After an image is isolated via a chroma key, can I give it a Drop Shadow?

[Theo Van laar]

Yes,you can give a shadow to the isolated PDA in the track motion window of the track that contains the PDA

Theo

[Dave Felder]

Following up:

Similar situation, except I am chromakeying an arrow over footage.

If I use the track motion to put a drop shadow on a chromakeyed arrow, it appears to affect everything on that video track. In other words, the 2D shadow button doesn’t appear to be turned on and off by keyframes. Is that correct?

I’m working on a 20 minute training video and it’s already got 8 video tracks for titles, picture in picture effects, etc. Do I need to add another video track just for one drop shadow on one graphic?

Is it possible to add a character to a CG font?

Ryan Video Productions Inc. Rockaway, NJ

[Mike Kujbida]

Why are you chromakeying the arrow?
Is this a custom drawing or just a standard arrow?
In case you didn’t realize it, the Wingdings & Webdings “fonts” have several arrows that can be used in the basic Vegas titler and a drop shadow can be added very easily.

[Dave Felder]

Thanks Mike,

I thought about using wingding arrows about ten minutes after my post and it works fine.

If it wasn’t an arrow, if it was something that I needed to create custom, is the only way to put a drop shadow on a chromakey’d figure by putting it on the entire track, and if so, is there a way to turn the shadow on and off using a keyframe?

Ryan Video Productions Inc. Rockaway, NJ

[Mike Kujbida]

I’d personally do this in Photoshop (save one with and one without a drop shadow) and then not have to worry about chroma keying it.

[David Lincoln brooks]

Thanks, guys.

This post is actually old now, and soon after asking this question, I figured out how to use VEGAS’s native drop-shadow function to get the effect I wanted…

But I certainly appreciate the contributions!

Thanks, Dave

The only things which matter in life are Art and Children. (Georges Seurat)

[Dave Felder]

What’s the Drop shadow function? I haven’t stumbled upon it.

[David Lincoln brooks]

Any video track’s event can be given a Drop Shadow (dark semi-halo on any two adjacent sides of an object, designed to give the impression of “protruding” towards the viewer’s space).

On any video track, click the tiny TRACK MOTION icon.

It will bring up a palette in VEGAS where, in the lower lefthand corner, you will spy a tick-box which says “2D Shadow”.

Ticking it active will immediately add a Drop Shadow to that particular event.

The color, size, location, intensity, etc. of the Drop Shadow can be controlled in the choices which then pop-up.

If a track’s event has been Masked, the resulting masked object will display the 2D Drop Shadow effect.

Good luck!

[Dave Felder]

The only problem with using the Drop Shadow effect on the track, (unless I’m missing something) is that the drop shadow isn’t affected by keyframes, so everything on the track ends up having the drop shadow.

If you can set up your project so all your graphics that require a drop shadow are on the same track, that would work perfectly. When you’re doing a 20 minute video with several hundred clips and graphics, it becomes a logistical effort to keep track of. Not that there’s anything wrong with an editor being forced to think ahead and plan a project in advance (and I wonder how many editors actually do that), but it would be useful to be able to just apply an effect to a clip instead of a track. Almost every other effect in Vegas can be applied to an individual clip, not just the entire track.

Just my 2 cents. I think the solution of adding the drop shadow in Photoshop will ulimately end up with a less crowded timeline. And, of course, in my case, using Wingding arrows in the Text Generator was the easiest and most efficient method.

Ryan Video Productions Inc. Rockaway, NJ

[David Lincoln brooks]

Well, yes, I DO hear ya, Dave…

On that same beef, I didn’t always think the VEGAS 2D Drop Shadow always gave me the effect I was looking for, but couldn’t control it as precisely as I would’ve liked…

Maybe importing a PSD— with your Drop Shadow present in one of the layers—- is currently the way to go if you are “anal” about getting the shadow to look “just so”.

DLB

The only things which matter in life are Art and Children. (Georges Seurat)