Shadow Generator — Elevation Scale, Layered Shadows, Effect Styles, Box & Drop Shadows

About this plugin

Shadow Generator turns a few settings into a scale of shadows — not one shadow, but a set of elevations that all agree with each other, because they are all cast from the same light source you chose.YOUR IT REVIEW CAN CHECK THIS, NOT TAKE MY WORDThis plugin declares no network access. Figma prints that on this page beside the last-updated date — so the person who approves plugins where you work can confirm it without contacting me. No server, no account, no sign-in, no analytics — nothing about you or your file is sent or logged anywhere, because there is nowhere for it to go. The only thing kept is a couple of numbers on your own machine: how much of the free allowance you have used, and how big that allowance was. A summary you can paste into a security ticket is built into the panel.ONE LIGHT SOURCE, EVERY STEPPick where the light comes from once. Every step in the scale casts from that direction: the higher the step, the further and softer the shadow falls, and the angle never wanders between them. Change the light and the whole scale moves together.A SCALE, NOT A ONE-OFFChoose how many steps you want, up to 8. Each step is built from the same colour, the same ramp and the same light, so a card, a menu and a dialog can sit at different heights and still look like they belong in one room. The preview shows every step at once, so you are choosing between scales rather than guessing at a single value.NATIVE EFFECTS, NOT A PICTUREWhat lands on your layers is Figma's own drop shadow, with the offset, blur and spread filled in. You can open it, nudge it, or throw it away. Nothing is flattened, nothing is rasterised, and there is no image to re-export when the design changes.LAYERED THE WAY REAL SHADOWS AREA single step can be built from several stacked shadows, where the near one is small and dark and the far one is wide and faint. That is what makes a shadow read as soft rather than smudged, and it is still one native effect list you can edit by hand.SAVE THE SCALE INTO YOUR FILEThe scale can be written into the file as effect styles named Elevation/1 upward. After that the shadows live in your file the way the rest of your system does: apply them from the sidebar, change one, and everything using it follows. This is the part $5 unlocks.FREE, AND WHAT $5 ADDSThe preview is free and unlimited — every setting, every step, as long as you like. Applying a step to your layers is free for the first 50 layers, across every file. $5 once, forever, unlocks unlimited applying and writing the scale into your file as effect styles. There is no account and no subscription.