PIXXO 3D released a YouTube tutorial on creating a glowing shield effect with Blender. The effect doesn't use too many nodes, so it is pretty beginner-friendly, the artist states. The tutorial only shows how to make the effect itself – as the creator explains, for the character, he used a basic Adobe Mixamo model.

To recreate the scene, the first thing PIXXO does when opening a new Blender document is remove the camera and the lighting, as those will be changed later anyway. After selecting the default cube, he creates a new node network.

To turn the cube into a sphere, he picks Ico Sphere in the Mesh menu and plugs it into the Geometry Group Output. Subdivisions are set to 3 for a fuller, more rounded shape. To replace the triangular faces with hexagonal ones, the artist looks up Dual Mesh and inserts it right between the Ico Sphere and the Group Output. 

Then, to start mapping out the animation, the artist goes over to the meshes again and selects Plane. By controlling the frames, he can decide at what speed the plane moves toward the sphere and how it keeps moving after crashing into it.

The disintegration effect on the surface of the sphere is achieved through the use of Vector Math. What happens is that with Vector Math, PIXXO takes the position input for the object and subtracts the location of the plane as it's moving through the sphere. To add dimension to the effect, he uses Gradient Texture and plugs it into the Scale setting of the faces making up the sphere. 

Using Mix Shader and Emission, along with the Fresnel factor set up, the artist quickly creates the material for the hexagons on the sphere. By adding in Color Ramp and adjusting its settings, he can control the color shifts on the faces.

Then, by using the UV Sphere mesh, PIXXO adds the little balls flying into the shield from the sides. He also applies the Rigid Body physics setting to the main sphere, with Type set to Passive and Shape set to Mesh. He treats the little balls similarly, except Type is now at Active, while Shape is at Sphere.

To finalize the scene, he adds a Mixamo skeleton and makes sure everything is time-adjusted so that the movement in the animation is cohesive. 

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