I have been trying to create an illustration of a city, where I shot it 90% degree from above to the ground, but I was confuse how to setting up the perspective, because I don’t know where I should lay down my horizon. In theory, the horizon should be outside the canvas because I am looking straight to the ground from above, but when I lay down my vanishing down on the horizon and start drawing, it doesnt seem right at all. Am i missing something? or my understanding is totally wrong?
Thanks
If you are looking straight down I would consider using a single point perspective. Just a suggestion but it may work.
Am i missing something? or my understanding is totally wrong?
You’re confusing physical horizon with drawing horizon.
Like what Damogag has mentioned, pick a focal point (center of interest) in your composition. Run a line over it that’ll represent the perspective horizon. Add vanishing points on this line as necessary.
Remember, perspective lines are meant as drawing aids to give the illusion of depth. They may or may not coincide with the real world horizon.
Ditto.
The buildings of a city are built up vertically and perpendicular to a level horizontal ground plane. So if your line of site is perpendicular to the ground plane (looking straight down), you will only need one vanishing point to create all of your buildings vertical lines. The problem arises with the horizontal lines. Perspective drawing is idealized. The eye as well as a camera lens warps an image along a spherical surface of a certain arc length depending on the focal length of the lens. Note the spherical warp of an image viewed through a 10mm fisheye lens opposed to a flattened image seen through a 1000mm telephoto lens. If you are not going to show the grand view of the city and settle for showing a reasonable section of it, you may not have too much of a problem with unavoidable distortion. Extra VPs won’t help with this non-linear issue of the horizontal lines. They’re all curved in reality.
so, wat you guys are saying, that a vanishing point doesn’t have to sit on the horizon? Yes, i can certainly imagine making an arieal shot of a city using 1 point perspective, its just like a bunch of long rectangle stretching to the vanishing point.
But i just mistunderstand the fact that vanishing point has to sit on the horizon, cux dats what I see everybody does.
VPs don’t always sit on the horizon line. If you look up at a building the horizontal lines recede out to 2 VPs on the horizon on either side of the building (if you can see 2 sides of the building). And then there will be a 3rd VP to which all of the vertical lines will vanish into up in the sky, not on the horizon line. The interesting thing about horizon lines is that they don’t represent any view within the image. They represent your view of the image. The horizon represents your height position (eyeballs that is) relative to the other elements in the picture. The horizon is only in view when your line of sight is parallel with the ground plane (within reason).
Well I usually go three point for environmments to show visual depth. As other have mentioned, 1,2,3 point perspective serve merely as guides in an illustration. I think that is the first thing you need to understand. I usually go 3-point for any environment. but it also depends on how forced of a perspective you want to do, which can get tricky. There is also turning paths which can be achieve through perspective as well by moving a Vp left and right, and you can move your vp up and down as well. to make paths give the illusion of some kind of hill or something. But for things like arial shots I go with three point. Look up Yanick Dusso’s work and he demonstrates these things in his paintings, he’s got a few polished environments. But, I would try to understand perspective first before tackling something as an arial shot of a city, which may a bit complicated to do, if you do not understand it. Just do a single building first and get used to it first then tackle something as complicated as cityscapes. But, you also got to understand design as well to give variation in your designs of buildings, that and composition and mood setting, also atmospheric depth and color. Do you understand 3 point perspective at all?
Three point perspective works fine when your line-of-sight is not perpendicular to the ground plane (looking straight down from above), which is the 90° angle of view that Mile Dream is describing.
yes, i understand 3 point perspective. It makes the illustration appear to be under a fisheye lens.
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