Shadow

With the Shadow effect, you can turn a drawing into a shadow. It doesn't matter if the drawing layer is a fully coloured character. The Shadow effect will render it into a grey, semitransparent, slightly blurry silhouette.

To add a shadow stretched out on the ground, simply add a Quadmap node to flip, stretch and skew the matte. Attach the entire effect to the same trajectory as your drawing layer and watch the shadow move along with your character.

NOTE: Don't forget that you need to connect your character in both the final Composite node and the Shadow effect if you want to see your character and its shadow.

Use the Shadow editor to modify the way the Shadow effect is created.

The Shadow effect uses the shape of the drawing connected to create the shadow behind another element and can blur the edges to create a softer effect. You can control the type and amount of blur, as well as the colour of the shadow.

For more information on the Apply-Peg-Transformation node, see Apply Peg Transformation.

Shadow Properties

Parameter Description
Truck Factor Activated by default, this option readjusts the blur when the elements undergo a change of depth or scale. When disabled, the effect's values will remain unchanged regardless of depth or scale changes. It is recommended that this option be disabled when multiple drawings are composited and attached this effect.
Blur Type

Radial: The edges of the matte are blurred evenly around points that make up the edge of the matte.

Directional: The matte is blurred in the direction you select.

Radius

Enter a value for the size of the blur. The larger the value, the greater the blur effect. The blur radius is affected by the drawing scale and camera position.

Directional Angle

If you selected the Directional Blur type, you can set the direction of the blur by entering a value from 0 to 360 in this field.

0: Blurs the image to the west.

90: Blurs the image to the south.

180: Blurs the image to the east.

270: Blurs the image to the north.

Directional Falloff Rate

The distance where the blur fades from the edge of the image. Select a value between 0 and 1.

0: Makes the blur fade out slowly, distributing the blur evenly from the edge of the character to the farthest edge of the blur.

1: Makes the blur fade out quickly. The blur is heaviest closer to the edge of the image.

Invert Matte Inverts the matte used to create the tone, shadow, or highlight.
Use Matte/Source Colour Creates the shadow or tone using the matte shape's colour. Be sure that you are in render mode to see this effect and that your background is NOT white and that you do NOT have a white colour card node attached to the composite. As the matte only gives colour information, but no alpha, the matte is automatically multiplied with the background colours. If there is no colour card attached and the background appears black, you will see the matte colour at full opacity. If it is multiplied with a white background, the colours disappear into the full 255.
Multiplicative Multiplies the tone or shadow colours with the background.
Colour
RGBA Enter a value to add or subtract from the colour channels in the drawings or attach these values to function curves.
Colour Swatch Opens the Colour Picker where you can specify the colour.
Intensity

Lets you set a value to determine the strength of the effect or attach a function to animate the effect.

NOTE: If this effect is connected below a Composite node set to Pass-Through, the effect will be applied to each element connected in the Composite node individually. If some of these elements are overlapping, the effect will also overlap.