#After effects 2 drop shadows how to#

If it looks good, you’re all done! Below are the settings I used for my Shatter effect.Illustrator (and just about all Adobe apps for that matter) has the ability to apply the most over-used design effect of all time - Drop Shadows (look out Drop Shadows, reflections aren't far behind). You also need to key your Radius from 0 to 4 so that your layer actually shatters. Open up the Shatter controls in your timeline under the “G” layer and key both of your Forces’ positions to follow the path of the train. Change your Forces (1 and 2) to have 0.00 set for both their Depth and Radius. My personal preference is to change your View to Rendered, so that you can see the finished product. Also change the Origin under Shape to mark where you would like the shatter to occur. After Effects’ Shatter is a very versatile tool - we’ll only be scraping the surface here, so you should definitely play around with it further later on.Ĭhange your Shape Pattern to Glass and your Extrusion Depth to 0.00. The settings used here are below.Īdd a mask to your text layers and animate them rising out of the ground plane.Ĭhange the position of your “G” layer so that it hops all the way to the edge. Then go into each text layer’s Material Options and turn on Cast Shadows.Īdjust your lighting to make your shadows and text appear the way you want them to. Make sure you Alt-Click this selection so that it says Accept Shadows: Only. You’ll see a selector that says Accept Shadows. Go to your Solid and open Material Options, which is located under the layer options. Don’t be alarmed the next step reveals all.

Go to Layer > New > Light and make sure that the Cast Shadows check box is selected. Now we’ll add a light, so that we can begin creating our shadows. Align the bottoms of your text layers to your new Solid plane so that they’re on the “ground.” The next - very important - step, is to change your camera view from Active Camera to Right. This will be your plane for the shadows, sometimes called a “shadow catcher”. Make your new Solid a 3D layer and rotate and place it within the composition so it fits the perspective of the clip. Go to Layer > New > Solid and create a new white (#ffffff) Solid. Since the footage file will not be a 3D layer, we need a plane for the shadows to project onto. I also parented the “AP” to the “G” with the “Parenting” Piq Whip, so that I can animate the whole word consistently.

Rotate your layers so that they fit with the perspective of the scene.įor this scene, we know that the letter “G” gets shattered in the end, so we’ll want to keep that as a separate layer. Start adding your text, making it into 3D layers by checking the “3D” box on each text layer. To create the final clip in this tutorial, I used New York City Subway Train Arriving by Shutterstock contributor Duncan Frazier: Go to File > Import > File and input your footage of choice.

As with our previous video tutorials, all of the tools and effects used here come standard with After Effects. We’ll also touch on another powerful effect called Shatter.

#After effects 2 drop shadows how to#

Have you ever wanted to put text into your video and make it look like it really lives in the scene? No, this isn’t another 3D Camera Tracking Tutorial - this time, you’ll learn how to add shadows to your text, making it appear as if it’s really in the shot.