Shine God

What it does

Apply Shine God to a layer and it becomes a light source: a crosshair to place the light, a handful of top-level levers, and the deeper controls folded away in groups.

• Source Point. Click where the light is. Rays stream away from it, through the emitter: text, a logo, a shape, a matte or footage.
• Ray Length, Exposure, Falloff. Usually the whole job.
• Follow a layer. Point the source at a null and the rays track it, including 3D emitters seen through the active camera.
• Real alpha. The source is hidden by default and you get rays only, with transparency, ready to drop over any shot in Normal mode.
• Shimmer, colour and spread. Animated flicker, a tint and a long, faint second fan, all folded into groups until you need them.

Nothing to install on a render machine

Shine God is built only from effects that ship with After Effects: Levels, Fast Box Blur, Fractal Noise, CC Light Burst 2.5, Tritone, CC Composite and Extract. The control panel is stored inside your project the moment you apply it, so farms, Media Encoder and clients need nothing extra.

FAQ

Is it really free? Yes, for personal and commercial work. Just don't re-host it or bundle it into templates; share this page instead.

Why do my rays stop at a hard edge? After Effects clips effects at the layer's own bounds. Use a comp-sized emitter, or precompose the element first.