Floor shadows in front of object

[carygee]

Is there any way to place a floor shadow in front of an object? (i.e. the light from behind)

[carygee]

Is there any way to place a floor shadow in front of an object? (i.e. the light from behind)

[ivan louette]

Actually you cannot put floor shadow in front of an object interactively, but with these steps it is not difficult to obtain the same kind of effects.

1° create your floor shadow
2° move it to behind your object
3° convert to editable shapes and ungroup
4° flip your shadow vertically and move it
5° apply a perspective mould to your shadow
6° play with some copies and a bleach ...

regards
ivan

[ivan louette]

...why not implement this possibility for shadows in next major releases ???
regards

ivan

[carygee]

Thanks. I too would implement this feature in a future release. In addition, the ability to fade the shadow (via a profile?) would be most helpful.

[ED]

This is not natural because it just does not look right.... If an object is "backlite" to cause a strong shadow in the forground then that object would/should be black (indicating the rear light source). When you look at the example above, which is nicely done, you will see a light source that is in the front/top/left area. The correct area for the shadow to be is in the default locations as done by XaraX. I think its fine that way it is now and if you MUST have it then you can still do it the way its shown above. No need to bloat the code with this however.

The BEST is good enough!

[leetucker1]

I would not expect that to bloat the code. I do not know the exact internal workings of the Xara code of course, but I'd expect that allowing forward floor shadows would simply be a matter of allowing the handles to be dragged 360 degrees and a slight improvement in the rendering algorithms. By no means should something like that change the code size more than a couple of kilobytes; it's mostly just using existing functions anyway, and thus it shouldn't cause bloat or slowing. It's a possibility to look into.

The best is good enough, but it won't be the best long if it doesn't keep getting better.

[xrenex]

But shadows in front of an object don't always have to be unnatural. Example: people looking at a sunset.

Following your line of thinking we wouldn't need a shadow tool at all.
But in my opinion this tool makes life a lot easier [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

[ED]

Just follow the above procedure and you'll be fine. No need to change XaraX, IMHO, to do something the program is already able to do now in a simple way. You already have full control for what you want once you add the above procedure to what X can do.

I'm all for making things better when it indeed does make the program more functional. Only Xara can determine if this is worth while.

The BEST is good enough!