short 5–10 second section containing both an easy case and a difficult case for this feature. Tune against the difficult moment without breaking the easy one. If two approaches are plausible, duplicate/version the project state and compare them rather than stacking both together blindly.

Verify the result

• Preview the full animation and compare the rendered output with the interactive viewer.
• Toggle/bypass the operation where possible and make sure the change you intended is actually responsible for the result.
• Check selection, visibility/mute/solo state, node connections, track locks, range, and source identity when the result appears missing.
• Save and reopen before treating a complex setup as reusable.
• If this feature changes final pixels or audio, render a short review and inspect the file outside Oraphim.

Related guides

• Animation and Keyframes
• Dissolve
• Fire
• Motion Graphics Overview