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Create shadows on subjects
I am trying to find a way to add shadows to subjects. Most of my work is green screen and I want to place a shadow on my foreground subjects.
Searching for what I actually want seems to be like a piece of hay in a massive stack of needs. Searches almost all result in drop shadows or text shadows.
What I am trying to create is say a building shadow falling across the subjects face.
I tried layering an object and creating a drop shadow, which works nicely, but when I drop the opacity of the object, it drops the opacity of the shadow.
There must be a fairly easy way to achieve the effect I am after.
Can anyone suggest a technique?
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5 Replies
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Did you try enabling drop shadow on the object?
Double click the object in the sequence and turn it on under motion.
Chris Tompkins
Video Atlanta LLC -
You might find easier results by using a compositing application like motion or AFX. It’s kind of hard for me to imagine exactly what you’re thinking of, but I think the answer to your question might like in overlaying the shadow on top of your subject and changing the blend mode to multiply? At least that’s how I’d approach it. Best of luck.
-Grant Gomm
http://www.blacklionproductions.com -
Might be easier if I give an example.
I have a background of a huge tree. I shoot an actress in studio in front of a green screen. Key it and add her to the tree bg.
She appears to be standing under the tree, but it looks superimposed because there are no shadows on her, because she was shot in a studio with even lighting.
I thought if I shot a leafy branch (obviously not green 🙂 against a green screen and keyed it, then drop shadow of the branch, lay it over the actress and remove the branch, leaving only the shadow. That may give me the effect that I am looking for.
Similar if I want it to be a building shadow covering part of her face.
I am just not sure what is the easiest and best way to go about this. Be it in FCP or Motion or if there are tools in-built that exist that could create this effect.
As I said most of the material I see about shadows is creating drop shadows of objects, but I need these shadows on my subjects without the objects present.
Does this make sense?
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Ahh, see I thought you wanted the girl to CAST a shadow behind her.
I get it now.
Take it into AE. Add a light, add a pic of branch off screen in front of light, cast shadows.
Chris Tompkins
Video Atlanta LLC -
I come across this when doing some green screen work. I have two strategies.
For something that’s stationary, I’ll just export a frame to photoshop, create a shadow, then save just the shadow with alpha and bring that back into the timeline. Sometimes you don’t need the round-tripping; use a 12-point masking tool to make a rough shape, blur it, warp/position it.
The other “trick” is that once you’ve generated a matte using chromakey, you can copy that matte into another layer, fill it with black, and warp it to make a shadow lay where you want it. And you can adjust the opacity of it and add gaussian blur.
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