Technical Questions that come up over time (Characters, Landscapes and more)

[Pensword]

While trying new stuff questions come up about how to do this thing or that thing.
Since there are many people with a lot of good experience here, I would like to ask those questions in this thread.
And since I dont want to open 100 Threads for several questions, I intend to ask them always in this thread.


Here is my first topic and question:

How do I create a 3d-Space, in which I then can place buildings and mountains?
A landscape that is made up of many Hills and Mountains can have Floor everywhere on each Axis (x,y,z - axis).
It is not a cube that I am drawing, where I know exactly where in 3d-space does the line of the border have to be.
But the lines really could be anywhere!

I want to show pictures for better understanding, what I intend to do and what I mean:

This Artist did it very nicely and what he did here, is way above my skill right now.
We are seeing a hill-Landscape from above. But floor is everywhere! But at every random point you also could raise the floor a little bit or lower the floor a little bit. You also can just put down no line at random places, which also reads as floor!
So how do I know, where to place lines? How to create such a 3d-space?




Here is a nice illustration-style that I would like in the end (in this case it could be way more clear where to put some of the border-lines, because it is not so much from very above).




And here you see an example of a building (which is a harbour-warehouse, built in the Game Minecraft), which I would like to place in such a 3d-Landscape like on the first picture.
(so creating a 3d-space from above, than placing this building inside the 3d-mountain-area from above)

[Noone]

It's all perspective based. You may not be specifically plotting a 3d cube on an xyz axis, but every object has a basic simplified bounding box which can be placed in perspective (sides, front, top/bottom). Placing planes in space requires this basic understanding, be it intuitively done to look "correct", or meticulously mapped out with grids and so on.

There is obvious benefit to learning perspective with exercises of course and plotting out perspective and drawing in a very technical way, especially at first, but then it is good to attempt to intuitively paint or draw with a basic perspective in mind. I find, for landscapes especially, setting a basic perspective grid first (2, 3pt etc) is always helpful to allow you to keep in mind and potentially use to troubleshoot things when the intuitive placement isn't working.  If you are reverse engineering a perspective view to add another object,  map out the grid of the scene, then add your object using it's basic bounding box. It can get much more complex if you want to learn how to exactly map objects. Scott Robertson has a book called How to Draw that delves into all the technical aspects, but it is dry and overly technical in many ways especially as it advances, if you aren't doing specific industrial design type work. Link here to preview it https://archive.org/details/how-to-draw-...0/mode/1up

Many people swear by using 3d programs to visualise basic planes and objects, as you can move the camera around and is actually quite a good thing to do, simply to learn, if you are less on the side of being able to intuitively visualise things in a 3d space. Practice drawing things from reference in many perspectives to build up your intuitive understanding. Draw from life, as well.  It will all come down to practicing what you want to be able to do.

[darktiste]

So what your asking is basically if i am understand you is how do i construct on a uneven surface

Well you could draw the house first but in that case you would be missing a lot of the detail of the terrain which determine what behind and what in front in term of perspective. You would also be missing alot of the proportional cue that help determine if the building is the right size. The easiest way to determine a complex subject is a box or a collection of box to plot the proportion first and then from those box create more complex construction within the bounding box. Personally i don't have much experience with such complex environment but from what i have gather about how other artist process and and what seem logical is doing simple box first to establish proportion but first you draw the terrain ruffly to determine WHAT overlapping WHAT this will save a lot of time if you know what you are doing.

What they are basically doing is using parallel line as guide by creating set of parallel line you start to have ''guideline'' that goes toward the vanishing point those line are ''reference'' that help you construct any form regardless of the perspective. You also have to find the ground plane otherwise you won't be able to determine how the terrain ''intersect'' with the building. This is more difficult on organic shape because this is no longer a very predictable plane on which you construct and it involve more complex intersection specially when done over rounded surface.

Here a demo i think will help you understand uphill perspective if that what i understand your referring to i personally refer to it as uneven terrain from a low or top down view.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQUwhd_t6vs

My advise regarding everything perspective is to get Scott robertson book-
Drawing and sketching from imagination with scott robertson.


I also given you an example of a house build on what seem to be a uneven terrain. Note i say seem because if there an overlap you don't necessarily know how the terrain is behind that obscuring shape nor doesn't it matter much if it on a flat or uneven surface (unless you are thinking about physic) because what matter is do we see or not the form intersecting. What matter primarily the order of form overlapping since it hide what behind itself (sometime you have many overlapping form so understand the order of what in the foreground vs background also matter to determine what hide what).One other concern is does that overlap hide the intersection of the ground plane of that object partially or completely. If it partially that where the trouble begin. Because now you have to deal with overlap and intersecting form.

Sadly i can't give you a very in depth explanation it come to down understanding construction method and grind and perspective theory that are often badly documented because it somewhat very case specific.What matter is understanding the rule so that once a specific scenario arrive you can use those fundamental to overcome the perspective challenge.

Also note if you wonder why there many set of line those are use to establish proportion (generally 6 feet) between 2 line.Understanding how to measure in perspective become even more important when you understand you can accurately refer back to the height of a door anywhere in a scene if you know how to as your ''unit'' of porportion since most scene will be empty until you add character so it good to have a door somewhere early in the process to keep track of propotion inside the scene.

[JosephCow]

If you wanna give this a try in a quick sketch, that might help to figure out the specific issue. There's a lot answered by darktiste and Noone, but not sure if it's specifically what you're asking? Cuz yeah, it's all just perspective problems. At the end of the day though where the base of the building intersects with your terrain, is entirely up to your discretion. You just need to define for yourself where that occurs. I like to sketch gridlines so that it kind of defines the blank areas and makes me thing of a 3D mesh.

So I would start with defining your viewing angle for the scene, and blocking out the environment with big blocks in perspective. This is where you define your different ground levels. Then just pick a ground level and that's where the harbor building sits. Or if you know kind of how you want the building to look, you could start with that, and then build terrain around it.