Making a simple "drop shadow" in Illusion 01 Nov 00
(Note: an Illusion project file containing the emitter used here
can be found at the end of the tutorial, and CAN be loaded by the demo version of Illusion.)
Here's a simple idea that I came up with recently -- I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner because it
really is quite simple and looks great.
First, we need a "single particle" emitter that we can move around the stage. What's a "single particle" emitter? Regular
emitters in Illusion emit many particles constantly. When a particle type is flagged as a "single particle", only
one particle is created, and it stays attached to the emitter. These type of emitters can be used as "sprites" to move
an image around the stage.
("Single Particle" particle types can also be used to add glows to regular emitters, but in this case we'll be using
the emitter as a sprite.)
We'll start with one of the "Illusion" emitters from the "logo effects" library. This emitter is available in the
demo library as well -- it's called "Logo -- Spin Shrink 1" in the demo, and is called "Spin Shrink 1" in the
"logo_effects_v1" library. If you don't have this IEL (and you're using the registered version of Illusion) click
here to download it. Then unzip into
your Illusion folder. To load the library into Illusion, r-click in the library window and select "load library" then
select this new IEL.
Let's get started now. Make the background color of the stage a medium to dark grey color. (R-click on the stage and
select "Background Color".) Now place the emitter on the stage near the center. If you jump to frame 40 (make sure
the "show particles" toolbar button is pressed) you should see this:
We're going to get rid of all of the "action" that this emitter does -- the spinning, shrinking, etc. since we just want
a simple word to move around the screen, at least to start with. We do this by reseting several properties such as
size over life, velocity over life, etc. First select "size over life" in the Hierarchy Window. The Graph Window should
show this:
Now R-click on the Graph Window and select "Reset". You should see this on the stage now:
Now select the "spin over life" property and reset its graph in the same way. You should see:
Do the same for "velocity over life":
Now select "spin" and make it 0:
Select "velocity" and make it 0 as well:
Actually, you probably didn't have to set "velocity" to 0 because once a particle type is
flagged as "single particle" velocity doesn't have any effect -- the particle is attached to the
emitter position. It was good to see how these properties worked together in the original emitter
though.
We only have 2 more steps. First, open the emitter properties dialog (R-click on the emitter and select
"Properties" or just hit Alt+Enter) click the "particles" tab, and check the "Single Particle" option.
Oops. Now I see that there is another step we need to do. See how the particle (since there is only one
particle now instead of many drawing on top of each other) fades in then disappears? We need to adjust the
color and/or transparency gradients of the particle type to make it stay solid white throughout its life. Do
that by selecting the "Colors" page. There's the problem: the "transparency over life" gradient.
Make it solid white by clicking the "link transparency to color" option. Now the preview window shows the
particle solid (not fading) as we want it, but it doesn't look "bright" enough. Check the "visibility" properties
in the hierarchy (check both the emitter visibility property and the particle type visibility property) and
make sure they are both set to 100%. Then close the emitter properties dialog by clicking OK.
The only thing left to do is make the emitter bigger -- it's too small. Just select the emitter "size" property
in the Hierarchy Window and slide it up to about 270%. Here's what your emitter should look like now:
That seems like a lot of work just to get a simple "sprite" emitter on the stage. Well, it was, but only because
we started with a fairly complex emitter. If you save this emitter now or add it to a library,
you'll have a quick starting point for any "sprite" emitters you want to use -- you'll just have to change the
shape image and will be ready to go. (The main reason I started with this particular emitter was to make sure
that everybody had access to it.)
Now we'll finally get to making the shadow. It's really simple. First, COPY the emitter (using the toolbar
button, Ctrl+C, or the Edit menu), then PASTE it. What you now have is two emitters in the same place on the
stage. Use the Hierarchy Window to select the bottom emitter (it's lower in the hierarchy). Open the properties
dialog for this emitter, select the "tint strength" property in the hierarchy, and set the value in the graph window
to 100%. Then change the Tint Color (by clicking on the little color box next to "Tint Color") to black. Then
close the properties dialog by clicking OK.
It doesn't look any different. Why not? Well, that's because we just changed the bottom emitter -- remember there
is a copy of the emitter directly on top of it. Now we'll make the shaow visible. Make sure the lower emitter is
still selected, and use the "Nudge" buttons to move the black emitter a few pixels down and to the right (or up
and to the left, or however you want the shadow to look).
That's all there is to it. You can also decrease the visiblity of the black emitter to "lighten" the shadow a little
if you want to.
The main steps to making the shadow are just:
1) Copy the emitter and paste it.
2) Make the lower emitter black.
3) Nudge the lower emitter slightly.
Note that if you want to make the emitter move around, or rotate, or change size (or change in any way)
you'll want to delete the shadow emitter, make all of your changes, then copy and paste it again. A note
about nudging emitters that move over time: when you Nudge the shadow emitter, hold down the CTRL key
so the entire emitter path moves. If you don't hold CTRL then only the emitter position at the current
frame will change.
It's a neat effect, and simple to do.
The project file: 
(2 KB)
(This project file CAN be loaded by the demo version of Illusion.)
Alan Lorence 01 Nov 00