[SOLVED] ToolBar DropShadow - mellow shadow with colored borders

mchouse

I'm trying to create a material design toolbar with a blurred drop shadow.

The challenge is that I can either create an extremely harsh shadow that looks terrible, or I have to make the borders transparent, which leaves an undesirable white ring around the toolbar.

I mocked up a quick Qt App to demonstrate the issue. If "transparentborder" is removed, the shadow loses it's blur.

import QtQuick 2.4
import QtQuick.Controls 1.3
import QtQuick.Window 2.2
import QtQuick.Dialogs 1.2
import QtQuick.Layouts 1.1
import QtQuick.Controls.Styles 1.2
import QtGraphicalEffects 1.0

ApplicationWindow {
title: qsTr("Hello World")
width: 640
height: 480
visible: true

toolBar: ToolBar {
    id: mainToolBar
    width: parent.width
    height: 48

    layer.enabled: true
    layer.effect: DropShadow{
        radius: 4
        samples: radius *2
        verticalOffset: 3
        source: mainToolBar
        color: "grey"
        transparentBorder: true
        }

    style: ToolBarStyle {
        background: Rectangle {
            id: toolBarRect
            color: "black"
            anchors.fill: parent
            border.color: "black"
        }
    }
}

}

I've tried putting the drop shadow against the toolbar rectangle that creates the background color, and I've tried creating another rectangle just for the drop shadow, but nothing seems to work.

EDIT:

Figured it out. I anchored the background rectangle to each side individually, and then added a margin of -1 to compensate for the lack of border, with the exception of the bottom, which requires a margin of 0. If the bottom is set to -1 as well, then the harsh shadow returns. It doesn't matter what the shadow looks like on the other 3 sides, since they meet the edge of the window.

    style: ToolBarStyle {
        background: Rectangle {
            id: toolBarRect
            color: "black"
                anchors {
                    top: parent.top
                    topMargin: -1
                    left: parent.left
                    leftMargin: -1
                    right: parent.right
                    rightMargin: -1
                    bottom: parent.bottom
                    bottomMargin: 0
                }
        }
    }