[Digital Genesis]

Hi everyone. I've been messing with 2 point perspective. Diagonal vanishing points in particular. Now I'm wondering whether what I made looks right or not.

I did it in corel xara (Ooooold app) and I wasn't too worried with getting exact lines, but I did make sure to get the proportions and form correct.

The blue and green cubes are the same size, the red is smaller. They are all supposed to occupy the same floorspace at the same time. (nevermind that they intersect)

Is it correct or did I mess up?!
Help wanted and requested. Overpaints very welcome if I messed up!



[ December 30, 2001: Message edited by: Digital Genesis ]

[Awetopsy]

hope this helps a bit.

[edited bad link]

[ December 29, 2001: Message edited by: Awetopsy ]

[Impaler]

Your boxes should actually be in three-point perspective if you can see the top of the cube, and you're not parallel to any of the sides. There's a third point below the cube that it sinks into. Usually the point is really far off the canvas, but it's there, and so your edges should warp accordingly. What you've got there is an orthographic view of a cube, which isn't usually correct.

Two-point perspective is for when you can only see two sides of a cube, and not the top or bottom. Sort of like, when you look up at a building, and you can't see the roof.

One-point perspective is for when you're parallel to one face of the cube.

[ December 29, 2001: Message edited by: Impaler ]

[Derek]

Impaler, you can see the tops and bottoms of cubes in two-point as well. They will be in your COV if not a bit blurry or out of focus in true vision. For an image they can be represented with clarity. You can use three point for this drawing, but it is not absolutely necessary in this case. We're too close to the cubes, and they aren't that large. The convergence wouldn't be picked up by most measurements even. Best to save 3P for impact, whereas this is just an educational illustrative device. Anyway, two point can be used with objects off of the eye level.
The bottom boxes should pretty much not be in the picture, they have corners and plane intersections right at the viewers 'feet', and are too distorted, aside from the obvious fact that the lines of the varying planes don't converge to single points.

[ December 29, 2001: Message edited by: Derek Smith ]

[Digital Genesis]

Thanks for the feedback so far

I guess I left out some explaining. Here goes:

I did the bottom cubes as the ones I'd use for constructing the other similarly colored cubes with (the smaller ones). I have a bunch of vanishing points and stuff that look very confusing, but which helped do the construction.

The main thing I wanted to find out was this:
The three different cubes, the small ones, they have different vanishing points. Just like three cars would have different vanishing points, if they were parked at oblique angles to one another.
Do the cubes/boxes look convincing, or am I messing up the point entirely?

If I am messing up completely, I'd sure appreciate having someone show how the cubes should look correctly.

[Jin]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Impaler:
Your boxes should actually be in three-point perspective if you can see the top of the cube, and you're not parallel to any of the sides. There's a third point below the cube that it sinks into. Usually the point is really far off the canvas, but it's there, and so your edges should warp accordingly. What you've got there is an orthographic view of a cube, which isn't usually correct.

Two-point perspective is for when you can only see two sides of a cube, and not the top or bottom. Sort of like, when you look up at a building, and you can't see the roof.

One-point perspective is for when you're parallel to one face of the cube.

[ December 29, 2001: Message edited by: Impaler ]

---

Two-point perspective requires a horizon line and two points located on the horizon line, to the right and left of the center, and whatever distance from the center.

Two-point perspective is not three-point perspective. Three-point perspective requires a third point located either above or below the horizon line and the vertical lines vanish to that point.

In the example drawing, which appears to be an attempt to use two-point perspective, and the artist has said that was the intention, there should be no third point. What makes it possible to see the top plane of the boxes is the fact that they are drawn below the horizon line.. and/or nearer to the viewer. The degree to which the boxes are drawn nearer to the viewer as well as the distance below the horizon line determines how much the top plane of the box is visible.

In the example drawing, as has already been demonstrated, the boxes have different points to which their top and bottom plane lines vanish, so the drawing is not true two-point perspective.

