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When creating lens flare presets such as these, there is always a phase of experimentation and research involved. You need to learn the features of the particular plug-in and find ways how to avoid or work around limitations just as you collect ideas for flares that might look cool. Some of that stuff never makes it into the final release, but nonetheless some people might find it useful if only to learn some tricks or derive their own inspiration. The below is such a collection. These flares require the Sapphire v6 plug-ins or the corresponding Edge plug-ins. Because they are provided in the specific GenArts preset format and not as After Effects projects they can also be used in Nuke, Final Cut Pro, Vegas or tools supporting OFX. For that, they need to be placed in the proper directories which e.g. on Windows is

C:\ProgramData\GenArts\Presets

They will then be accessible through the preset browser or flare editor, respectively.

GenArts Lens Flares

Since for all intents and purposes the default flare in Boris Continuum Complete 8 is pretty awful as are most of the presets, I sat down and created a tweaked version that much better represents something that could exist in the real world. See the before and after comparison images and make up your own mind.

Better BCC Flare

This collection of 3 separate projects allows you to create any variation you can think of when it comes to radars, sonars and other scanning device screens. Because everything is determined with expressions, you need not worry about all that blinking and labeling. You just animate your targets and adapt the design, and the code does the rest. The package contains the reference designs illustrated in the clip below. The setup with the light grid can be produced by cloning a prototype light with the expressions and then adjusting the parameters of the grid. Similarly, the other setups can be modified by replacing the layer in teh timeline or modifying the pre-comps.

Radar – Dradis – Light Grid

Symmetrion is a toolbox of projects that allows you to create mesh and grid structures easily, deal with large amounts of points easily and, most importantly, provides an easier way of creating deformations in FreeForm Pro, including symmetrical "modelling". Please refer to the PDF document in the package for more details.

Symmetrion

This is a simple expression project that draws two lines of text with matching DNA sequence pairs. By modifying and expanding the code, you can of course draw other patterns as well – from binary code to matching groups of words.

DNA Base Pair Sequence

This project allows you to build cubic reflection maps (or generally a unfolded cube cross map) such as it could be useful for a number of 3D-ish effects like Shapeshifter or FreeForm Pro. The package contains two projects: One that contains a rigged "live" version, another for offline baking of maps if you don’t have any of these plug-ins and want to use the maps in conjunction with other tools. Within each project, there are two methods to produce the maps. One takes any normal footage and slices it up to produce a cube and retain unwarped projections while at the same time doing some dilation/expansion at the top and bottom to produce a ceiling and floor, the other method uses skybox images such as you can create them in 3D programs or by photographing multiple views from a tripod. Alignment of the maps can be controlled with some expressions as well.

The Cube

Inevitably this project shows a variation on the DNA helix theme using Shapeshifter.

DNA

This is a simple project showing how some simple techniques can be used to produce an interesting skin reveal effect using Shapeshifter. This could come in handy for logo animations or just complementary background elements e.g. themed around the Asian dragon cult.

Lava Snake

This is sort of a tech demo illustrating various techniques how you can manipulate displacement maps and use advanced features like shadow casting and the depth buffer output in FreeForm Pro to create detailed scenes, in this case an eroding Acropolis with a couple of crumbling pillars.

Pillars in Decay