Shadows not showing

[Mattyj]

ugh I have checked animate layer effects and turned shadows on in the shadows tab, but still no shadows. I even tried the technique where you duplicate the chosen layer then colorize it in a slightly transparent Black but still no shadow effect. Any suggestions?

[MrMiracle77]

Do you have a screencap of the setup, and maybe one of the layer properties panel as well?

[Hoptoad]

Not sure why you aren't seeing shadows. Unless...

A shadow doesn't appear in the workspace, it appears when you render, so Preview > Render to see the shadow. A lot of fancy effects aren't visible until you render: Gradients, for example.

[dueyftw]

The best way to make shadows is to duplicate the layer. Change the colors to black. Then adjust the opacity to 50 or less and use the x rotation tool to move it.

Note! Done when your happy with the animation.

Dale

[Greenlaw]

Additional Tip: An easy way to change colors for a duplicate of a rigged character is to select the character's Bone layer, open the Layer Settings, enable Colorizing and set it to the desired shadow color and 255 Alpha. Just like with regular shadows, you won't see the result till you render, but this saves you from having to re-color every shape in the duplicate rig, including the ones in Switch layers.

I do this when I need to construct special mattes for compositing using Moho's Layer Comps for output. (If you're compositing, you can just use the character's alpha channel for shadows or to set up lighting effects.)

(I wish Layer Comps had one-click settings to set up special mattes for output. Actually, I'd like to see Layer Comps get options for other special output like normal maps, motion vectors, depth pass, etc. This data can be super useful when compositing. Even better, if Moho will support EXR, then all this data can be embedded in a single file.)

[Mattyj]

Awesome, really really appreciate the feedback again. Think ive forgotten to lower the layer opacity when duplicating and colorizing which is probably the issue. Will hopefully sort this and let ppl know if it worked. Cheers.

Matt

[Mattyj]

cool so shadows are working now upon render, does colorizing a duplicate layer for a shafow effect not show up until render too? Still does not seem to be working that approach, but will try your suggestion also Greenlaw, cheers all for the help again, such a primo program.