An orthographic drawing is not a perspective drawing at all. It is one or more flat views of the top, bottom, left, or right sides of the object. It is often accompanied by an isometric view, drawn usually with vertical, 30 degree, and 60 degree angles/lines in order to give the viewer some idea of how the object looks.. and these kinds of drawings are most often used by engineering people when building a part, an assembly of parts, or an entire machine, tool, or other object.

[Ian Jones]

Digital Genesis:

Here's my take on this question. I think that Impaler is correct, because technically things will just about always be in 3 point perspective. Choosing when to actually use it is another thing. It would be unnecessary to use it for you drawing. Like someone said it would only be practical for really tall buildings or objects on strange angles, or whenever you wanted to emphasise the height of something. Like Derek said it isn't absoluetely neccesary to use 3 point for this example.

You have the right idea in terms of how to represent boxes at different angles to each other. They will have different vanishing points unless they are parallel. <--- There's an important point! Awetopsy noted that some of your lines weren't accurate. Those particular lines need to converge at the same vanishing point because.

"Parallel lines converge at the same vanishing point"

So you got that different angles of boxes right, but as ppl have been saying, you have drawn the boxes at the bottom of the page where they look forced, and kinda warped. Now im a little unsured about how to remedy this, so I won't offer any advice there.

Hope that helps.

[Digital Genesis]

I appreciate the commentary. I think there is agreement that it looks plausible, except for the construction cubes at the bottom.
To illustrate what I mean with 'construction cube' here is a pic where I have included some of the extra layers:


As can be seen, I felt the vanishing lines of the cube that Awetopsy did over looked alright at the time. I still do, but maybe my lines are not as accurate as I thought =)

And here is an extra one which shows just the three upper cubes. Remember, the front one is actually smaller than the two in the back.


If anyone has further info on why it is wrong or maybe just acknowledgement that it looks alright, please feel free

[Jin]

Seems like 2-point perspective ought to have a horizon line and all parallel lines (except verticals) should converge at points on the horizon line, to the right and to the left of center. Below is a close-up to show lines extended from the box lines in the most recent image posted, then a zoomed out view showing where those lines converged, marked by red dots and question marks where it's unclear what the intended vanishing point was. In some cases, it is obvious that parallel lines of the box would never converge at a single point.





If the intention was not to have lines converge to vanishing points on the horizon line, at least parallel lines should converge to the same point.

Using Illustrator and other programs.. maybe Corel Draw too?.. it's possible to manually enter the location of a point and use this when drawing construction lines to ensure the lines all converge at the same point.

Wouldn't that be easier than freehanding/eyeballing the drawing and having it end up all kittywampus?

It's a snap in AutoCAD to do this kind of stuff... as I recall from years ago.

[Jin]

Duplicate post deleted.. sorry.. I don't know how that happened.

Jin
____

[ January 02, 2002: Message edited by: Jin ]

[Digital Genesis]

Wow, Jin.. I respect your abilities as an artist, but I'm afraid your eye-balling is suffering somewhat more than mine does.
Here is the evidence, as per my original green, red and blue colors...



These are most of the original layers I used to construct the cubes. As you can see, all lines DO converge on the same horizon.
That they are not 101% correct, I already stated was not my intention. Just like you can draw freehand perspective which would not stand up to very close scrutiny. All I asked for was whether it looked right, proportion/form and perspective wise. Not a lecture on what programs I should be using to skip the hard parts

[Jin]

Take another look and you'll see that the drawing over which I laid projected lines is not the one you are talking about and demonstrating in your last message. However, it is a drawing from your own message.

See message from Digital Genesis dated December 30, 2001 6:09 pm (that may be Pacific time), and the image between the lines that read:

"And here is an extra one which shows just the three upper cubes. Remember, the front one is actually smaller than the two in the back."

and.... (image here)...

"If anyone has further info on why it is wrong or maybe just acknowledgement that it looks alright, please feel free"

The image containing three boxes colored yellow, brown, and gold/orange was used as the base for my example with projected lines. I did not "eyeball" the extended lines. They were carefully laid over the existing lines of the boxes (which, again, were not drawn by me) to demonstrate the fact that the box lines are not drawn correctly to converge at the same vanishing point.

You asked if the drawing looked right. It doesn't.

