Making edges render with Cycles I'm using the Laplacian Lightning Generator, and have figured out how to make the generated lightning renderable in Blender Internal. While I (probably?) could use this, there's a few issues with me using BI, such as the quality of Cycles (e.g., really detailed shadows) not being available with BI.

I read in the Lightning addon comments that you can convert it to a curve, or use wire material. Is wire material available in Cycles?
I tried converting it to a curve, but I can't figure out how to make it visible in render from there. I could extrude it, but then it'd be a 2D plane of lightning, as the lightning itself is just edges (wouldn't it?)

I'm wanting it to be similar to the video showcase it has; glowing, bright, etc. I also need to be able to animate this rather easily, I'm still new around here. :P

I apologize if these are really dumb questions. Thank you in advance! :D
The laplacian Lightning generator produces a set of Mesh objects. At its most basic setting, using two empties (origin and ground). 



You can use the Single Mesh tickbox to make sure it's all one mesh, you lose flexibility, but the sake of example that method is probably handiest.




You can add a skin modifier to the mesh. By default the skinned edges is probably not the right size, you enter edit mode on the mesh, and go to vertex selection mode, select all vertices, then ctrl+a to scale down the radius of the skin.
Alternatively convert it to a Curve object (it will convert each edge to a straight section Curve type)  (alt+C > Curve From Mesh)


Both solutions will render fine in Cycles.



For the animation, perhaps you might use a Build Modifier and tick reverse. Remember Light is a really fast phenomenum, often all we see is the trail of air burning and extinguishing rather fast.

Ultra Slowmotion: 



I think it might have been better to subdivide the generated mesh a few times..now it exhibits jumps.. 

Credits to gandalf3 for this one:



Alternatively

(unless you need to generate a tonne of different strikes) Why not trace a photograph and use artistic discretion to 3d spatialize it, and animate that strike:)