Perspective
The 1-, 2- and 3-point and fisheye constructions, the axis set a stroke can snap to, the tolerance that keeps curves drawable, and one guide across every plane.
Reference
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- Perspective
The perspective guide draws a construction — a horizon, a set of vanishing points, and the rays that converge on them — and pulls your strokes onto it.
Unlike the other two guides, the construction is scene-level: one perspective for the whole shot, not one per layer. That is what lets it be drawn on every drawing plane at once.
Options
Switches the guide on. On its first use in a shot the construction is centred in the view.
1-Point · 2-Point · 3-Point · Fisheye, below.
Whether the guide pulls strokes at all. Off, it is a construction you draw against by eye — the rays are still drawn.
How hard a matched stroke is pulled onto its axis.
Offers true vertical as an axis. Hidden in 3-Point, where the third vanishing point already governs verticals — offering both would make them fight over every upright.
Offers true horizontal as an axis.
How far off an axis a stroke's heading may sit and still be captured by it. A stroke further off every axis than this is left alone.
How many rays are drawn to each vanishing point. A drawing aid only; it does not change what a stroke snaps to.
Draws the construction.
Draws a faint copy of the construction on every other drawing plane as well, each at its own depth.
The vanishing points and the horizon are dragged on the canvas. Each vanishing point has a handle; the horizon has one of its own that carries the whole construction with it.
The four constructions
| Mode | Vanishing points | For |
|---|---|---|
| 1-Point | 1 | Interiors and corridors — you face one wall square-on, and horizontals and verticals stay square. |
| 2-Point | 2, both on the horizon | The everyday exterior box: a building seen at its corner. |
| 3-Point | 2 on the horizon, 1 above or below | Looking up at a tower or down at a street. |
| Fisheye | 4 | Curvilinear — lines bow toward the horizon the way a very wide lens bends them. |
What a stroke can snap to
A perspective guide that only offered its vanishing points would make the drawing worse, not better: every stroke would be dragged onto a convergence line, and verticals, horizontals and curves would be unreachable. So the guide holds a set of candidate axes and picks whichever one your stroke is actually heading along:
- each vanishing point — the convergence line from where you started toward that point;
- true vertical, in 1- and 2-Point (see Snap verticals);
- true horizontal (see Snap horizontals);
- free — no axis at all.
Free is the important one. Without an escape, a perspective guide makes curves impossible. Tolerance is what governs it: a stroke whose heading is further from every offered axis than the tolerance is left exactly where the pen puts it. Lower the tolerance to draw more freehand between ruled lines; raise it to have more strokes captured.
The axes are drawn as well as snapped to. An axis you can snap to but cannot see reads as a bug rather than a feature.
The axis is chosen a little way into the stroke
The guide waits until a stroke has travelled a short distance before committing to an axis, and takes the heading from the total displacement since the start rather than from the first couple of samples. Deciding immediately would read the pen's initial wobble instead of your intent — a slightly shaky vertical would point sideways for an instant and lock the whole line onto a vanishing point. The head of each stroke is therefore left unsnapped until the axis is decided.
One guide, many planes
In a 3D shot, layers sit on drawing planes at different depths. Show on all planes draws the same construction on each of them, each sized for its own distance.
The vanishing points are directions, not places, so the convergence carries across the planes unchanged; what changes is the scale of the construction, which follows the depth ratio about the horizon. Seeing the background plane's wider grid at the same time as the foreground's tighter one is what tells you the planes belong to one space.