TUTORIAL FOUR:PUTTING THINGS IN PERSPECTIVE Before you attempt to complete this tutorial,you should work through Chapter Five:Using Perspective. That chapter introduces you to the fundamentals of perspective in DeluxePaint III. In this tutorial,we'll create a perspective landscape and build a three dimensional arch as shown in Figure 6.7. In the process,you'll learn some of the tricks about using perspective that you can only understand when you see them in context. CREATING THE PLANE The first step of our tutorial is to create a perspective plane. You don't need to create a plane every time you use perspective. We're doing it here,so you can readily see the "depth" of your picture. Load the Block brush from the Art disk. Notice that this brush is held by the lower right corner. If you expect to use a brush in Perspective,it is best to save the brush with the handle in the lower right corner for two reasons: 1.Rotations always occur around the handle,so holding the brush in the corner helps make the rotations consistent and useful. 2.If you establish a Perspective grid,you can make all of your brushes conform to that grid if their handles are in the same corner. Choose Coords(short for Coordinates)from the Prefs menu. Press the Enter key to enter Perspective mode. Position the cursor at 196,25 and press Shift-G,which turns on the grid and uses 196,25 as one of the grid points. Tip If you turn on Coordinates and take note of the cursor position before you rotate your brush,you'll be able to recreate the perspective plane exactly. Press Shift-Keypad 7 to rotate the brush -90 on X. Notice that at this point you don't have angles in your Menu Bar. You can turn off Coordinates if you want to see the angles,but you don't need them for this exercise,since all of our movements are on 90 and based on sight,not numbers. Choose Perspective>FillScreen from the Effect menu. BUILDING THE ARCH Load the RedBlock brush. You are no longer in Perspective mode,but the Grid is still on. Press the Enter key to enter Perspective mode. Your brush is automaticaly laid down on the perspective plane in the same orientation you left it in last(that is,rotated -90 on the X axis). This is an important point to remember,because it means that you can easily bring in new brushes at the right perspective simply by loading them with the perspective plane define by the previous brush. TIP You'll notice that the grid as been adjusted to your new brush size. It is not necessarily true that your new brush will line up correctly witht the grid point you used to define the plane(196,25),because the brush handle is tied to the closet grid point when you enter perspective,and there is a three-in-four chance that it will be tied to one of the other corners. If you want the brush to line up with the grid point you specified when you created the grid,press Keypad 0 to reset the brush 0,0,0 orientation,align the handle with the grid point,and rotate the brush again. If you don't want your perspective grid automatically sized to new brushes,turn off the AutoGrid option in the Prefs menu. Press G to turn off the Grid so you can move the brush freely on the plane. Position the brush so that the Y axis of the brush is aligned with the Perspective Center and the bottom of the brush is aligned with the edge of the second full row of tile on the floor.(The coordinates will show this point as 175,46) Press Shift-G to turn on the grid and use your new handle position as one of the grid points. Press Shift Keypad-8 to rotate the brush up on the X axis. Move the brush two grid points to the left and stamp it down. Paint the brush three times above the current brush position so you create the face of a column. Paint the brush four times to the right to form the top of the arch and the top of the right column. Then paint the brush three times down to form the right column. At this point you have a two dimensional arch on a three dimensional plane. Our next task is to give the arch a third dimension. Move the brush so that it is directly on the bottom block of the left column of your arch. Press Shift-Keypad 4 to rotate the brush 90 on the y axis. Paint the brush where it is and twice above to form the left side of the column. Move the mouse a bit to the right to move the brush back along its x axis and paint another set of blocks so your column is one block wide at the face and two blocks deep as shown in Figure 6.7. Press Shift-Keypad 5 to rotate the brush back on its Y axis so that it is facing you head on. If the bush is not the same size as the facing blocks of your arch,hold down the Ctrl key and move the mouse forward or backward to bring it closer or move it back. As we explained in Chapter Five:Using Perspective,the Ctrl key temporarily fixes the Y axis of your brush so that you can move it on it's Z axis. As you become adept at painting in Perspective,you'll find yourself using this key often. Position the brush to the left of the bottom block of the right column. Press Alt-x to change the brush handle to the other side of the brush. Your brush jumps so that it is over the bottom block of the right column,but the brush is now held by the lower left corner. Remember that Alt-x,Alt-y,and Alt-s reposition your brush handle. These keyboard equivalents are especially useful while working in Perspective,since you usually don't want to move your mouse to choose from a menu. Press Shift-Keypad 5 to rotate the brush 90 on the Y axis. Paint the brush where it is and twice above to form the left side of the column. Paint another column just behind this first one so your column is one block wide at the face and two blocks deep. Press Shift-Keypad 4 to rotate the brush back on the Y axis. If the brush is not the same size as the facing blocks of your arch,hold down the Ctrl key and move the mouse forward or backward to bring it closer or move it back. Move the brush up so that is is over the block in the upper left corner of the arch. Press Shift-Keypad 7 to rotate the brush -90 on the X axis. Move the brush to the right and stamp it once below each of the three blocks that form the top of the arch. Paint another row just behind this first row so the top of your arch is one block high and two blocks deep. Your arch is complete and should look just like the arch in Figure 6.7. INSERTING THE SEASCAPE PICTURE To give your perspective painting a bit more color,and a landscape for the background,we'll load the seascape picture and add it behind the arch. Choose Spart>Swap from the Picture menu to display the spare page. Load the Seascape picture from the Tutorial drawer on your Art disk. Choose Change Color>Default Palette from the Picture menu. Jump back to your main page(press J or choose Spare>Swap from the picture menu). Choose Spare>Merge in Back from the picture menu. In a flash,your arch has a nice seascape backdrop. This exercise gave you a quick example of perspective,but you can do a lot more. For an excellent example of perspective at work,load the picture Hall of Stars from the Tutorial drawer on your Art disk.