Shadows Walkthrough

download: 16MB

Although not as in depth as the others, I've made a walkthrough on how I do shadows. It's available for download.

It's really more of an explanation or showcase of how I set one up, but does an OK job of getting the point across. While I was working on a static image that had animations added, it's the same idea for working with video*.

That little asterisk is pretty important though: If you're going to work on video, you will need to rotoscope the shadow matte layer (it controls where the shadow is allowed to be) and that can be time consuming.

For clarity:
The "Set Matte" effect here is the really important piece. That effect will force the solid layers to only show up where the breast is cutout. By then adding on a blur, it would basically look like a giant Outer Glow on the breast. Since shadows don't do that, there's a Mask on the layer, which further limits the size of the shadow. At the bottom of the pile of effects there is a second Set Matte that does something similar, except it keeps the shadow from going off her body.
That does mean you could just not use a mask and rely solely on that second Set Matte effect, but I like a bit more control.