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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects compositing shadows

  • compositing shadows

    Posted by Pinkfloyd on September 9, 2005 at 3:56 am

    Hey, I need to composite a shadow onto a pre-existing .mov file. I have a guy keyed out, and placed onto the master .mov file but need to place a shadow of him on the floor IN the .mov file. I remember reading something about it with mattes and lights but now it has slipped my mind as to how to do it. can anyone help me out in this situation?
    Thanks ahead of time,
    Tom

    Graham Quince replied 20 years, 8 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
  • 1 Reply
  • Graham Quince

    September 9, 2005 at 8:06 am

    There’s a few ways to do this.

    1) Use Radial Shadow

    2) Duplicate your guy, use brightness/contrast to turn him black, and then use 3D Transform to distort him to be a shadow. Opacity, transfer modes and blur will help sell the shot.

    3) 3D Layers. Set your guy to be a 3D layer. Create a white solid and set that to be a 3D layer. Position the layer at his feet and rotate it 90 degrees. so it’s a virtual floor. Add a Light and set it to cast shadows. In material options, set your guy layer to cast shadows, but not to accept lights. Set the white layer to accept shadows, but not light. Now set the White Layer’s transfer mode to something like Multiply, or maybe Color Burn. And you’re done. To improve the shadows, you can adjust the light’s cone, diffusion etc..

    Hope that helps

    Graham

    http://www.qcit.com

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