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Trying to make this effect in eevee:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1629004850

I'm looking to make a glowing trail of light, in eevee, which starts of bright but tapers away into darkness. It needs to be able to be locked to follow the motion of another object.

[solution]:

enter image description here

I have a stream of particles following the eye: newtonian physics, 0 gravity, 0 velocity. They fade from bright to nothing using the process @atomicbezierslinger gave.

While the particles do follow the path as hoped for, they don't 'connect up' yet. The easy fix (in the above image) is just to have a high 'Number' (2500 for each eye in this case).

I had an issue where the particle appeared in 'clumps' every frame. This was because it was parented to an animated object which moved only on every frame. Baking the motion and removing the emitter's parent fixed the problem.

I'll try the process @RichSedman linked later. It may well be a better solution.

Thank you for the advice.

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  • $\begingroup$ Can you place your comment in the orginal question? $\endgroup$ – atomicbezierslinger Nov 30 '20 at 22:41
  • $\begingroup$ Similar to blender.stackexchange.com/a/94976/29586? $\endgroup$ – Rich Sedman Nov 30 '20 at 23:07
  • $\begingroup$ @RichSedman I saw that post, but will that work in eevee? It looks very nice. $\endgroup$ – Smail Nov 30 '20 at 23:30
  • $\begingroup$ @Smail Yes - it’s mostly concerned with the creation of the path and then bevelling it to produce the trails and all of that is not dependent on the render engine so will work fine for Eevee. Only the material nodes at the end might need a bit of tweaking depending on the look you’re going for - but your example in your question could be used for that bit just fine. $\endgroup$ – Rich Sedman Dec 1 '20 at 0:07
  • $\begingroup$ Thank you @RichSedman, I'll give that a try; add it to the OP when I've got it understood. $\endgroup$ – Smail Dec 1 '20 at 3:27
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Size and other attributes can be controlled by percent of life expired with a texture associated with the particle system. Blend texture horizontal and color ramp. Strand Particle Coordinates. Below size is decreased as particles age.

Please click on images to see them larger.

enter image description here

Materials can use [particle info node] to calculate percent of life expired.

enter image description here

Please experiment and improve the information provided. You can do a better job.

There is also Bloom. Highlight Blurring. Cycles may be preferable for transparency. There are may videos on the site with the names that rhymes with noonoob and here at BSE. The Blender compositor can select the highlight and blur.

value = [Current age] / [lifetime] with a math node.

So a material can become transparent or change color for a particular particle over time. I have chosen to change color for a quick answer which you can improve.

This work with practice will take less than 15 minutes for a rough approximation.

The older particles can be more transparent and smaller and less bright in the four combinations.

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    $\begingroup$ Thank you @atomicbezierslinger, I was starting to figure out a couple parts but this helped out a lot for me. Do you know how I might get it as one trail? I haven't found an easy solution in the settings yet. $\endgroup$ – Smail Nov 30 '20 at 23:34
  • $\begingroup$ In the above I have stated the Compositor can blur the highlights $\endgroup$ – atomicbezierslinger Dec 1 '20 at 0:11
  • $\begingroup$ Sorry, I missed it among the rest. Thanks again for the advice, I wasn't aware you could set the color to change with time/age. This'll be useful to look into. $\endgroup$ – Smail Dec 1 '20 at 1:04

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