creating a realistic drop shadow & stylized long shadow — after effects tutorial

Since the standard drop shadow in After Effects is pretttty trash I thought it would be helpful to give some alternatives that I regularly use that I think look a lot better.

The first is one that actually looks like a nice diffused shadow, and can be made pretty easily using 5 normal drop shadows. You can always use more to make it look even better, but 5 usually is good enough to sell the look. Basically what I do is stagger the shadows so that the distance and softness values double each time. Staggering them this way gives it a really nice falloff and manages to keep the directionality of the shadow in tact. By pickwhiping each shadow's distance to the previous shadow's distance x2 and the softness to it's own distance x2, you can create a chain of value changes that starts with the first drop shadow, allowing you to affect the shadows and distances of all 5 drop shadows at once!

The second shadow type is the more stylized long shadow. The main effects used to make it are CC Radial Blur set to "straight zoom" to blur out the layer in one direction - you can sort of think of this as our fake light source that is casting the shadow, Levels - with the channel set to alpha so that you can turn the blur solid by setting the input white value to 1, a Fill to change the color and CC Composite to put the original layer's contents back on top of everything else! One thing you'll notice with this one is that your layer's boundaries clip the Radial Blur off, the way most people get around this is to precompose the layer first before applying the effects. That way the layer boundaries take up the full screen and you avoid any clipping.

As always, I dive into more detail in the full video and step through how everything works as well as sprinkle in some spicy tips along the way





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timestamps
0:00 - Intro
0:34 - Making a Realistic Drop Shadow
3:54 - Making a Stylized Long Shadow


tags
after effects drop shadow, after effects tutorial, adobe after effects, motion graphics, drop shadow, after effects shadow tutorial, drop shadow effect, long shadow, drop shadow tutorial, natural 2d lighting, faux 3d after effects, drop shadow process, motion graphics tutorial, 3d shadow in after effects, drop shadow after effects, motion design tutorial, material design, after effects long shadow, long shadow in after effects, after effects shadow, shadows in after effects


If you enjoyed the tutorial on how to make long shadows in after effects then please drop a like and subscribe, it really helps a lot! Long shadows in after effects are really cool ways to make your motion graphics or just text in general stand out! Also creating realistic 3d drop shadow in after effects is another way to step up your style and set you apart from the rest!