Making drop shadow stick to the character?

Retired Products Toon Boom Studio Support and Troubleshooting
1

Hi!

I am having trouble with the drop shadow effect, my character moves up while the shadow moves down as though he is flying away but thats not what i want, is there a way to make the shadow follow him as he walks up the screen?

Thanks for the help!

2

The character is walking up a hill in a straight line, viewed from behind, so there is no side to side movement, and unfortunately as the character goes up the shadow goes down.

3

If the thing is moving in a straight line side to side it does that fairly well. Anything other than that requires manual tweaking. You will have to look at each frame and make adjustments as the sequence advances. I think this can be fun if you have enough time. I set up an experiment of a solid circle with a shadow but they behave appropriately. I don’t understand why yours moves down when the object goes up. Can you provide a link to the movie? Or can you at least post a screen shot of the Camera view at the beginning and a few of it as it progresses? Also, I’d like to see the control box of the shadow, the wire frame that you grab to reposition and reshape the shadow with.

4

this is the scene I’m trying to work on, file:///C:/Users/Scotty/AppData/Local/Temp/Toon%20Boom%20Studio%208.1/QuickPlayback/swfPlayer/player.html

the shadow starts at the feet and ends up way down on the drawing board.

how did you tweek the shadows frame by frame? i have been trying to figure that out.

sorry, Im new to toon boom

5

I think the link you posted is a location on your computer hard drive.

You need to upload it somewhere online for other people to access it.

6

I was also unable to make the Drop Shadow effect follow the Drawing object if it moves diagonally. The way I got it to work is as follows:

  1. Animate the object/character in your scene as you wish.
  2. Duplicate the animated object/character (“Duplicate Element” command).
  3. Add a Parent Peg to the duplicated object.
  4. Add a Drop Shadow element.
  5. Drag the Peg into the Drop Shadow element.
  6. Add keyframes to the Peg at Frame 1 and the last frame.
  7. Use the Move Tool to set the Peg’s positions in the newly created keyframes to match the position of the original object. The duplicated object will diverge from the original object.
  8. Select the Drop Shadow element. Click “Hide Elements” in the properties tab. Now we’ll only see the shadow but not the drawing.

I tried this with a simple circle object, but I don’t have any demo video for it. I hope this technique works for you. Good luck!

7

Awesome advice!

thanks for the help

8

What path is the shadowed object (the object casting the shadow not the shadow) taking? Is it on flat ground? Is it moving from one side of the screen to the other in a straight line? Or, is it climbing or moving up and down (the bottom elevation as opposed to bending over)?

It is a simplified effect that has limits to how much can be fully automated before you need to tweak it frame by frame for best results. This will depend on the environment. It is ideal if the object moves in a straight line from side to side and it is drawn at a right angle rather than in perspective view at an odd angle. The bottom of the feet or its base would be flat when it connects to its ground.

It sounds like you just have to adjust the position of the shadow itself. If it moves away from the object as the object moves to another location of the scene I suspect the path of the object is not moving in a straight and level line. It may be moving at an angle.

The shadow effect does not follow its object as well when moving up and down so you will need to adjust it when it looks off.