Tutorial 210: Textured Shadows

Joe Clay | Sep 4, 2020

In this After Effects tutorial, we build a mask that can follow another layer. This technique is helpful in creating shadows out of images and textures. It's extra handy because you can set it all up with one texture layer and have everything in your scene use that single layer for its shadow. This technique can also be used anywhere else you need a mask to follow a layer.

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Expression

Make sure to change the layer in offset/xOffset below as well as provide the proper offsets as show in the tutorial.

Tracking x-only

xOffset = thisComp.layer("01").transform.xPosition - 1295;
pts = thisProperty.points();
for(i = 0; i < pts.length; i++) {
    pts[i] += [xOffset, 0];
}
inTans = thisProperty.inTangents();
outTans = thisProperty.outTangents();
createPath(pts, inTans, outTans, true);

Tracking xy

offset = thisComp.layer("01").transform.position - [1588, 511];
pts = thisProperty.points();
for(i = 0; i < pts.length; i++) {
    pts[i] += offset;
}
inTans = thisProperty.inTangents();
outTans = thisProperty.outTangents();
createPath(pts, inTans, outTans, true);

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