Make Marbel Texture..
Make variable colored grid..
Neon Text..
The micro bevel..
Rusted Type..
3D Text/Logo..
Techno-wave Effect..
Trendy Avatar..
Simple background..
Digital Effect..
Polar Coordinates..
Water drops..
LCD Screens..
Steel Type..
Pixelated Text..
Smooth Edges..
Vectorizing Photos..
Luminous Essence..
Transparency..
Digital Smoke..
Game cube logo..
Gradient Grids..
Sparkles..
Driping Slime..
Borders..
Cartoon Clouds..
Organic Tech..
Aqua Balls..
Kerning and Tracking text..
Getting rid of overlap..
Weaving a ribbon through text..
Blend layers w/ opacity mask..
Brilliant Color..
Create 3D Cylinder..
Creating Artistic Brushes..
Fine Lines Design..
Transition b/w two objects..
Distortion Effect..
Soft Proof your colors..
Knotworking..
Creating views..
Transforming shapes..
Creating Image map..
Optimizing web graphics..
Using Slice tool..
Creating web button..
Animation of scaling..
Ripple Animation..
Colors changes to animation..
Neon light animation..
Creating a Navigation bar..
Animated Imagemap Button..
Preloader with FlashMX..
Sound Control..
Steel Flash..
Using masks..
Loading an external movie..
Flash light effect..
Flash game techniques (P-1)..
Flash game techniques (P-2)..
Flash game techniques (P-3)..
Flash game techniques (P-4)..
Flash game techniques (P-5)..
Dropdown menu for FlashMX..
Zoom blur effect..
Dessolving words ..
Spotlight masking..
Passing variable to Flash..
Clear Text..
Create Time in Flash..
Change colors of movieclip..
Creating sites using CSS ..
Dreamweaver 4 Flash buttons..
Defining a site..
Dreamweaver Form tips..
Dreamweaver interface..
Creating nested tables..
Rollover form buttons..
Graphics Editing w/ DW & FW..
Inserting FW HTML into DW..
Working with templates..
Quick shapes in freehand..
Making a 3D pie-chart..
Exporting GIFs from Freehand..
Creating 3D Soccer Ball..
Creating Perspective shadows..
Chrome effect in Freehand..
Creating Hollow Envelopes..
Building Buttons..
Drawing a heart symbol..
3D Ball ..
Bouncing ball..
Automating Fireworks..
Text writing animation..
Fireworks 4 Popup menus..
Creating Gel Text..
Outline tool overview..
Cracked text..
Page curl ..
Contoured Text ..
Drop Shadows ..
Creating complex shapes..
Creating volumetric clouds..
Water/Fire/Smoke Effect ..
The Power of Radial array..
Modelling an Eye..
Welding vertices..
Animating a ball..
Realistic Texturing..
Polygon basics..
Lathe Tutorial ..
Emit geometry from a point emitter..
Creating a missile trail..
Animating a flying baloon..
Introduction to Expressions..
Making MEL Procedures..
Introduction to MEL Scripting..
Modeling a mechanical hand..
Build a spiral staircase..
Building leg skeletons..
Modeling a head..
Texturing the head..

How to make water ripple..
Create Ghost shader..
Using two bone IK Solver..
Using multi-texturing..

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

10) Now repeat steps 4-9 on any other objects you want shadows for. Like I did for the second person shown above.

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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