• Adobe After Effects

  Tinting shadow catcher color

  Posted by Justin Lockwood on November 6, 2016 at 4:51 am

  Trying to comp some 3D text over camera footage of a street pavement. I currently have it set up so that I have a 3D light, and a shadow catcher ground plane receiving the shadows. Everything’s working great, except I can’t figure out how to tint the cast shadow’s color on the shadow catcher. I need it to be tinted slightly blue to match the shadows in the footage.

  Changing the 3D Light’s color doesn’t seem to do anything to the shadow, and neither does applying color correction effects on the shadow catcher layer (Tint, Hue/Sat etc). It just remains black, or some kind of colorless gray if I adjust shadow diffusion or darkness.

  Any ideas?

  Roei Tzoref replied 9 years, 6 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Roei Tzoref

  November 6, 2016 at 10:47 am

  2 options come to mind:
  1. if the 3D layer that is casting the shadow is already in that color, you can set the light transmission in the material option of that layer to higher than 0% and you will see it tint.
  2. if option 1 does not apply, you would have to do some compositing. separate your 3d layer from it’s shadow by duplicating it and setting the upper one to cast shadow – off, and the lower one to accept shadow – only. set the color of the below layer (if it’s text then in the fill color parameter), and set light transmission to more than 0%.

  Roei Tzoref
  After Effects Artist & Instructor
  ♫ Ae Blues Tutorials

Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up