can't work the drop shadow effect ????

Retired Products Animate General Discussion
1

Help! can anyone direct me to a step by step method to apply a drop shadow effect.
I want to create a shadow from a character in the scene.
I create a shadow effect layer and attach the drawing so that it is a now a child.
In the camera view the character appears as a shadow, but the character has it self is invisible.
In toonboom studio this was so easy, and there would be handles to alter the angle, size etc.
Please tell me someone what I am doing wrong!!! ???

2

You can create a drop shadow attaching the drawings layers of the caracter as childs of the effect, and you can see it only in render view mode. (color flower button) If you have not created a BG , create a colour card with any colour.
You can distort this effect attaching it into a quadmap that have control points to alter the size, angle, etc, as keyframe based mode in the timeline.

Yoryo.

3

Thanks Yoryo.
I’ll give it go although I am not sure about using a quadmap, sound complicated.

4

Hi Yoryo,

I tried it, almost there, managed to attach the quadmap and manipulate the shadow but I am just getting the shadow the character that is casting it dosen’t show up.

I am not getting quite right, obviously.

5

are you useing pro or standard?

6

I am using animate 2 upgraded from toonboom studio and beginning to regret it.
Do I have to clone the character layer keeping above the shadow layer but that can’t be right!

7

Don’t regret it is a big upgrade once you get used to it.

I had a look in the userguide and in the example they have the limpa character above the shadow effect either as a duplicate or clone. So that appears to be the way to go. LillyV I am sure will be able to give a definitive answer.

I can’t see a way around it in Standard.

8

Thanks for all your help, I have managed to do it by using a clone on top of the shadow effect and it seems to work fine but because I have the hair of the character on a different layer I am getting a double shadow effect.
But hey I got it work I am sure I can work round the hair problem.
Thanks again for all your help and prompt replies.

9

Hi Robbiemac.
The shadow effect is very easy to apply. All layers of the caracter needs be cloned and attached into the effect. You can manipulate the shadow appareance with the layer properties panel that appears double clicking in the left name field layer in timeline. You can modify blur type, radius, angle, matte, colour, alpha as shadow atributes, and assign truck factor that readjust the blur if you change the depth or scale.
All attributes will be abble to preview only if render mode (in camera view) is enabled. (and of course, with a colour BG, if not all is black.)
Quadmap is so easy too. It´s a shape modifier that make possible changes along the time with keyframes. To do it, create a quadmap,(upper + button), attach the shadow effect, that contains the layers caracter, into it. Select the quadmap layer, four square numbered corners appears. Drag them, one by one, to new locations to distort the shadow as you need.
Click the + in the right side of the quadmap name layer, this open the quadmap sub-layers when you can assign position values x-y for each point at each time in the action, and this is all. This composite done a more professional result that the shadow in Toon boom Studio, as you can see.
Hope that you can solve the issue. Best Regards.

Yoryo

10

Hi Yoryo,
Thank you very much, I think I have pretty much grasped it now, I will now practice so that I am familiar with the process.
Best wishes