Shadow along line

[Owen Henry]

Hiya. I need to have a shadow effect on a wiggly curved line, and it has to be in one direction. Trouble is, the shadow follows the curvature of the line, crossing it and going off in other directions. I can join and fill the shape, but it doesn't really help because the shadow is not the same depth or in the same direction - say to the north west.

Also, I need a med/heavy shadow off an invisible line, can I do this?

Thanks
Owen

[Mickie]

Owen,

You could try making two copies of the line and blending them. Then add some transparency and feathering to the blend – play with the profiles – and place behind the line.

Mickie

[Egg Bramhill]

Owen
On your second point, you can have a shadow off an invisible line, but the shadow is no longer editable.
Create the line.
Apply the required shadow
Arrange / Convert to editable shapes
Ungroup
Delete the line. (Your left with just the shadow)
Can't really understand your first problem. Perhaps you could post an image?
Egg

[tiddles]

Owen
You can have an invisible line but you have to convert the line and shadow to editable shapes,
set the line colour to "no clour" by right clicking in the little hatched box. You can then still resize the "shape" and the shadow will follow. You can turn the shadow off by changing the fill colour to "no colour"
It works cause I just tried it to see what would happen..... Xara X1 has a couple of ways of acheiving the same result...
Cheers
Terry

[Owen Henry]

Mickie: The line curves and turns, changing direction often. Imagine the outline of a hand, for example. I want about a quarter inch shadow with the shadow lying in one direction away from the line, regardless of the way the line direction changes. That sound weird I know. The blend suggestion ended up looking like a regular shadow, but maybe I got it wrong, I'll have another go.

See this example image. See how this regular shadow follows the line as it curves. I want the shadow to always stay in one direction away from the line, as opposed to sometimes going underneath and in the other direction. Ignore line on right.

Egg and tiddles: Thanks! this works nicely.

Thanks for the help.

Owen.

http://img297.echo.cx/img297/5010/line1pz.gif

[Egg Bramhill]

Owen
Is this the type of effect your after?
http://www.xlwebdesign.co.uk/tg/shadow.jpg
Egg

[Owen Henry]

Egg. Thats it, though with the shadow actually touching the line - but that's it. How to do?

[Egg Bramhill]

Owen

Here you go :

http://www.xlwebdesign.co.uk/tg/shadow2.gif

[glenngosack]

Hi Owen,
I tried this and it works... create your initial shape. Put a "glow" shadow around it. Convert this to editable shapes. Select just the initial shape and clone it (Ctl K). Hit Ctl C to copy it into the clipboard, then delete it. Next hit Ctl A to select everything left (assuming it's the only 2 objects there), and arrange/combine shapes/slice. Just the shadow remains but split at the original shape. Hit escape to unselect the objects and select just the lower half and delete it. Next hit Ctl-Shift-A to paste the original shape back to its original position and there you are.

I don't have a photobucket acct. so I tried to be as explicit as possible. Hope it helps

Glenn

[glenngosack]

Wow, Egg, you beat me to it.. and with pics...