<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>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-12-29T13:39:13.623Z
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?
stib
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-12-29T15:18:56.147Z
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.
membersound
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-12-30T00:16:27.687Z
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.
stib
<after-effects>
How to let the path of a composition shine to parent layer?
membersound
# 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.  

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## 0 answers

