Drop shadow without affecting layer transparency

[Mike Sevigny]

hey Nick,
Two things that might help,

1. When you set the ‘cast shadows’ to ‘on’, click on the word ‘on’ one more time to set it to ‘only’. Now only the shadows will cast.

2. If you’re not using the raytrace engine with 3D layers then you can try to simply add a drop shadow layer style. Right click on your shape layer, go to ‘Layer Styles’ and select drop shadow. Your settings are in the timeline.

Mike Sevigny
TorusFX Inc.
https://www.torusfx.com
https://www.linkedin.com/pub/mike-sevigny/49/875/495

[Erik Waluska]

Just a warning, layer styles can wreak havoc in 3D comps, doing all sorts of weird things that make no sense. Or at least up until CS6. If you do try that and things start going all hinky, then delete the “layer styles” from all of the layers in the comp. Just turning them off doesn’t do it.

Erik Waluska
EAWmedia

[Nick Matthews]

Thank you both for your efforts, but unless I am misinterpreting the suggestions I think I will have to get a bit more specific. See image.

I only mentioned the shape layer to keep my explanation simple, but the reality is a bit more complex. I am looking to get shadows on the edges of a comp with ~30 layers with animation, without the shadows showing through the transparent parts.

My attached example uses 3 copies of that comp to get the alpha shadow, then the normal comp over top again. Which is more taxing than it needs to be when previewing and I’d rather not go through the steps for each separate future animation. I’ll do it if that’s the only way, but I feel there’s something I’m missing to make it simpler.

There is no 3D being used, I’m simply using renders from C4D and some creations within AE.

Thanks for your time.

shadowsample.jpg

[Walter Soyka]

Walter’s single-layer, transparency-avoiding drop-shadow recipe:

Levels: Alpha only, alpha gamma tweaked to crush out transparency
Fill: Black (Color will be shadow color, opacity will be shadow opacity)
Fast Blur (Blurriness will be softness)
Transform: (takes the place of offset/direction/distance)
CC Composite: Original, in front, RGB only unchecked

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Nick Matthews]

Walter, your process absolutely works with single objects like shape layers, but when I tried applying it to a composition it did not avoid the transparency like it did with the one layer.

shadowsample2.jpg

Thanks for sharing that though, I will definitely remember how to do that for other projects.

[Walter Soyka]

I said “crush the alpha” above, but I should have said “blow out the alpha” instead. If you bring that gamma slider to the right (making the gamma number very small instead of very big), then this should behave as expected — it shouldn’t matter that the source layer is a comp.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Nick Matthews]

Oh excellent, I should’ve thought to tweak the setting a little more when I wasn’t getting the proper result.

Works great, thanks!

[Walter Soyka]

You’re welcome.

You can simplify this process a bit for future work by saving this as an animation preset [link].

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Brandon Gregory]

That is pretty awesome Walter Soyka, though it’s missing one thing! How do I change the blend mode? Let’s say I would like to set the shadow to multiply?

[Walter Soyka]

Add a Compound Arithmetic effect after the Transform effect and before the CC Composite effect, and set its Second Source Layer property to the background layer you’d like to use. You may need to do some precomping and/or use the new Effects & Masks option in the layer selector.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
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