Manor's yard - perspective

[Monsieur OUXX]

Hi,

Anything shocking with that perspective?

Don't get all worked up, it doesn't need to be perfect... But it shouldn't be shocking either.
As you can see it's a one-point perspective with "handmade fisheye effect" (there is a curvature on the far left and right)

[Snarky]

Two-point, actually...

It looks fine to me, for the most part. I'm not 100% sure the gables are symmetric, the peaks look a little too far to the left to me. Did you do the crossing diagonals thing to find the center point of those faces?

[Khris]

They look fine to me, they should be pretty far to the left due to the heavy foreshortening.

The only part that's bothering me is the ground:



(Not half a circle btw, much more z than that.)

[Ryan Timothy B]

Actually you're using a two point perspective so the center line for the base of the stairs shouldn't be completely horizontal with the camera. The way you have it right now, in a birds eye view, that straight line coming out of the base of the stairs is actually curving off to the right of the house.

[Monsieur OUXX]

I have strictly no idea why you two guys think it's a 2-point perspective. It's not!
If you see 2 points it means I've messed up my drawing somewhere.
Show them to me. Show me the money!

@LeKhris: Yeah, the garden is wrong. It was fine but then I decided to move up the wall on the left => this implicitely changed the ground's plane. You've spotted yourself the little horizontal line in the middle of the circle, that was my original reference.
I'll have to change it. I wish I had Photoshop, I'd just need to distort it, it would take 2 seconds   I'm lazy  


EDIT: I just realized all I had to do was to do this draft with Google Sketchup. I'm so stoopid.

[Anian]

Yeah, SketchUp will do quick work for the basic lines such as this and you'll get correct perspective. Now, I'm not sure if you're kidding about the perspective thing, but still somebody might find it usefull.

It is a 2 point perspective, the fact that you don't realize that won't help you draw it.   You drew 1 point where lines converge, but the other point (at least it should be) is off canvas to the right and all the lines that go from left to right, like the one on the side of the house, should converge there.
You might say that they don't and that is why it's a 1 point, but if that's true, the lines (unless they're at an angle to the viewer) sholud then be parallel to the upper and lower edge of canvas. In fact, I find that most drawings look better in a 2point perspective.

This what you think you drew - http://www.olejarz.com/arted/perspective/images/intro.gif
(notice that one set of lines converges to point and the others are parallel)

And this is what you drew (incorrectly, but still closer to this than the 1 point) -  http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4016/4546694127_b2d933073b_m.jpg
(see the one set converges to the left and the other to the right)

I'd show you but I got Sketchup installed on the other OS so I'm not really up to doing that, sorry.

[Khris]

Wow, it must've been late. How did I miss all those angled lines...?
The general idea of my "correction" still applies, but it's as off as the original ground lines.

But yeah, the house is 2-point all the way. Like anian said, with 1-point, only z-lines converge.

[Monsieur OUXX]

Now now, guys....
Indeed the official term for this is "2-point perspective", even though, for me, the important point here is the middle one. The points on the left and on the right (which make it 3-point, actually) are just there as an accessory. It won't help fooling myself by sticking to a traditional 2-points, as all the lines have curvatures.

But hey, then again, thanks for the advice on the ground, I've corrected it and will post the update asap.

[Khris]

Strictly speaking, that's neither one-point nor two-point, much less three-point perspective.
It's a mixture of one-point p. (left and back wall) and two-point p. (house) with a fish-eye effect applied afterwards.

Here's a quick SketchUp model with an actual half circle in front of the house:



I just took a screenshot and warped it manually in Photoshop.

As you can see looking at the green line, the viewpoint was slightly angled to show more of the house's front.

[Monsieur OUXX]

As you can see looking at the green line, the viewpoint was slightly angled to show more of the house's front.

Yep, that was the whole idea. I also needed to show more of the left wall so that one could see the gate, that's required to be of the far left.

[Daniel Thomas]

I think the correct term of what you're working on is 'curvilinear perspective', or at least that's what I have been taught.
So you could google it if you would like to find some online information, there is also already made perspective grids for it that you could use as a guide.

[Monsieur OUXX]

I think the correct term of what you're working on is 'curvilinear perspective', or at least that's what I have been taught.
So you could google it if you would like to find some online information, there is also already made perspective grids for it that you could use as a guide.

thanks. I've googled it and found interesting stuff. But then again I'm all good, I just got confused after moving stuff around while drawing the garden.

Here is an update.

I've corrected the garden. It's mostly "correct" but it's going slightly downhill to the left, so it might confuse the eye.
It's not obvious but the wall on the left continues all the way down to the path. the wall is actually standing on a small hill.


I'm not very happy with the stairs but that's the best I could draw at pixel-level.

Don't hesitate to criticize the shading.

[Khris]

If a line is "parallel" to a plane (i.e. doesn't intersect it), the shadow thrown by the line onto the plane is also always parallel to the line.

Look at the lower front edge of the small roof above the entrance and its shadow, it's angled.

Also, the part of the house to the left of the entrance if much much wider than its right counterpart, though this might be intentional.

[Monsieur OUXX]

Look at the lower front edge of the small roof above the entrance and its shadow, it's angled.

You're absolutely right, I'll correct it.
To be perfectly honest I usually use arbitrary non-parallel lines for cast shadows because it's an easy trick to make the scene look less artificial. However I forgot that, while this practice could be tolerated if the source light is some random spot, it certainly doesn't work when the source light is the sun (infinite istance, parallel rays) 

the part of the house to the left of the entrance if much much wider than its right counterpart

True. Not intentional. I got confused by the central part that pops out. I then drew the left and right parts with the same apparent width, but didn't pay attention to the fact that a big portion of the left part should be hidden by the middle part.
I always do that!  :'( Now I'll whip myself, father.

[Khris]

I then drew the left and right parts with the same apparent width, but didn't pay attention to the fact that a big portion of the left part should be hidden by the middle part.

It's not just that, what's visible of the left side alone is at least twice as wide.
With an angle like that, width decreases almost exponentially the further you go back.

[Monsieur OUXX]

With an angle like that, width decreases almost exponentially the further you go back.

True that :-)
But as they say: "If it fools the eye, it's alright"

[Monsieur OUXX]

A little bit of progress.
Still very unhappy on the perspective of small elements (stairs and columns). Pixels positioning is delicate here.
Please note that the dark curve at the foot of each column is not realistic, it's just meant to enhamce the readability.




Also I've been toying with curves to change the colors. I'll use that to simulate the time of the day. Maybe I'll post some sort of very primitive shaders module if I'm happy. Or is there one already?

[Khris]

When I first saw those columns I was thinking "optical illusion". If you want to have elaborate architecture like that (and don't want to use SketchUp renderings as base), you have to use helplines if you're - sorry - bad at eyeballing it.

I'd really, really recommend SketchUp.

The alternative:


The main mistake with your version is the distance between the columns. It's supposed to shrink as much as the width. Also, if you look at the height; the farthest column is about 60% as tall as the closest, same must go for the width.
The lighting on the columns though, which are lightest at 90° away from the light source, makes the shadows thrown by the columns look like a part them that's in shadow itself.

[Monsieur OUXX]

My problem isn't eyeballing it. The problem is that, at pixel level, you have to decide for example if an element will be 3 or 4 pixels wide... Which means 25% difference! That can ruin your perspective.

EDIT: I'ma ctually going to draw this bit hi-res, and then downscale it.

[Monsieur OUXX]

Just a little work in progress.
No need to comment, it's just eye candy.





PS: this darn image takes 10 minutes to render on my crappy notebook :'( (even without the many rooftiles it's very long -- but I don't want to use a texture)