Perspective Part 02 – Creating a Grid

Posted on 2012/01/13 at 00:08 by daarken 17 Comments

In this video Daarken shows you how to create your own perspective grid using the pen tool.

Update – I realize there are many ways to create a perspective grid. This is just ONE way of doing it. It may not be the fastest or easiest, but hopefully some people found it useful. With anything in Photoshop, there are many different ways of doing something, like masking an object. Feel free to use your own method or another method you found elsewhere. I am just trying to show people one way that I learned how to create a perspective grid.

17 Comments on "Perspective Part 02 – Creating a Grid"

Eludor · 2012/01/13 at 00:48 · Reply

Looks a bit complicated to me.
Why not copying a straight line and just rotate it?
As long as the pivot is always on the same spot it should’nt make a diffrence.
Thought of making a vanishing point brush, but till now I just always painted my grid from scratch everytime. Yeah I know that’s time consuming :).
- daarken · 2012/01/13 at 08:39 · Reply
  
  You could, but you would have to line it up to the pivot point each time. Seems like more work to me.
Jean-Luc · 2012/01/13 at 01:58 · Reply

Thats such a useful tutorial, that no one ive seen has ever done, thank you!

I’d love to see how to go about having the 2 point perspective, but getting different angles.
skulio · 2012/01/13 at 04:39 · Reply

Much easier and faster is to draw horizontal line with your brush (i always on the begining make canvas bigger than my actual need for about 1000 px from each side), on it ends you just mark little dots and now by holding shift you click dot and point where the perspective line should go, and again dot, direction of the line. After that you just transform grid to the size you want to and simply shrink your canvas to the size you need. I hope that this explanation isnt to messy but its really easy, and much faster metod :)

Oh and don’t forget to turn off opacity and size jitters in your brush settings.
- daarken · 2012/01/13 at 08:42 · Reply
  
  You could. I am just trying to show people one way of doing it. I am not saying it is the easiest or fastest and I am not saying my way is the only way. There are many different ways of doing things in Photoshop and sometimes I can’t cover everything. Plus my goal isn’t always to teach people how to do things the easiest way. I wanted to show people one way of doing it while using the pen tool. Plus I already showed people you could click, hold shift, and then click again to make a straight line in the last tutorial. I didn’t want to rehash something I already taught, I wanted something new.
  - skulio · 2012/01/13 at 11:09 · Reply
    
    easy, easy :) I’m not attacking you, just thought that it would be nice to mention the other way of doing grid in the same topic/tutorial
    - daarken · 2012/01/13 at 11:43 · Reply
      
      I never said you were attacking me. I was simply telling you the reason I used the technique in my video. I already showed how to use the shift click method, so I wanted to show something new. I appreciate your feedback though.
Gummi Hardar · 2012/01/13 at 13:42 · Reply

Here is also a good tool for perspective drawing in photoshop, if people are looking for that, thou I usually use the pencil, ruler and paper technique when making a perspective drawing :)
http://www.freddieart.com/quicktools/index.php?page=detail&get_id=1&category=2
- daarken · 2012/01/14 at 07:21 · Reply
  
  Oh cool, thanks for the link!
- Judy · 2012/01/14 at 14:49 · Reply
  
  Really nice, thanks a lot for sharing!!
Judy · 2012/01/13 at 13:58 · Reply

Oh this is really cool and easy way to make grid. I think I will always need to have the grid on while drawing because when I try to draw something in perspective it looks weird if i don’t have a grid. This is really useful. Thanks again :)
Johnny · 2012/01/13 at 14:42 · Reply

When you are setting up a composition for a painting/drawing do you usually plan out the perspective or can you just like eyeball it? Because I’ve seen some of Feng Zhu’s videos where he just draws and everything seems like they are in perspective.
- daarken · 2012/01/14 at 07:21 · Reply
  
  Sometimes I do, but not usually. When I was creating building concepts at Mythic I used perspective grids or SketchUp, but when I work on illustrations I usually just eyeball it.
todd kowalski · 2012/01/14 at 15:43 · Reply

Thanks a lot for the tutorials, Daarken! They’re awesome and very helpful.
Hav0cc · 2012/01/15 at 22:50 · Reply

Great technique for setting up a perspective grid! I wish i had thought of this before.

I used to just shift drag for the horizon line, select two points on the line and shift-klick em till I had all the lines, but chances are you wont have a 100% accurate perspective grid this way…

thanks man! this is alot more accurate haha.

cheers
http://hav0ccsdailysketches.blogspot.com/
DryPencil · 2012/05/03 at 17:31 · Reply

Here’s another way to easily make a perspective grid: draw a horizon line while pressing the shift key. Then select the polygon tool and in the “Sides” panel type “99″. Now you can effortlessly create a one point perspective grid with the polygon tool and align it to your horizon line. You can make a two point perspective grid by using the polygon tool on each edge of your horizon line. :)
Mynta · 2012/07/26 at 15:17 · Reply

@Eludor. that’s exactly what I did. I made a 12in x 12in 300 dpi canvas, did a 1px wide line straight through the middle, and copied and rotated it until I had this gigantic vanishing point wheel stamp, with about a bazillion spokes. :P It works just fine.