How to Create a Lightning Storm

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Add energy and excitement to your scene with natures most dangerous force: Lightning!

Length:
30 minutes
Software:
Blender 2.5 Alpha
Difficulty:
Intermediate
Rate:
VN:F [1.9.17_1161]
Rating: 4.6/5 (71 votes cast)

During this tutorial you will discover how to:

  • Quickly model a detailed lightning bolt
  • Make an object disintegrate
  • Create light flashes
  • Add glow and glare effects in the compositor

Last week I posted the how to create rain tutorial, and was surprised at the number of comments requesting lightning! I guess they go hand in hand or something?

Anyway, it took me a while to get the technique nailed down, but I think I’ve finally worked out an easy way to create and animate a lightning storm within Blender.

At a Glance

Screenshots from the video:

 

Reference image used: ¡Rayos!

Lightning reference videos:

Do you have any real life lightning stories? A near miss? Post it below! I’d be interested to hear them! :)

Download starter .blend Download finished .blend

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to Create a Lightning Storm, 4.6 out of 5 based on 71 ratings

About Andrew Price

User of Blender for 9+ years. I've written tutorials for 3d World Magazine and spoken at three Blender conferences. My goal is to help artists get employed in the industry by making training accessible and easy to understand. I'm an Aussie and I live in South Korea ;)
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  • fergus

    I’ve come up with a method for making a star wars style lightening shooting using blender. have all the modeled lightening bolts moving around the person getting electrocuted. animate the materials using a noise modifier in the graph editor to make all the bolts flashing randomly. when you render it, hopefully, you will get realistic looking lightening shooting! all thanks to this tutorial!

  • bshep

    Lightning is amazing…

  • Fran Cory

    http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/mothership-cloud-supercell-tornado/65582

    Dear Andrew

    I have been watching and marveling at your Guru videos for over a year.

    I changed continents last year, and let my 3D alone while I settled in
    Texas.

    Like most Texans I have become weather obsessed.

    The weather is so extreme and powerful.

    I have updated my Blender and look forward to trying your tutorials again.

    You do great work and hope you enjoy the tornado on this link.

    Sincerely

    Fran

  • http://LightWizzard.com/ Jeff Flesher

    I noticed that you changed your Lightning from a Curve to a Mesh in your finial also, I know why you did that for the Leaders, since they had a Gradient, but was there a reason to do this for the Lightning, if so, what was it.

    Thanks

  • http://LightWizzar.com/ Jeff Flesher

    I noticed that the RGB Curve in your Finished blend, was not connected, I assume that you missed it, but I have to ask, you know what they say about the word AssUme.

    Great Tutorial and Website, I’m using your Technique, Thanks.

  • https://www.facebook.com/pages/blender-Works/132831550129151 tarik bagriyanik

    here is my simple animation:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWJNTGt0jqI

  • bob

    hey,um….i cant seem to find the tutorial on how to make the clouds….where would i find it?

  • Blacky

    I got 2.58b this time baby. I won’t give up again. hee hee

  • Sagerfrog

    Curves through grease pencil?

    • http://www.strawberrymonkey.weebly.com mango

      that would be cool

  • http://www.thevoidentertainment.webs.com Michael Glen Montague

    As for how lightning disappears, I think it does fade out, but since some parts of a lightning bolt has more energy than other parts of it, it appears as if it breaking up into pieces. (Just my thought on one of the mysteries of lightning)

  • giles

    when i render something like thisi dont get the images in the file ive chosen whats going wrong?

  • Lembidi

    Thank’s Very much men!! comon men just i like see it’s!! wow!! and i creating the Very untsopable character!! thank’s men!! your got a reward!! good job!! so nice you!!

  • Marcel

    This looks great and I wanted to use it in a short film project as an intro. I downloaded the final blend file but I cannot render it properly: the lighting won’t disappear. As soon as it appears it will freeze. I’m using Blender 2.58 Win32. I tried the 2.5 alpha versions with no success, they simply give me a white output. Maybe it’s some render settings that needs to be set, I don’t know. Please help me if you can, it would be a shame if I can’t use this nice thunderstorm.

  • joe

    hi andrew!!, it is great your tutorial, I would like show me, if it is possible obvious, who do you do the animation of the lights?, for example show and hide the rayos, and switch on and switch off the lights in the cloud, because i don’t know do that it. Thank you, and I going to wait for this tutorial.

  • Dave

    I know this is quite late, but I wanted to add a small suggestion for the modelling of the lightning bolt itself.

    If you only broadly model the path of the bolt, you can add some extra randomness by using “subdivide fractal.” In Blender 2.57, this option is enabled after W->Subdivide, on the option panel to the left. The bolt must be a mesh type, however, but it’s easy enough to convert between a mesh and curve type.

    I hope this can help save a little bit of time.

  • Guillermo

    Please put tutoriales in Spanish

  • nemanja

    This tutorial is great, i did everything with lightning correctly and i want to render it with city but i have no idea what you did and how since im noob in blender id be more than thankful if anyone can help me so…there is that :)

  • T4N5K1

    I render it but i want it to be as a usable movie file and i dont want to have to spend 20+ hours waiting for it to render. What should I do?

  • Jahnu Best

    Hey Andrew, I don’t know if you’ll scroll down all the way here. Using your tutorial, I created this video of a lightning storm:

    http://vimeo.com/16751757

    Thanks for the tutorial!

  • Illiah

    Great tutorial!

    I am having a small problem though with the lights in the clouds and was wondering if anyone else had the same problem and managed to fix it? When the lights are at zero energy, the render and animation both show a smallish white dot where the light is. i tried setting the distance at those places to zero as well but it didn’t help. if anyone has any idea why this is happening, please let me know.

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