Shadows in animation

[adub99]

Hi all, fairly new to this, but a very general question which I'm hoping someone will at least point me in the right direstion to finding the answer...
I have created a character in the generator, and got it moving around the stage just how I want, but am having trouble working out how to cast a shadow from it (its gonna be a sot of sunshine behind it, casting a shadow to the front, which I want to follow the character about)
I can do this with a single layer and vector groups etc, but as soon as there are switch layers involved, I'm getting totally lost !
I was hoping someone could at least give me a few pointers (im not after anyone to do it all for me, as half the fun is working it out for yourself, but I am, as I say TOTALLY lost)
Any help would be greatly appreciated

[GCharb]

Hello adub99

One way to do it is to animate your character, make a copy of it, turn it black with some transparency, then use the layer deformation tools to skew it on the floor or whatever.

[adub99]

Would I copy everything in the switch layer. This is a character created with the generator

[hayasidist]

depends on how strong and where in the sky your sunlight is (high = small shadows, low = long shadows). if the sunlight is very bright you'll have a strong shadow - like a shadow puppet - and Gilles has said it - you'll need a faithful, but distorted copy of the shape of your character (so no need to dup features that don't alter the overall sillhoutte). If the sun is hazy you could get away with just a few blobs of semi-opaque fuzzy-edged stuff that are a close enough match to the sillhoutte and that you can move around to mirror character movement (maybe controlled bones linked to the main rig or maybe point animation).

don't forget how a shadow moves as you lift your foot etc especially if the sun is low in the sky.