After Effects Tutorial - 29 - Shadows Video Lecture | How to Make/Edit Movies & Animation with Adobe After Effects - Software Development

what's up guys welcome to your 29th
After Effects tutorial and in this
tutorial I'm going to be going over
shadows now well I guess let's just go
ahead and start enough of me talking so
let's go ahead and I'm going to open a
new composition and by open it I mean
make 10 go ahead and drag clip right
here get rid of this one so now we have
just basic clip you can even have a
solid if you want but I'm just going to
have a clip and get a good still with me
and and oh yeah that's good or hate it
and now I made this a little thing in
Photoshop and it's just my name and make
sure that when you make it has some
alpha which mean or transparency you
might call it so as you can see um this
has some transparency you can see
through it so the next thing we want to
do is go ahead and create a new light so
go ahead and click a layer new light and
make sure it's any light besides ambient
means pretty much covers the whole thing
spotlight yeah just put a spotlight and
make sure this little cast shadows box
is checked now go ahead and click OK BAM
look at that nothing happened and let me
tell you what first of all whenever you
composition 3d is off by default and
shadows can only cast on 3d so go ahead
and click those 3d boxes just like that
and now let me find my Z and move it out
now as you can see we still aren't
really getting any shadows in what I
mean aren't really I mean we're not
getting any shadows at all and that's
because whenever gone cast shadows this
light is good right now but we have to
set up these layers so that shadows
aren't abled on them so the first thing
we need to do is go ahead and click
material options under your Bucky layer
and click a cast shadow see it's off go
ahead and click on right there and now
we don't have a shadow yet but that's
just because it's not moved in the right
direction so as you can see is we move
this
z position we begin to get the shadow
we're looking for but actually the
shadow kind of sucks right now it just
looks like pretty much like another
layer really so we want to give a
realistic shadow so let me go ahead and
change my intensity in my life we're
done working the only thing we're going
to be working with now is like so under
light options go ahead and give it a
little more intensity brighten it up a
little bit and now to give it a
realistic shadow we probably don't want
it this dark I mean uh shadows just
aren't that dark this is like solid
black right now so what we want to do is
lighten up the shadow darkness a little
bit and there we go maybe even a little
more but I want to make sure you guys
can see it so adjust the shadow darkness
and again this is under your light
options shadow darkness now another
thing that you usually want to do is
take the shadow diffusion and this
pretty much means the fuzziness of the
shadow shadow darkness means how dark it
is shadow diffusion means on how fuzzy
it is you probably want to change this
to a few pixels like there that's good
right there 11 so instead of having nice
hard crisp edges you have a little like
faded away like a shadow usually is so
I'm going to put that about 12 right
there so again the key things you have
to take note of is make sure the layer
layers you want to cast our turn the 3d
make sure under the thing that's casting
the shadow you have cash shadow on and
another thing to make realistic looking
shadows you probably want to lighten up
your shadow darkness and also your
shadow diffusion wants to be somewhere
in like the 10 pixel arrange or whatever
you know whatever is useful for your
animation so that's your quick tutorial
on what shadows are and how to use them
in After Effects I'll probably well I
don't know what I'm going to be talking
about in the next tutorial so I guess
you're just going to have to watch and
see but thank you for watching this
tutorial I hope you learned a little
something but not too much of course
don't forget to subscribe and i look
forward to teaching you something in
next
tour