Illumination/Shadow

This effect was generated in Filter Forge, a Photoshop plugin that allows you to create your own filters.

Author: Crapadilla

• Send email
• All filters by this author (57)

Filter Details

• Downloads: 226
• Usage Rank: Low
• Comments (9)

Description

This snippet demonstrates a technique for generating drop shadows, smooth surface shadows and even ambient occlusion approximation effects for complex heightmaps. It provides a simple illumination/shadow model best suited for the use in simple-type filters that seek to emulate lighting and surface depth.

TIPS:
- The filter automatically interprets all source images as greyscale height maps.
- Disable 'Example Mode' to load a source image.
- The 'Light Angles' of 0, 90, 180 and 270 degrees correspond to light from the left, top, right and bottom respectively. Note that the control has no effect when 'Shadow Depth' is set to zero.
- Experiment with 'Shadow Depth' to achieve various shadow looks. A zero value is best used for effects approximating ambient surface occlusion.
- Use low 'Shadow Spread' values for harder drop shadow effects. Higher values will yield smoother surface shadows.

Keywords

illumination shadow lighting ambient occlusion surface shading

Filter Controls

• Light Angle
• Shadow Color
• Shadow Spread
• Shadow Depth
• Shadow Gain
• Example Mode
• Example Select
• Flat Shade Examples
• Show Source