Three-Point Perspective - The Y Trick

in Drawing Basics

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Three-point perspective offers complete freedom to rotate objects in any direction. I'll break down the basics for you and introduce the "Y trick," a simple technique that makes drawing objects in 3-point perspective a lot easier.

Tony Zhang

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4mo

Off we go.

@faegbc

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4mo

Things are so much more enjoyable when using intuition and neighboring lines to inform your convergences, rather than feeling forced to plot out points and lines. I think im going to try taking things a little slower and just practice getting myself to comfortably orient boxes like these before moving onto more projects.

Josh Fiddler

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5mo

For a fun exercise, apply this and draw the INSIDE of a box. See how the rationale can all apply with a simple change in uh ... perspective.

Lane Campbell

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6mo

random boxes and consistent tumbled boxes. Please let me know any critiques, thanks

Patrick Bosworth

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6mo

Hey Lane, it's pretty tough to see your boxes in this photo. You always want to present your work in the best conditions possible so we can give you a meaningful critique. Always photograph your work under a light source that is as bright, and even as possible. Orient yourself so the light source is unobscured by your arm or camera. Also, square up your shot so the edges of the page are lined up with the sides of the photo. When the page is angled like this the perspective of your drawing surface isn't lined up appropriately for the viewer so it can throw off the look of your perspective. Hope this helps!

@bumatehewok

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6mo

Question for anyone out there. I have heard people say 2 point is the most commonly used perspective and three point is just for buildings and similar things. I have also heard things like 2 point is likely the most you need. As some one who is working towards character design should I still invest more time in 3 point over 2 point perspective?

Josh Fiddler

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5mo

Putting your characters into a scene for fun would sure be easier knowing more 3-point tricks for moving things around or making convincing lighting where it matters. And you can pick all that up along the road so maybe don't dwell.

Rachel Dawn Owens

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6mo

I think it’s worth understanding 3pt perspective. It will help your drawings look more 3d. No need to get too far in the weeds with it though (unless you’re going into architecture or something). Heres a super simple way of thinking about it.

Zach Pipher

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9mo

This is kind of a fun thing to do. I can see how the 1p and 2p were so important to understand this. But now that I do I can think though the vanishing point, rather I can comprehend the vanishing points rules now so that objects looks correct. I love this.

deidre jermaine

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9mo

Nice!

loes roos

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10mo

Interesting. Never really thought about that 4 point as a fisheye view or the rounded lens view. Cool. Worth exploring. But did a few cubes using the Y. I was also not familiar with that technique. I have drawn quite a bit using the isometrics so I forced myself here and there with relatively close imaginary vanishing points. About 20 done... of the 100 plus...

Dermot

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10mo

Here are some of my 3 point boxes Would it be correct to say: 1. True three point is partial 4 point curvilinear perspective, as the convergence lines would curve slightly, maybe difficult to observe any curve although it would curve. 2. Three point linear perspective then ignores any curving, the actual converging lines being straight, i.e no curving converging lines? 3. Curving converging lines are left to 4 and 5 point curvilinear perspective. 4. My brain has thrown a wide curve ! 5. Help!

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10mo

One, Two, Three, Four, Five ...

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10mo

Inspired by the animation that @Fabian Ayala did for the 1-point perspective I animated transformations from 1 to 5 point perspective. It was fun but challenging. Looking forward to your thoughts. (you need to open the original to play the GIF) Higher quality here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcpkeIiTMCk

@nathan_the_phaneuf

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10mo

A question, if you will. I praticed the Y trick and boxes (will do more, but I'm short on time right now) and a point is nagging me ever since I knew what three point perspective was years ago: when something is both under and above the horizon line, what do you do? I know Stan briefly touched this in the video, but I can't find an answer else that four points and curvilinear perspective. Does it mean that you must now absolutely deal with four points or you have a certain wiggle room where you can keep it at three without breaking perspective? Can you even use a point above and a point below independently from each other? Sorry if it's a question beyond the scope of the course, I was just curious and thinking constantly about this.

Dermot

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10mo

Nathan, I was wondering about that too at the end of the video. So what do you do? I think Stan was introducing 4 point and curvilinear. For the lesson, I think he meant stick with three points and compromise ! ?????

