Adding "Searchlights" to a 3D animation

Hi everyone,
I'm new here (and to After Effects) and am trying to create 3 "searchlight" spot-lights dramatically shooting up into the sky behind a bank building set on a hill for an animated commercial (fyi: the animation was modeled with ArchiCAD 10 & rendered with ArtLantis Studio 1.2.6 Rfc0 as an MPEG movie file).
Would anyone here be able to give me basic instructions on how to create these searchlights with After Effects? Any help will be appreciated.
Todd

Well, a million ways. The simplest and most cost effective is to use the Beam effect. Set its timing parameters so it gives a continuous beam and then adjust the thicknesses and opacity. Anotehr idea is to use the radial wipe transition - use the "Both sides" mode, adjust the transition percentage, use feather. if you wanan go fancy, you could use Trapcode Lux. It renders physically correct volumetric light effects based on 3D lights in your comp. Lastly, there's laso a searchlight/ light beacon effect in one of the Tinderbox collections. One tip: if you use the simpel tools that come with AE itself, don't play cheap and dirty. Getting a good-looking light beam will require multiple duplicates and some experimentation with color, opacity, blendmodes and additional effects such as blurs to soften everything.
Mylenium

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