You asked if anyone had further info on why it is wrong. I gave you a drawing to show you why it looks wrong.

If you didn't want help, why bother people by asking for it?

If you expect people to help, why be rude when they give it?

Never mind. I think that I probably know the answers to my questions already.

Have a happy New Year!

[Digital Genesis]

Jin, the yellow/brownish boxes are the same as the red, blue and green ones. I simply tinted them for the sake of clarity. Your lines are wrong.

I did ask for help. And I am happy I got it.

However, that you made a mistake and are unwilling to admit it - but instead attack me as a person - is just sad.

Moderators, feel free to close this thread.

[Jin]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Digital Genesis:
Jin, the yellow/brownish boxes are the same as the red, blue and green ones. I simply tinted them for the sake of clarity. Your lines are wrong.

I did ask for help. And I am happy I got it.

However, that you made a mistake and are unwilling to admit it - but instead attack me as a person - is just sad.

Moderators, feel free to close this thread.

---

Digital Genesis,

I'm sorry you feel that I attacked you. That was not my intention. My intention was to help you by responding to your message and to your questions.

If my drawing is wrong.. I don't give a hoot. I drew the lines over your drawing for no reason at all other than to help you. No one's paying me to spend time doing this and there's no pleasure in "being right". If you knew anything about me you'd know that I'm not an unkind person, and spend most of my waking hours helping people out.. mostly learning the software I love but off and on in other ways where I know a little about the subject.

After spending almost 28 years earning a living as a technical illustrator.. it seemed fairly reasonable to share what I know, since you asked for help.

There apparently was no point in my spending time on this so I'll bow out and hope you find the answers you want from others.

Best of luck and, again, Happy New Year!

[Sukhoi]

I feel I must try to contribute to the solutions of the broblems in this thread...

Those kind of perspective drawing almost always looks wrong IMHO. There is no ground texture to be seen anywhere, nor is the cubes "filled" with colour and/or texture which makes it very difficult to accept the image. We all know of images that we love and accept although they are incorrect, perspective wise. Here we have images with nothing to make us believe in them, other than a horizon. Then we have some transparent cubes of random size, placed randomly across the surface of an invisible floor... I have made sketches that began like this and I always thought they sucked.

My point is that even though the image may be correct it still looks wrong...because there's nothing in it to capture the eye.
So I think you have made a big deal out of a problem with no solution.
Thats my view on the matter, anyways.

Does anyone get my point, or should this thread be put to sleep??

Sukhoi

[Jin]

Sukhoi,

I'm "bowed out" of the perspective discussion but want to express my appreciation for your efforts.

It really isn't a big deal, never was, and never will be, so don't fret about it, please.

I've been off setting up a painting challenge, having a great time, and trying to talk myself into doing something more like chores and less like fun.. but not succeeding as I like fun more.

[Jin]

Another duplicate post deleted.

[ January 02, 2002: Message edited by: Jin ]

[Sukhoi]

"so don't FRET about it, please" (I'm sorry, but my english abilities doesn't cover this word....so I'm afraid I don't understand...

But you said THE word there, Jin: fun.

I like that

Sukhoi

[Jin]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Sukhoi:
"so don't FRET about it, please" (I'm sorry, but my english abilities doesn't cover this word....so I'm afraid I don't understand...

But you said THE word there, Jin: fun.

I like that

Sukhoi

---

Sukhoi,

To "Fret" means the same as to worry. I was saying not to worry about it. There are many more nice things to think about and we agree. Fun is good.

If you need me to explain the word "fret" better, just let me know and I'll try to find the right words so you'll understand.

[Novacaptain]

I have a question.

One thing I've wondered is how can one be sure that the drawing is of a cube and not some brick-shaped look-alike?

[Sukhoi]

I get it, thanks

Sukhoi

[Lunatique]

My head hurts.... so many lines....

[wigin]

hmm actually Sukhoi said it. These types of perspective drawings always look wrong but they are right hehe =).. An advice that my perspective teacher told me about these type of drawings which i have been doing for the pass 4 months is If it looks wrong its right... =)... you can take this or leave it but oddly enough it very true in some circumstances ...