Joren Kandel of Pixel Lab fame, offers a few tips for compositing and adding different glows in After Effects, to some text that was created in Cinema 4D. One tip involves using an AO pass for more interesting glow effects.
how to set up your renders so you can composite in really nice and realistic glows by using the Ambient Occlusion pass in a way you wouldn’t normally think of
Joren shows how you can get access to all the different faces of the 3D type in After Effects, specifically the bevels, or the caps. This can be easily done by using an object buffer. Once things are available in Ae, you have a lot of creative things that you can try out.
When it comes to the glows, using an AO (ambient occlusion) pass as a matte for the glows will make it look much more natural and realistic looking.
