Body: <p>I added some point lights that form a letter. Then I added an optical flare (AE plugin FX) with source type "track lights" to get light dots from the light layers.</p>
  
  <p>This works fine and looks as follows:</p>
  
  <pre><code>optical flare layer FX
  light layer1 (point)
  light layer2 (point)
  light layerN (point)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Now I of course want to create several letters. Therefore I group the light layers each in a composition that represents a letter. Of course I do not want to dublicate the optical flare layer into all my compositions, but move it out and just have one flare layer that is FX for all lights:</p>
  
  <pre><code>[optical flare layer FX]
  [light composition A]
  [light composition B]
  [light composition C]
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Problem: As soon as I move the optical layer out of the light compositions, the FX is not applied anymore to the lights that are contained inside the multiple compositions.</p>
  
  <p>Why? How can I let the light layers of my compositions "shine through" to the parent layer, and apply the flare FX there with only one single FX layer?</p>
  
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2014-12-29T13:39:13.623Z
Comments.Text: have you tried turning on continuously rasterise / collapse transformations (the little sun icon) for the light comps. Also, you know there are other ways of getting glowing light effects without using actual lights, don't you?
Comments.UserDisplayName: stib
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2014-12-29T15:18:56.147Z
Comments.Text: No I don't, can you give me some keywords? I tried rasterise, but that won't work as the optical flare FX requires the lights to be in the same composition than the FX layer itself.
Comments.UserDisplayName: membersound
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2014-12-30T00:16:27.687Z
Comments.Text: Are the light comps 3D layers (as well as collapsed)? As for other glowing lights, the good ol' glow effect works well on bright coloured layers. You could create a shape layer and use a dotted stroke, and apply the glow effect. Or an adjustment layer with a blur effect on it set to additive mode.
Comments.UserDisplayName: stib
Tags: <after-effects>
Title: How to let the path of a composition shine to parent layer?
UserDisplayName: membersound
ThreadText: # How to let the path of a composition shine to parent layer?
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2014-12-28)
  
  I added some point lights that form a letter. Then I added an optical flare (AE plugin FX) with source type "track lights" to get light dots from the light layers.
  
  This works fine and looks as follows:
  
  ```
  optical flare layer FX
  light layer1 (point)
  light layer2 (point)
  light layerN (point)
  
  ```
  
  Now I of course want to create several letters. Therefore I group the light layers each in a composition that represents a letter. Of course I do not want to dublicate the optical flare layer into all my compositions, but move it out and just have one flare layer that is FX for all lights:
  
  ```
  [optical flare layer FX]
  [light composition A]
  [light composition B]
  [light composition C]
  
  ```
  
  Problem: As soon as I move the optical layer out of the light compositions, the FX is not applied anymore to the lights that are contained inside the multiple compositions.
  
  Why? How can I let the light layers of my compositions "shine through" to the parent layer, and apply the flare FX there with only one single FX layer?
  
  **Tags:** after-effects
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_1**: have you tried turning on continuously rasterise / collapse transformations (the little sun icon) for the light comps. Also, you know there are other ways of getting glowing light effects without using actual lights, don't you?  
  > **username_0**: No I don't, can you give me some keywords? I tried rasterise, but that won't work as the optical flare FX requires the lights to be in the same composition than the FX layer itself.  
  > **username_1**: Are the light comps 3D layers (as well as collapsed)? As for other glowing lights, the good ol' glow effect works well on bright coloured layers. You could create a shape layer and use a dotted stroke, and apply the glow effect. Or an adjustment layer with a blur effect on it set to additive mode.  
  
  ---
  
  ## 0 answers
  
  