Calling art majors: question about vanishing points

Blade Borge

Blade Borge

Well-known member
so there's one point perspective and two point perspective, can you have two types of vanishing points in the same picture? Is vanishing point something that applies to the entire scene or each individual object?
 
My recollection from perspective drawing class is that you can have either 1 VP or 2, but not both.

I think of 2-point like looking at the corner of a building with a wide angle lens. The tops of each side will slope down, whereas the bottoms will slope up, each side eventually leading to the same point. 1 point is like looking down train tracks where parallel lines eventually meet.

A vanishing point will apply to the whole scene AND every object. If an object does not fit into the perspective determined by the vanishing point(s) it will not look right.
 
"so there's one point perspective and two point perspective, can you have two types of vanishing points in the same picture?"

You could have both. You can have multiple objects with different vanishing points.
In one point the vanishing point is within the frame and all the horizontal lines are parallel (don't converge). In two point your seeing corners and the lines that come out of those corners converge to two different vanishing points. The vanishing points don't even have to be in the frame.
 
Multiple vanishing points occur all the time in compositions. If you think of a stack of books and turn each book a little so that they aren't lined up together, they will all have different vanishing points. If you turn one of them so that the horizontal lines are parallel with the frame that one book will be 1 point while the rest will be in 2 point.
 
Another way to say the same thing might be that all lines in the picture frame that are parallel to one another have the same vanishing point, while lines that are not parallel to one another have different vanishing points. Also, a single square or rectangular object might have one vanishing point (if it is pointed straight away from the viewer) or two (if it is angled relative to the viewer).
 
Don't forget three-point perspective, which is the best simulation of perceived space, of the three.

Within a single image you should have one consistent vanishing point (or set of vanishing points) for all objects projected in the image. You can have multiple vanishing points (or sets) in one image but this is tricky, and can look very odd to the viewer.

Combining single, dual, and three-point perspective renderings in one drawing is frankly not something that it has ever occurred to me, to try. Why would you want to?

...anyway, check this out, it's a decent tutorial that gets the concepts across.

http://www.khulsey.com/3_point_perspective.html
 
Sad Max said:
Combining single, dual, and three-point perspective renderings in one drawing is frankly not something that it has ever occurred to me, to try. Why would you want to?
Click to expand...


I don't. I've been getting more and more into compositing 3d animation with live action stuff. I figured understanding vanishing points and what not would help my ability to match the 3D plane with the real life plane. Guess it was a random curiosity that came from this. Thanks for the link.
 
Composition wise its best to let one perspective dominate but unless you have a scene where everything is at right angles 2 and 3 point will come into play. Good link BTW!
 
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