Week 3 - Perspective in photoshop

In this lesson we did a quick recap on perspective, then learnt how to make perspective grids using photoshops shape and line tools.

Before going onto the computers we did a 3-point perspective grid on paper and had to draw three cubes:

It was easier to draw the cubes further away from the vanishing points as the closer an object gets to the vanishing point, the more distorted it becomes.

 

 

After that, we went onto photoshop, here is the process of making perspective grids on it:

I forgot to actually save my screenshots in class, but luckily I didn't merge any of the layers so I was able to go back into the file and take screenshots of the process. Something important to note is that FireAlpaca can open photoshop files with all the shapes and lines in tact - I have no idea how to do these in FireAlpaca itself, but they do work, so there must be a way to do it here as well.

First we opened up a 16:9 canvas from the photo+video section when starting a new file - I changed the background colour to grey. Ctrl + R brings up the ruler tool from which you can drag guidelines out - we used these to create the horizon line and vanishing points. At some point we also expanded the canvas/ working area but I can't remember how we did that.

After that we used the shape tool to create a polygon, gave it 75 sides, a thickness of 1 and a star ratio of 1% which resulted in a lot of lines we could then use as perspective grid lines. We duplicated these for each vanishing point.

 

 

In FireAlpaca instead of the shape tool, you can press and hold 5 and then youre given a ruler tool that looks similar to our modified shape. You can't duplicate these as far as I'm aware, so you'd have to use it to draw guidelines, then copy and paste those guidelines. Pressing 1 gets rid of any rulers.

 

FireAlpaca does have a shape tool, I might experiment with it later to see if you can create guidelines with it like in Photoshop.
 

Then we practiced drawing some cubes using the newly made grids. Both Photoshop and FireAlpaca have a shortcut for straight lines by holding shift. In Phototoshop if you hold shift you can draw straight lines as you would using a ruler, this can only make horizontal or vertical lines. You can also hold shift and click between two points for staright lines at any angle, although for clear lines you have to make sure pressure sensitivity is off. In FireAlpaca, you can also hold shift and click on two points for staright lines (this time it ignores pressure sensitivity), but for the ruler/ horizontal and vertical lines you have to press 3.

 

Equidistance using the line tool and perspective grids:

Equidistance in this case is making sure objects or lines are evenly spaced within a certain perpspective - so the lines aren't literally evenly spaced, but they are evenly spaced for the perspective they're in. It's fairly simple to do (although a bit tedious) using photoshops line tools:

 

The method is to draw a line, draw guidelines from the top and bottom of those lines to a vanishing point, and draw a second line with those guidelines. Then conncect the corners/ draw an X to find the centre of those lines. From the centre, draw a guideline to one of the vanishing points. From the bottom point of the first line, draw another guideline through the centre of the second line. From where that guide line intersects the top of the original two guidleines is where you can now draw a third line - from this point, you can keep drawing guidelines from the bottom of the previous line to figure out where to draw each subsequent line.

After practicing equidistance, we were tasked with drawing something using the perspective grids we constructed in photoshop, and to utilise the equidistance method as well:

 

I decided to draw a building, as that would be easier to draw windows in and to make them evenly spaced. Here I drew the main shapes/ cuboids first.

 

 

After that, I started drawing in windows using the equidistance method.