I need to create a sunrise animation with the sun disk rising over a planet surface, in view of the camera. It will be rendered in Mental Ray or V-Ray.
I want the sun disk and flare glow to look like in the intro to 2001 A Space Odyssey:
http://youtu.be/e-QFj59PON4
Or like this photo:
http://www.san-julian.co.uk/images/Total_Solar_Eclipse_2006.jpg
I would like to know if adding the glow is easily possible in After Effects or Autodesk Toxik (Composite). I don’t have the budget to afford Nuke.
I need the flare to actually match the visible illuminated shape of the sun, such that when only a crescent is visible, the glow protrudes from that exact shape, and so on as the shape grows in view. As you can see in the photo of the solar eclipse, the glow surrounds the oblong visible shape.
This tutorial is for creating a sunrise in After Effects, but the result isn’t quite what I am going for 
I don’t want the flare to be perfectly round when the sun is partially hidden.
http://vimeo.com/43181729
EDIT:
This would probably work perfectly, but unfortunately it doesn’t appear to be available for the Maya version of V-Ray:
V-Ray lens effects