How to make realistic shadow in Affinity Designer?

[Egor Komarov]

Affinity Designer do not have good blur filters or perspective tools or morphing. And i do not have idea how to make really good shadow for objects. 
Any idea? 

[Alfred]

Affinity Designer doesn't have a Perspective Tool yet, but it has a perfectly good Gaussian blur effect.

 

A simple way to make a shadow object is to duplicate all of the elements, place the duplicate copy behind the original and click on the 'Add' icon on the Geometry toolbar to create a single object from it. You can then give it a black fill* (with no stroke) and apply a Gaussian blur to soften the edges. Set the opacity of the fill according to how strong you want the shadow to be, and shear it to the angle that you want. Finally, shrink or stretch it to the required length.

 

I've attached an example I made earlier.

 

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*The fill doesn't have to be black, of course. You might, for example, want to simulate the effect of yellow light, in which case the shadow would be blue.

[Graphix_Guy82]

Hi, I'm new to using this software, and am having some trouble with making a shadow.  I got the image of what I want in a group along with all the parts I used to make it.   I duplicated the layer group, but when I go up to click the geometry toolbar, it is grayed out.   Do you have an idea of what I am doing wrong? Do I have to merge/rasterize all my layers in the group first?

[Alfred]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity Forums, @Graphix_Guy82.

 

A group is a single object, but for Geometry operations such as 'Add' you need to select two or more objects. Select the group and ungroup it (but keep it selected) and you should find that the 'Add' icon is no longer greyed out.

 

[Graphix_Guy82]

Thx for you help with this... I will try it

 

[Benjalp]

is it possible to make a shadow cast to one side of a figure and not around it? (I don't mean to move it).

Cheers!