Blender : Animating a Lightning Strike By Saraja Olivier

You can now invoke the Animation buttons (F7-KEY or ). Click on the  button. By default, you are in the Build parameters window. Don't change anything. Set Len: 5.00 and Sfra: 50.00. This means that your lightning will build over 5 Frames (Len) and that the building process will start only at Frame 50 (SFra). Don't try to get more complex, this is all you can do ! It barely worths a full step, I know, but it is a tutorial dedicated to the Build effect, so I really had to... :o)

You can check the wiremode animation by pressing ALT+A (ESC to stop the animation) and see the building process of the lightning (beware, if you stayed close to my own parameters, you will certainly get bored during the 50 Frames frames...). You can also render the animation itself. If you only want to previsualize your effet, go into the Display buttons (F10-KEY or ), set Sta: 50 and End: 55 before clicking on .
Now, let's go to real fun part of this tutorial : making sure the lightning will disappear after Frame 55 !