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Creating Perspective Shadows
This tip will be focusing on the Perspective Grid and how you can create
Perspective Drop Shadows. It can be a bit awkward at first because you
are going to have to get used to how FreeHand scales objects on the perspective
Grid, but hopefully this will help you on that road.
It's a good lesson on all things Perspective, including some of which
I'll be showing you below.
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| In this exercise, I'll be adding a perspective shadow to the
two objects above. You can use just about anything for this tutorial,
as it is very versatile.
As you can see they sit on a 1 point perspective plane.
The shadow will be falling on the floor plane and be cast from
a single light source. |
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| 1) It's pretty important to figure out where
your light source is going to be as it helps determine
how "long" or "short" the shadows will be cast from the objects.
For a 1 point perspective grid such as this, it must be exactly
on the vertical plane above the vanishing point like shown above.
The higher up it is, the shorter the shadows are and it's the
opposite for a lower light source.
If you want a different shadow angle, just move the single convergent
point to a new location. Make sure to move that light source with
it. |
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| 2) Next, if your objects are oddly shaped,
draw a square that exactly surrounds the objects. After you've
done that, select them then click on the Guides layer to turn
them into Guides.
Grid hidden for clarity. |
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| 3) Turn on Snap to Point. Next draw
a line from the center of the light source down to and
beyond the innermost top corner of each of the Guide boxes.
When I say innermost, I mean use the top corner that is
closest to the light source like shown above. Select these lines,
and click on the Guide layer. Again these lines will be turned
into Guides to be used later.... you'll see.
For now, hide those Guides. |
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| 4) Next create a new layer and name it Shadow.
Put this layer below any others like shown above at left.
Second, select and Clone the objects casting the shadow
and put it on this new layer. Give this clone a Basic fill
containing your shadow color and set your strokes to None
or use that shadow color again. |
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| 5) While this clone is still selected, choose
the Perspective tool. Click-Hold on the clone and
tap the Down Arrow key to project it to the floor plane
of the grid like shown above.
Don't worry about the size yet... you'll be enlarging it in a
moment. |
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| 6) Now we are going to flip this clone. Click-Hold
on the clone again, and tap the Space Bar to flip it vertically
like shown above. |
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| 7) Now to enlarge the shadow you must
use some Perspective Grid modifier keys while holding the mouse
down on the object.
First Click-Hold on the shadow and press the 2 key
to enlarge it both x and y. To speed up the enlarging process,
you can hold the key down and watch it enlarge. This could
take a while to happen depending on how large you need the shadow
to be.
You can move the shape around while you are doing this
to get a better idea of how much more you need to go. Also, letting
up on the mouse once in a while will help with placing the shadow
like shown above. |
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| 8) Now turn those Guides back on. You'll
be using the vertical line guides for determining how far out
that shadow will fall on the floor plane.
Since you used the top innermost corner of the square as a guide
point, you'll be using the bottom innermost point of the projected
shadow bounding area. |
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| 9) Using a similar method as in step 7,
instead we'll be using the 7 key to enlarge the shadow
in the y direction only.
With the Perspective tool, Click-Hold the shadow and press
the 7 key to start enlarging the shadow. When you extend
the bottom innermost point of the object to hit the vertical
guide (highlighted above), you're finished. |
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| 10) Now repeat steps 4-9 on any other
objects you want shadows for. Like I did for the second person
shown above. |
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| When you are all finished, you can select the shadows and
go in the View menu and choose Perspective Grid -> Release
with Perspective.
After that, you can give the shadows special touches like gradient
fills or even use Lens fills if they cast over other things.
Other modifications to this include raising the objects casting
the shadows to appear as if they're floating. |
You can use this method for creating shadows on 2 or 3 point Perspective
Grids as well. I may expand this tutorial at a later time to demonstrate
other methods of creating Perspective Shadows when objects are on different
perspective planes. It gets a bit confusing, but works very much the same
way.
Make sure to visit that link mentioned at the top for more information
on the subject of Perspective.
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