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Backlighting a Logo and Have Shadows Move Across the Front
Hi, I’m pretty new to After Effects, and I was wondering if someone could point me in the right direction on how to do this.
I have a flat logo that I need to have backlit, and when the light source moves from left to right the elongated shadows on the floor in front of the logo will also shift.
Thank you in advance for your help!
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3 Replies
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You need two layers, a camera and a light.
1. Make text for your logo. Click the layer’s 3D button.
2. Make a solid and click its 3D button. Rotate it 90 degrees on the X axis. You won’t see it yet.
3. Make a new camera from the layer>new menu. Move it up high so you see the floor.
4. Make a new light. Make it a spotlight or infinite light. Move it behind the text.
5. Set the light to cast shadows (hit AA), and set the text to cast shadows (AA).To animate the light’s position, use keyframes as outlined (in general) in the help.
If you want to free up the camera’s movement so it doesn’t aim at the same place all the time, select the camera, then layer>transform>auto-orient>off.
To see the front of the text, add another light. -
Thank you! I will try this.
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Since my last message on this thread was simply “I will try this,” I thought it would be good to give an update. What Steve suggested worked really well! Thanks so much!
One problem i was having was with the floor in the foreground, there was a lot of gradient banding when the shadows moved across the foreground and when the camera moved around. (i made the floor really huge so that I could zoom around/in/out with the camera.) I didn’t want to add too much noise but wanted to have the foreground a little blurrier perhaps to make the banding less visible. i think when i played around with the aperture it helped a little (not sure why though!)
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