#Add drop shadow after effects how to
#Add drop shadow after effects movie

The text is an important part of any video’s visual identity, as it can make a social media video or a full-feature movie more appealing to the audience. The rendering process, however, may take a while, especially if the computer you’re working on doesn’t have a lot of processing power. Click on the shadow layer and press the T button to bring up the Opacity parameter and reduce its value to about 20%. Additionally, you can add the Gaussian Blur effect to the shadow layer if you would like to make the text in the shadow less sharp. Drag and drop the effect to the shadow layer and then change its color from the Effect Controls panel. Head over to the Effect&Pressets panel and use the Effects Browser to locate the Fill effect. Adjust the X-rotation and Z-rotation properties to reposition the text and click play to see if both text layers are animating at the same time. Press the R button, while having the animation layer selected to gain access to the Position properties. Click on the 3D checkbox to turn the animation layer into a 3D layer or alternatively you can just toggle the switches on modes and select the 3D option. Duplicate the animation layer, by selecting it and pressing the CMD+D keyboard shortcut. During the process of making a handwritten animated text, adding the drop shadow effect below or behind the text can help you make the animation look more professional.īefore you start you’ll have to select all the layers in the animation and hit Precompose, in order to merge them into a single layer. Logos, watermarks and all other types of text animations often lack depth, and for that reason, animators often create the 3D effect by using the drop shadow. You can fine-tune the opacity of the shadow, alter its direction, increase and decrease its distance from the source or change its color to make the effect look more convincing.Īdding the Drop Down Shadow to Text in After Effects

Once you apply the effect a soft-edged outline will appear behind the layer, which makes it a great choice if you want to create an outline around an object.

You can then just drag and drop the effect to a layer on the timeline and proceed to adjust its settings in the Effect Controls panel. The Perspective folder in the Effects & Presets menu contains the Drop Shadow effect, and the only thing you have to do to access it is to type its name in the Effects Browser. If a shot contains one or two objects against a solid background, then applying drop shadow can be effective, but if the background contains a lot of details you might want to consider other methods of creating shadows in AE.

#Add drop shadow after effects how to

How to Apply the Drop Shadow Effect in AE?Īdding a drop shadow to the footage you’ve chosen randomly won’t necessarily produce the results you want, because how visually pleasing the effect is going to be depends on how the shot is composed. Read on if you would like to find out more about the process of creating the Drop Shadow effect in Adobe After Effects. The Drop Shadow effect is commonly used to add depth to static and animated text, but there are lots of creative ways you can use this effect to enhance the footage you’re editing. Learning how to control the shadows in the footage you’re editing, will enable you to improve its quality, which is why you also need to know how to add artificial shadows to images or text layers you use in your projects. If(curLayer.kind = 'LayerKind.NORMAL' || curLayer.kind='LayerKind.Capturing the play between the light and shadow is what makes cinematography an art. That's the best I can think of right now, but what often happens here is that one idea prompts other users to think of another wrinkle, so fingers crossed.ĭoc.activeLayer = curLayer = gp1.layers You can help yourself by Ctrl clicking other objects to restrain where the shadow is painted in. Before you add the layer mask, Ctrl click each box object in turn to load as a selection, and add the layer mask.

If you were feeling very clever, you could arrive at the required selection using calculations, but that would make my head hurt. You now have the box contents back, but the drop shadow overlap will be gone outside the box, so it is a matter of hand painting it back in the layer mask. That will make the part outside the box disappear, so Ctrl click each object in turn, and fill its layer mask with white. You'll already be using this workflow I suspect, but it then boils down to:Ĭtrl clicking the relevant box layer to load it as a selection, inverting the selection, and filling each layer mask with black The first thing you need to do is check Layer mask hides effect in the layer style panel Your problem, of course, is that you need the shadows to overlap the other box contents 'inside' the box, so I can't think of any significant shortcuts to achieving this.