@lieseldraws

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10mo

Here's a burning question: Does simply practicing more boxes help you draw them accurately enough? (Like Stan said, I understand we're not aiming for 100% accuracy in free-hand drawing) What if you keep drawing them wrong? I feel like making the same mistakes over and over again won’t lead to improvement. You have to fix your boxes afterwards. For example, vanishing points can't be randomly placed. The horizon line should be perpendicular to the Y axis (Marshall talks about this in the Draftsmen episode on perspective). But the problem is, it’s time-consuming to find those far-off vanishing points to ensure they’re positioned correctly. I feel like it’s unproductive to be correcting every box you draw this way (like the attached photo). Then again, you can’t improve without knowing what’s wrong, right? So how do you practice more efficiently? Anyone with some advice, please help. I'm tired of drawing ugly boxes and spending hours correcting them look convincing.

Dermot

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10mo

"What if you keep drawing them wrong?" Yeah, I've mastered ugly boxes too. Maybe the assignment will clarify things a little further. Fingers and toes crossed !

loes roos

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10mo

Try and sketch free hand, and check yourself with a ruler or an angle... Just that first bit... Your eye should learn to adjust...

Pedro Branco

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10mo

I started my art journey two years ago with Drawabox. As the name implies, you very quickly move into drawing 3d boxes. In fact the major challenge of the first chapter in that course is to draw 250 boxes in perspective without drawing the vanishing points. After doing the challenge, I was still completely in the dark. I'd gotten better at drawing boxes but they were rarely "correct". This was mainly down to the simple fact that learning how to do this, as with learning anything, requires one to commit to understanding the insights that are given and/or figuring out these insights by oneself. If you can understand "what" you are drawing and its rules, you can draw it. And this sounds like a very stupid thing to just say, I mean it's a given that if you want to learn you need to pay attention, but fact was I'd just done the 250 box challenge 4 times, while reading the articles on the site, and none of the insight was sticking. I had to use a ruler to make something even remotely accurate. The biggest insight that made the gears turn for me was understanding that "things move away from a point and as they move towards it, their form distorts into being smaller". What this means is that if I can identify the closest "object" everything will shrink from there. Couple that insight with the rule that everything converges into a point and my knowledge of what a cube is and I could conclude a few other things such as: - You can find a VP with any two lines in case you need to. - After confirming the general position of the VP you can draw any line that converges towards it. - If you draw two lines that converge to one VP, any 3rd line drawn in between these lines can't have a greater angle than the first two lines. I could go on and it's all very obvious stuff that I wasn't paying attention to. Until I made a conscious effort to really "know" the things that I already knew and had read over a dozen times by this point. Honestly from what you're saying it feels like you're tying way too hard to get them absolutely perfect, which I don't think anyone can do with perfect accuracy. Maybe take a break from boxes or review what you know and draw a few with just your knowledge of drawing a box in 3d and then ask yourself where you went wrong, if you went wrong that is. It also helps to look at a box or cube in real life or in a 3d viewer. Hope this helps.

Vishal Hudge

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10mo

Its Fun !

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10mo

Some practice using the Y trick. I set a goal to do 100. We'll see.

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10mo

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10mo

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10mo

Vue Thao

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10mo

@Stan Prokopenko I played around with the camera setting in Blender like you did. I want to share what I know. TOP LEFT: 70 mm = human's default visual eyesight. We see them every day. Every corner parallels each other and every one of them converges to the vanishing point. BOTTOM LEFT: 20 mm = This is known as "fisheye". At the bottom of the cube, each corner tapers. Equivalent to 3 points perspective. TOP RIGHT: 120 mm = Orthographic perspective. Similar to 70 mm, their top and bottom lines parallel each other but the lines started to bend further away. BOTTOM RIGHT: 400 mm = Absolute obtuse. The angle is shaped like a fan. The plane on the left (shadow) is smaller than the right (lit/hidden from view). The plane at the bottom follows the same pattern as the top making you imagine they're fallen buckets. Free online Protractor www.ginifab.com/feeds/angle_measurement/

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10mo

Thank you!

Dennis Yeary

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10mo

interesting would you say the same for drawing a city with out the vanishing points?

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10mo

Depends on the goals of the drawing. Look up urban sketching and you'll find plenty of beautiful city sketches drawn freehand without guides. The imperfections give it a charm that work well for sketches of that type. Below is an example from James Gurney's Guide to Sketching book. But I'm sure that for his more polished Dinotopia paintings he spent much more time getting it technically accurate.

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10mo

Ackchyually ... true isometric means that all axes are separated by exactly 120° And, yes. that is Y I have no friends.

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10mo

Haha that's technically right. Artists have a way of changing meanings of scientific/mathematical words. I guess the correct word for what I'm referring to is the whole category of Parallel Perspective. Thanks for the correction, nerd ;)