lenseflare workflow

I am familiar with a few flare plugins like video copilot but how do you add them properly once your 3D sequence is rendered? how can you let in between objects (between the sun and the camera) occlude the lenseflare since your adding the flare to a 2D image? what if those objects have chromatic aberration/depth of field/motion blur? how can you let the flare track the movement of the sun in the image sequence?

You can do all that in your compositing software. I usually track the light source and use it as the lens flare position. In case an object goes in front of the light, I animate a quick mask, or move a shaped mask with a tracker on the object.

Other solution that I use for other effects like rain: export your maya scene in a format supported by your compositing software (FBX in general), with animation and everything. Then composite the lens flare in 3d, use 3d objects as masks for the flare.I don't know how After Effects handles 3d though, I only used it a couple of time for simple Optical Flares and animated the things by hand.

thanks alot for the info

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