Dale Posted January 13, 2015 Share Posted January 13, 2015 Vic Asecas on our Facebook page asked about creating a long shadow, it would be good to have in future. Here's the example effect Vic wants to achieve: When I had a play I struggled to make it look as good, it seemed to me that the effect can be approximated with dark shapes and a gradient transparency, but the gradient has a straight profile perpendicular to the gradient path. In Illustrator, this effect can be achieved using blended copies of objects that go from e.g. 20% opacity down to 0% with a blend spacing of e.g. 1pt. Even with a long shadow this produces vector banding like the bad old days, so I'm sure there's a nicer way we could achieve it. Mesh fills would be one possibility, obviously the Blend tool on the roadmap is another, but maybe a Long Shadow layer effect/tool is another possibility? ronnyb 1 Quote Twitter: @Writer_DaleAffinity apps run on: Ryzen 5 3600, 32GB RAM, GTX1650 Super Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted January 13, 2015 Staff Share Posted January 13, 2015 Hi Dale, It's possible to construct these effects with the current tools (with smooth gradients). I gave it a shot (and will take another look later) but it seems feasible already. Here's what i have: MattP 1 Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software | Affinity Quick Reference Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ronnyb Posted January 17, 2015 Share Posted January 17, 2015 Miguel, would u post the settings you used for long shadow effect? That would make a great Style preset!! ecols33 1 Quote 2021 16” Macbook Pro w/ M1 Max 10c cpu /24c gpu, 32 GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Ventura 13.6 2018 11" iPad Pro w/ A12X cpu/gpu, 256 GB, iPadOS 17 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted January 17, 2015 Staff Share Posted January 17, 2015 I didn't use any effects, I've drawn the shadows manually. I still want to look at this again and I will try to replicate it with the FX. As soon as i finish i will post the afdesign file here. ronnyb 1 Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software | Affinity Quick Reference Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
retrograde Posted January 18, 2015 Share Posted January 18, 2015 That's how I would do it as well MEB... I would use a black multiply fill around 10-15% opacity then apply a transparent gradient on it. That way if you change the blue to another colour the shadow still works. Once you create the shadow shape you can just duplicate it as many times as you need it and adjust as you go... you could also save it as a style to quickly apply it or use in other documents... Quote http://www.kevincreative.com https://www.behance.net/kevincreative https://dribbble.com/kevincreative https://www.instagram.com/kevincreative/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dale Posted January 19, 2015 Author Share Posted January 19, 2015 It's certainly a good approximation Miguel with nice radial transparency, but for other shapes it would need a more complex solution provided by the maths of the Affinity guys rather than the hands of a designer. Quote Twitter: @Writer_DaleAffinity apps run on: Ryzen 5 3600, 32GB RAM, GTX1650 Super Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted January 20, 2015 Staff Share Posted January 20, 2015 Yes, I know what you mean Dale. There's no way to automatically create the shape of the shadow based on the source shape through styles. Only scripting or hard coding the effect would solve the geometry transformation issue. Nothing i can do there. But there's other considerations in hard coding it on the app. This is a compound effect that only is being discussed here, because it's a trending effect. In two years it will become obslolete and nobody will be doing it anymore (aqua effects - just to pick a widely spreaded effect -, anyone remember those?). It's also too complex to be implemented as an FX (for the same reason: it will become dated) and because FX are meant to be basic building blocks (attributes) for other compound styles/effects, and not finished parametric effects themselves (i believe). Also a pre-coded effect like this is more adequate for a consumer level oriented software or as a plug-in than for a professional application, which can rely on scripting and/or actions to speed up the creation of effects like this. The scripting support solution may solve those issues, but is almost useless for the majority of users. Most people buy Affinity to design, draw or ilustrate, not to code, which turns it into a niche solution. Regarding the actions, it's still may be tricky to implement those shape transformations with actions because some operations needed for this effect are performed at a node/path level, not at a shape level (stretch, scale, rotate etc), but i may be wrong here. That's why i want to take another look at this. What are those Photoshop actions doing regarding the shape transformation issue? Would be interesting to know what others think about this too. Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software | Affinity Quick Reference Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dale Posted January 20, 2015 Author Share Posted January 20, 2015 It isn't me the consumer-level author guy asking for this feature, it seemed to come from a designer using Illustrator. This style requires the use of a competitor's product instead of AD, so I pass the request on for consideration, I do appreciate that it's not critically important. There's a technical side that piqued my interest because the technique Illustrator designers are using now, making blended shapes, is a "sub optimal" way to achieve this effect :) so an alternative is worth considering for a moment. And besides, it could be used for more than this one effect, it could lend itself to some much nicer illustration styles. We get requests for other kinds of shadows too, with shear, variable blur and variable opacity over distance, maybe this idea sits alongside them? How many of them will be plug-ins or scripting in future? That beats having no solution, but by the time we get there we could match the blended shape method anyway, which might be fine enough. Maybe if our planned Blend shapes tool had a Gaussian Blur option that clipped within the shape extent, then no special feature, script, or plug-in is needed at all? Quote Twitter: @Writer_DaleAffinity apps run on: Ryzen 5 3600, 32GB RAM, GTX1650 Super Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted January 20, 2015 Staff Share Posted January 20, 2015 I know it wasn't you Dale and i'm not using a consumer-level term here in a depreciative way. It's in the sense that it's a pre-build compound effect that you apply with one click (it's restrictive). But if an apllication consumer-level or not, speeds up or do something that helps achieve what you want, i'm all for it. I think it makes more sense your last suggestion to integrate all those attributes in a amplified shadow FX (shear, variable blur and variable opacity over distance, shadow extension) than integrate it as a single compound effect. The Blend tool is always welcome no matter what! Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software | Affinity Quick Reference Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ecols33 Posted April 13, 2015 Share Posted April 13, 2015 Hi Dale, It's possible to construct these effects with the current tools (with smooth gradients). I gave it a shot (and will take another look later) but it seems feasible already. Here's what i have: long shadow_1.png How did you make this? I currently make a bunch of shapes where I want to make the shadow, then combine them using the add tool, and then fill them with a gradient. On rounded rectangle shapes, getting the corner is SUPER annoying! This takes a long time and I want to know if there are other methods. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TJNickerson Posted July 23, 2015 Share Posted July 23, 2015 For anyone wondering how to do this, I tried making a blog post explaining it the best I could. It is still relatively tedious compared to Illustrator or Inkscape, but it's really not that bad once you get the hang of it. Grigory Nokhrin 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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