Put it all together and you get this rather ugly looking thing: radiansToDegrees(Math.atan2(toCompVec(), toCompVec())) Note: You can change the color, opacity angle and distance of your shadows. Click on 'Inner Shadows.' You can see a three-dimensional shadow attached to your text or shape object. Right-click your text or object layer, and follow the same instructions in applying a drop down shadows.

Make sure that you have the Preview box checked to get a live preview with the applied effect and to notice any changes. After applying the Drop shadow from the Layer Styles panel as you normally would. This will open the Drop Shadow window, where you can select the settings of your drop shadow in Illustrator. After applying the Drop shadow from the Layer Styles panel as you normally. This is expressed in radians, so to make it useful for the drop-shadow direction control we use radiansToDegrees to turn it into degrees. Again, go to Create a composition > Add a Text or shape object. To add a drop shadow in Illustrator, select your shape (s) and just go to Effect > Stylize > Drop Shadow. If the vector you give it is the unit vector along the x axis of the layer (i.e the vector ) the result can be fed into the atan2 function to return the rotation of the layer in relation to the world. So it translates an arbitrary layer vector into comp space. What toCompVec does is to give you the composition equivalent for a given vector on your layer. That’s where the slightly mystifying toCompVec expression comes in. So we have to find their orientation in comp-space. But for layers that have parents or that are auto-oriented this won’t work. Simple enough, it compensates for the layer’s rotation by substracting it from the desired value. Normally to keep the drop shadow of a rotating element correctly aligned I use this on the direction property: value. The Drop Shadow applies a nice shadow behind your title. However, you can easily group your Layer Styles together by using the Drop Shadow as a style rather than an effect. Instant crowd scene!īut I want them to have a drop shadow. There’s a Drop Shadow effect under the Effects tab. I have some background elements that I want to wander around, and because I’m lazy I don’t want to hand animate them, so they just have a wiggle expression applied to their position channel and auto-orient switched on.

Drop shadow in after effects