What I really want is to add shading to my animated shape layers.

I'd love to have something working like Photoshop's field blur, who can easily add varying degrees of blur on a single layer.

Use Field Blur to build a gradient of blurs, by defining multiple blur points with different amounts of blur. Add multiple pins to the image and specify a blur amount for each pin.

 

The final result is combined effect of all blur pins on the image. You can even add a pin outside the image, to apply the blur at corners.

That can be really useful to smooth out shadow layers without having a uniform gradient.

Hope you see what I mean.

More info about Photoshop's field blur on Adobe Help.

I stumbled upon Eyedsyn's Shade it plug-in but it looks just like an emboss effect and it seems it can only make noisy shading.

I don't mind that much about a noisy effect though.

Thank you for your help :)

What I really want is to add shading to my animated shape layers.

I'd love to have something working like Photoshop's field blur, who can easily add varying degrees of blur on a single layer.

Use Field Blur to build a gradient of blurs, by defining multiple blur points with different amounts of blur. Add multiple pins to the image and specify a blur amount for each pin.

The final result is combined effect of all blur pins on the image. You can even add a pin outside the image, to apply the blur at corners.

That can be really useful to smooth out shadow layers without having a uniform gradient.

Hope you see what I mean.

More info about Photoshop's field blur on Adobe Help.

I stumbled upon Eyedsyn's Shade it plug-in but it looks just like an emboss effect and it seems it can only make noisy shading.

I don't mind that much about a noisy effect though.

Thank you for your help :)