I am looking at a paper that describes how they made electricity and the equtaions seem practical. But I was thinking to make electricity on the fly in the game would be costly. So I figured why not a simple little MD2 which is pre-formulated for an electric arc. THen I thought I could make a tool that could produce this models easily, pick two points, the arcness, life time, and the path it self. Then I thought could anyone else use these models and the entire tool package. Thats where I stopped becuase I don't know, thats why I'm asking in this forum. Lets say I can make a tool package to make a MD2 style electric arcs that the user has total control over, you think people in game making and/or software cummunity would be interesting in purchasing a tool such as this? Or Does 3Ds make stuff like this already? See I'm a programmer I dunno whats available on the art side of things.

There is a volume shader in Softimage|XSI that David Eu wrote a long time ago for mental ray 2.X and Michael Bentitou enhanced for mental ray 3.X.

http://www.joncrow.com/tutorials/xsi_tuts/lightning/advanced_lightning.htm

If I recall correctly, the source code was included as part of the Softimage shader SDK. Many studios used it and enhanced it to make stunning effects (see http://www.animallogic.com/film/matrix/gun.html for an example)

-cb