- Next we will add the Drop Shadow filter to the ball on Frame 15. At this point in our animation, the ball is at the bottom of the stage. Therefore, the Distance between the ball and its shadow is smaller and the Strength of the shadow will be higher.
On Frame 15, go to the Filters tab and select the ball. Change the following values for the Drop Shadow filter.
Blur X and Y: 20
Strength: 90%
Quality: High
Angle: 90
Distance: 50 - Now we will set the filter properties for the last frame. Go to Frame 30 and set the following values. These values are basically the same as for Frame 1. But I have set the Distance to be slightly less than that for Frame 1. This will prevent the illusion that the ball stops in space for those two frames.
Blur X and Y: 20
Strength: 30%
Quality: High
Angle: 90
Distance: 140
Test your movie again. OK, we have a drop shadow following our ball. But it would look more realistic if the shape of the shadow was not a circle. We need to flatten the shape of the shadow a little. But to do this we would need to flatten the ball. We do not want to do that. So, how do we get around this dilemma? We will copy the ball to a new layer and then we can change the shape of the ball and its shadow on the Shadow layer. - Add a new layer and name it "Ball". Add a Keyframe to Frame 15 and 30.
- Go to Frame 1 on the Shadow layer and select the ball. Click Edit – Copy. Go to Frame 1 on the Ball layer and click Edit – Paste in Place. We have just copied both the ball and its shadow to the Ball layer. But we do not want to copy the shadow to this layer - only the ball.
Go to the Filters tab and select the ball again. Click on the Minus sign to remove the filter. - Repeat the last step to copy the ball from Frame 15 and 30 of the Shadow layer to the same frames on the Ball layer.
- Add a Motion Tween to the Ball layer.
Test your movie and you should not see any change. We still need to work on the shape of our shadow. Let's lock the Ball layer while we work on the Shadow layer. On the Ball layer, lock and turn off the visibility. Now go back to the Shadow layer and let's get to work. - On the Shadow layer, we are ready to flatten the shadow shape. In order to do this, we must flatten the ball that creates the shadow. On Frame 1, select the ball and click on the Free Transform tool. Push down until the ball is flatter. (Alternative - You can also change the Height setting in the Property Inspector to about 30.)
- We really do not need two copies of the ball but we cannot remove the ball on the Shadow layer without losing the shadow. So we will make the ball invisible. Go to the Filters tab, select the ball and place a checkmark next to Knockout. This should make the ball disappear but the shadow will still be visible.
- Repeat the last two steps for Frame 15 and 30 on the Shadow layer.
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