A procedural, animated energy ball shader
Drop this material on a sphere and get a glowing, pulsing orb of energy. It’s built from one “Energy Ball” node group with four layers you can style separately: a bright core, a pulsing glow, swirling noise and an outer ring.
The animation runs on drivers tied to the frame number, so it plays forever on any frame range with no keyframes to manage.
Features:
- Fully procedural and animated out of the box
- Core Energy: size, color and strength
- Pulsing Energy: color, strength, range and speed
- Noisy Energy: seed, scale, detail, color, strength and contrast, plus rotation and location for the swirl
- Circle Energy: thickness, strength and color for the outer ring
- Two files: a single energy ball, and a scene with four ready-made color variations
How to use it:
- Use File > Append > Material > Energy Ball, then assign it to a UV sphere or icosphere.
- Change the four color inputs to create your own look (blue plasma, green toxic, red fire and so on).
- Press play to see the animation. To change the speed, edit the drivers on the animation inputs (they divide the frame number by 20 and 50).
- Turn on Bloom in Eevee or use the Glare node in Cycles for an extra glow.
Perfect for:
- Magic spells and power-ups
- Sci-fi cores, reactors and portals
- Game effects and motion graphics
Included files:
- energy ball dist.blend (single ball, Eevee, created in Blender 4.3)
- energy ball variations.blend (four color variations, Cycles, created in Blender 5.2)
Tutorial:
CREATE Your Own Procedural Energy Ball in Blender FAST
I recommend this Blender course for artists who want to improve modeling, materials, lighting, and rendering skills.