Subtle shadows with grouped brightness transparency

[David O'Neil]

There has been much gnashing of teeth, and cursing trying to figure out quasi-photorealistic effects for the past week, but finally had a breakthrough, so another thing to post, as I haven't seen it in searches.

I was trying to get more realistic shadow effects, and just applying mix transparencies to objects and laying objects on top of each other resulted in darker shadows than desired, as well as the blend regions on them interacting in odd ways.

After much study, I found that a viable solution was grouped brightness transparencies. You can draw your shadows in shades of black (from 50% white to pure black), and then group everything, and apply brightness transparency, and viola! you have a complex shadow just the way you want it. It may take some playing around with the shades of black to get the exact shadow you want, but at least it works. After that, apply your white highlights, and everything comes out good.

Hope this helps someone else. For something so simple, it took a lot of time to figure out. The following example doesn't do it justice, but gives the idea. On another positive side, everything remains vector.