Lightly

Lightly is a fast, artist-friendly system for creating festive garlands, street strings, and marquee lights in Unity. Draw a path with waypoints, pick a bulb style (primitive or prefab), choose a color look (palette or gradient), and you’re done. Lightly handles wire sag, even bulb spacing, live edit-mode preview, performant pooling, and hysteresis culling so your scenes stay gorgeous and smooth.

Designed to drop into any project. Ships with profiles (ScriptableObjects) so you can save and share looks across scenes, plus a LineRenderer wire that can match or follow bulb colors. Effects like blink, pulse, and color cycling layer cleanly—great for cozy ambience or festival energy.

What makes it different

• Authoring speed: Edit-mode live preview (with a manual Refresh/Rebuild button) lets you see spacing, sag, and color instantly—no Play press needed.

• Believable wire: Choose Straight, Sag Per Segment, or Catmull–Rom curves with per-segment sag direction and tension.

• Visual variety: Palette/gradient color, InSync / OutOfSync / Wave coordination, and a wire that can Cycle With Bulbs.

• Production-ready: Pooling (optional DontDestroy root), frustum culling with hysteresis, and editor perf caps (preview FPS & max bulbs).

• Profiles: Save/load complete looks via ScriptableObject profiles; auto-apply on enable for consistent results across many strands.

• GC2-ready: Built to play nicely with Game Creator 2 actions (toggle, rebuild, swap profiles, set palette at runtime).

Key features

• Path & spawn
  Waypoints from a root or manual list. Spawn Along Segments, Waypoints Only, or Both. Even spacing with loop support.

• Wire shaping
  Straight / Sag / Catmull–Rom, sag factor & direction, tension, and samples per unit.

• Bulbs
  Primitives (Sphere/Cube/Capsule/Cylinder/Quad) or your prefab; bulb scale and local offset for “hang below the wire”.

• Color & effects
  Palette/Gradient; Wave sweeps color down the strand; blink/pulse/cycle with sensible ranges (Pulse Speed 0.3–0.8 cozy, 1.5+ energetic; Pulse Amount 1.1–1.3 natural).

• Wire visuals
  Optional LineRenderer with Solid / Gradient / Cycle With Bulbs and emission boost.

• Performance
  Pooling with initial size & growth, culling with enter/exit padding & cooldown, editor caps for preview FPS and count.

• Profiles
  Create, Load (Apply), Save—share one profile across multiple strands for a consistent look.

• Documentation
  Clean PDF (included) with quick start, property deep-dives, examples & FAQ.

Typical use cases

• Town squares & market streets (long Catmull runs, subtle pulse)

• Cozy porches and shop fronts (sagged wire, warm gradients)

• Carnival/fair marquees (waypoints-only, blink 2 Hz, bigger bulb scale)

• Quest/seasonal events (swap profile or palette at runtime; bump global glow)

Tech specs & compatibility

• Render pipelines: Built-in, URP, HDRP (use an emissive material for bulbs/wire).

• Platforms: Editor/Windows/macOS/Linux; works on consoles/mobile with typical content budgets.

• Unity: 2020.3+ recommended.

• Dependencies: None. GC2 optional; methods exposed for easy integration.

What’s included

• Lightly runtime & editor scripts (manager, profile, custom inspector)

• Demo materials & presets

• Documentation PDF (Quick Start, properties, examples, FAQ)

API hooks (for designers & GC2)

StartShow(), StopShow(), SetEnabled(bool), Rebuild() / RefreshNow(),
ApplyProfile(XmasLightsProfile, bool rebuild = true), SaveToProfile(XmasLightsProfile),
SetPalette(List<Color>).

Support

Includes a troubleshooting FAQ in the PDF. Need help or a custom feature? Add a note on your ticket with a short clip or repro scene.