How to Add Flashing Lights in After Effects?

Adding flashing or flickering lights in After Effects can enhance visual effects and convey urgency or dynamic energy. Based on the provided reference, one method involves combining glow effects on a solid layer and an adjustment layer.

Creating Animated Lights with Glow and Adjustment Layers

According to the reference snippet derived from a YouTube video titled "Flicker Your Lights In After Effects With This Easy Expression!", a technique for creating animated lights, potentially leading to a flashing effect, involves the following steps:

1. Start with a Solid Layer: Begin by creating a solid layer in your After Effects composition. This solid will serve as the base for your light effect.
2. Apply the First Glow: Add a glow effect to this initial solid layer. Adjust the glow settings (like Radius, Intensity, Threshold) to achieve the desired appearance for your light source.
3. Add an Adjustment Layer: Create a new adjustment layer above the solid layer in your timeline.
4. Apply the Second Glow: Add another glow effect to this adjustment layer. Applying a second glow on an adjustment layer allows you to affect multiple layers below it uniformly or add a different type of glow spread or intensity on top of the base glow.

The reference states that after these steps, "We now have an animated light". While the snippet doesn't explicitly detail how this specific combination directly produces flashing, the video title suggests that achieving a flicker effect might involve an "easy expression". Typically, expressions are used to automate animation, and a flickering effect is often created by linking properties like opacity or glow intensity to a dynamic expression (like wiggle() or a time-based function).

Potential Methods for Flashing (Implied by Reference Title)

The video title "Flicker Your Lights In After Effects With This Easy Expression!" strongly implies that an expression is used to control the flickering/flashing motion of the lights created using the glow method. While the expression itself isn't provided in the text snippet, common approaches include:

• Linking Opacity: An expression applied to the opacity property can quickly toggle the layer's visibility on and off.
• Animating Glow Intensity/Radius: An expression could animate the intensity or radius of the glow effects applied to the solid or adjustment layer, making the light appear to pulse or flash.
• Using Time Expressions: Expressions based on the time property can create rhythmic or random fluctuations.

By combining the glow layers as described in the reference with an appropriate expression controlling the animation property, you can create dynamic flashing light effects in After Effects.