Inner Drop Shadow

rrcalbick · March 2018

This might be a silly question, but is there a way to create an inner drop shadow on a smooth polygon? I've been playing with the various sheet effects to no avail. Either I'm missing something terribly obvious or there is no simple way to do this.

Monsen · March 2018

Not directly, but you can achieve something similar by placing a path on top of the edge of the polygon, and have that path cast a shadow. You'll probably need a couple of partial paths on different sheets with different shadow angles to get this right however, and some trial and error). The end result depends a lot on exactly what you are trying to achieve though.

Loopysue · March 2018

I think I may have the wrong idea about what you are trying to achieve. I suggested an inner glow over on the FB group page just now, but Monsen's answer has made me stop and think.

Do you have a screen shot of what you are trying to do?

rrcalbick · March 2018

I was afraid I might have to do something like that, but your comments make sense. I was hoping for something simpler, akin to Photoshop's inner drop shadow blending option. No worries, thanks for the info!

rrcalbick · March 2018

If you've ever looked at lake depth woodcuts, that's what I want to do. Like in this image:

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0184/8744/products/LakeTahoe_24.5x31_-L_1024x1024.jpg?v=1350867584

Monsen · March 2018

As Sue hinted to, you should be able to approximate that with an inner glow.

rrcalbick · March 2018

I'll fiddle with it some more, thanks!

Wyvern · March 2018

I think you may be able to duplicate the effects on that lovely woodcut map if you set up each wooden layer from that on a separate CC3+ sheet. Then create a solid rectangle on the sheet, and draw your smooth polygon onto that. Then use Multipoly on both polygons, so you now have a rectangle with a hole the shape of your smooth polygon in the centre of it. Add a Wall Shadow, Directional effect to the sheet, and then adjust its parameters, and that of the Global Sun to get the same kind of shadow on one side of the woodcut map's layers, but none on the other. You can add the thin black outline for each woodcut layer by copying the smooth polygon shape onto a separate CC3+ sheet (these lines can all go onto one, with no effects on it, but make sure it's nearer the top of the drawing stack of sheets than the woodcut layer sheets), and changing those polygons to each have a Hollow fill with a suitably thin line width of appropriate colour. You'll also need to add a mask sheet on top of everything to hide the shadows being cast outside the map borders because of the Wall Shadow, Directional effects on each of the woodcut layer sheets. This is probably still more complex than you were hoping for, I fear, but it should get you quite close to the artwork effects in your linked image.

rrcalbick · March 2018

Excellent, that seems to be the answer I was looking for, thank you Wyvern! It is a bit more involved than I was hoping for, but the end result will be well worth it I think. Thanks!

Loopysue · March 2018

Yep, Wyvern to the rescue

rrcalbick · March 2018

Actually, I think I may have a simpler way to do this. So if I have three levels or contours, I put them each on their own sheet, one atop the other, with the "deepest" one on top. On each sheet:

1) Create a polygon with a fillstyle using one of the transparent bitmaps (e.g., solid 20 Bitmap)
2) Apply a Drop Shadow effect to each sheet (Offset X: 0, Offset Y: -5, Opacity: 75%, Blur Radius 1 unit, effect units set to map units)
3) Apply an Inner Glow to each sheet for an overall outline of each contour (black, Opacity: 100%, Brightness: 75%, Blur Radius: 2 units, effect units set to map units)

This creates a very similar effect to Wyvern's method of creating a multipoly. The land itself would also have a drop shadow, although the Offset Y value would be 5 instead.

This seems to achieve the effect I'm going for as well. The resulting drop shadow on each contour is actually at the top and therefore makes it appear like it's actually a shadow from the contour above.

Wyvern · March 2018

I'm glad you managed to sort something out in the end! There's usually more than one way of tackling an issue like this with CC3+, but finding out is often a matter of what you've done with the program before, and some methods can be more successful and/or quicker and easier than others. And it's very easy to get distracted playing around with some of the sheet effects... ;D

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Inner Drop Shadow

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