Creating contact shadow

[joost]

Is there a (simple) way to create a "contact shadow" effect as e.g. KeyNote can do?  At the moment I copy my vector drawing to KeyNote (which rasterizes it) and add a contact shadow. This is a bit clunky and I end up with a pixelated image. A way to do this directly in affinity designer would be much preferred.

[Old Bruce]

Is this the sort of thing you mean by 'contact shadow'?

[firstdefence]

A Contact Shadow makes the object look like it’s standing on the slide.

[firstdefence]

The best method I have worked out is not to draw an ellipse for a point of contact but a stroke with the ends narrowed.

Did a bit of refining on the contact shadow this morning.

 

 

contact shadow.afdesign

 

[GarryP]

I had a quick go at this and came up with a fairly easy method of duplicating the arrow, converting it to curves, making the fill darker, squashing it quite a lot vertically, squashing it a little horizontally, adding a bit of blur and knocking the opacity down a bit.
The bottom example in my attached image shows the shape of the ‘shadow arrow’.
I can’t decide if it looks reasonably realistic or not but it might be usable for some basic needs.

[firstdefence]

Yeah I tried that Garry but it didn’t look quite right and it doesn’t like the arrow is connecting with the surface, the shadow at the point of contact isn’t dense enough to suggest contact, hence the use of pinched strokes, I suppose you could shape an ellipse to be a double teardrop shape but the stroke method seemed to yield a better result. 

 

[Aaron Martin]

My workaround for this is to make a shadow and rasterize it and shorten it by and reduce the width. This process has works better in afphoto since u can give it some extra dept of field blur and some other adjustments to it. Downside is it will make it rasterize so not very good for resizing but gets the job almost done. I hope we could have more blur effects adjustments on designer though. 

[GarryP]

No, you’re right, it doesn’t look like it’s connecting with the surface does it?
In lieu of creating it in real life to see what the shadow looks like I wonder if someone could quickly knock this up in a some 3D software to show us what it might look like. (I haven’t used Blender for years so I’d have to learn to do it from scratch again.)
I wonder what the shadow of a 2D shape would look like and whether that would look ‘right’ even if it was nearer what was real.

[firstdefence]

Realistically a 2D shape, so as close as can be made in the real world - a sheet of inkjet paper cut into the Arrow shape above would not cast a shadow or would be so faint thin as to be unseen if the light was directly above, the object would need some depth to it, so extruded to create a surface that could block light enough that it would cast a perceivable shadow.

I actually cut the double arrow head out of paper and used my iPhone light to try and test it but you can’t make it perfectly flat so the kinks in the paper do cast a shadow and quite a strong one too when using an iPhone light, solid for the full width of the shape, this is probably because the iPhone light acts as an intense spot light. The light from my Mac screen was giving a nice diffused shadow effect onto the paper but was from the back and cast a faint shadow forwards from each point of the arrow making contact with the surface, a bit like this.

[firstdefence]

Following on from the light from the Mac screen I moved the light slightly back and got what one could consider a contact shadow of sorts.

[GarryP]

Interesting. I wonder which, if any, of these the OP prefers.

[firstdefence]

8 minutes ago, GarryP said:

Interesting. I wonder which, if any, of these the OP prefers.

I suppose the one that least interferes with the rest of the interface which would be the last version, at least we get a better idea of how a real world contact shadow should look on a double headed arrow, I can see why the shadows are simplified enough to make the viewer think that the 2D object is sitting on a surface without going into making a true representation. I mean how often would you see such a thing?

Having said that, my observation has become shadow acute lol! I’m now looking at everything that can have a shadow and how that interplay between light and dark works. 🤔

[GarryP]

I have a feeling that one of the simple ways is probably what they will prefer as it’s quick and easy to do.
I think most people wouldn’t notice if the shadow was or wasn’t perfect as, like you say, how often do we see a 2D shape sitting up on a surface by itself with a very specific sort of lighting mainly from the top? As long as it looks okay for the second or less that we look at it then it will probably be fine.
As for now looking at every shadow that comes up and trying to figure out what’s happening, I can understand that way of thinking and have been there myself on occasion.