Hello everyone!

 So I have been trying to render a star in Maya. The proper means by which I can achieve this from what I have been able to figure out is using the light glow and sun flare settings in the attribute editor.

I have two main problems which are preventing me from rendering a distant sun coming from from the horizon of a planet.

One: The light glow will not render in Mental Ray. Is there a way to bypass this? If so what else can I use to create a sun flare in Maya?

Two: When rendering in Maya Software the light glow will show (with the sun flare) but it goes through the planet.

No matter where I position it whether it is behind one object or behind 5 it will still show through all of these objects. How can I prevent this light glow from showing through objects in Maya?

 I do not want to use any video editing software unless I absolutely have to. I use Vegas to edit all my video data and Vegas has a sun flare effect but it is unrealistic, and I can't control it entirely which makes it difficult to get a desired outcome.

Anyways that's my current problem. I hope someone can help. I really don't want to use Maya Software to render anything, and as I have stated before I really only have Maya as an option to work in.

It's not that these effects don't work in mental ray - they do. If you, say, increase your intensities x10 and use mental ray the effects will appear. The main thing you will notice is that the effects are not as smooth as they appear with the software renderer.

As far as glows (specifically) are concerned, you could fake them with a samplerInfo / facing ratio node driving transparency. As you can see, I have two spheres. The inner sphere has incandescence applied (see Attribute Editor), the outer sphere has the "fake glow" network at the bottom of the Hypershade applied.

Sorry, can't give you lens flare...yet.

I may try working with two different layers for the sun flare. I can layer them in Vegas I guess.

Though Vegas has a sun flare effect it doesn't seem so well. Just doesn't feel right, may I get your opinion (and anyone else on it) ? This one uses the Vegas flare, personally I find the lense flare in Maya much more suitable.

I don't see attachements.

It would not let me attach it. It should be showing as a Gif file under the post. Is it really not?

Yeah, the Vegas one is so-so.

I would either use the Maya software flare as a pass and composite it or (my After Effects workflow) I would draw / create the desired flare in Photoshop and animate it in After Effects.