Isometric wheels?
Printed From: Pixel Joint
Category: Pixel Art
Forum Name: WIP (Work In Progress)
Forum Discription: Get crits and comments on your pixel WIPs and other art too!
URL: https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=6033
Printed Date: 11 September 2025 at 9:19am
Topic: Isometric wheels?
Posted By: HHXplorer
Subject: Isometric wheels?
Date Posted: 15 February 2008 at 12:55pm
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It feels like I've tried a million different ways, but they all pretty
much suck, how am I supposed to do an isometric wheel and make it look
good? Thanks //Magnus EDIT: I'll might as well show you a house I'm working on in Paint!   ------------- |
Replies:
Posted By: Pixel_Outlaw
Date Posted: 15 February 2008 at 1:09pm
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Well the best way to make top facing ones is to use a circle with length to width a ratio of 2:1. Now, the sides do not share the same 2:1 ratio even rotated. I forgot the ratio for side facing ellipses. Sorry I can't help much more than that. People will try to show you how to rotate them using photoshop but the circles will still be wrong because the are just rotating top facing circles. I'll work it out and get back to you later. I should just finish my little program that produces them for the pixel artist on the go. ------------- http://www.shmup-dev.com/forum/"> 
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Posted By: Tillimann
Date Posted: 15 February 2008 at 2:01pm
| Hi, I just want to say that you should use a different program to draw your images, "Graphics Gale" (the version without GIF support is for free) for instance. You will save much time I guarantee. |
Posted By: Pixel_Outlaw
Date Posted: 15 February 2008 at 2:45pm
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Ah here you are.
Now remember this. IF you are drawing ellipses from the top the width will always be 2 TIMES the height. If you are working from the sides as you would for say a car, the width will always be 1.61 times the height.
Don't be too worried think of it like this. If you are drawing a top ellipse you simply make sure that the width is twice the height with your circle tool. If you are making side ellipses you draw an ellipse with a width that is 1.61 times the height then rotate it at a 63.4 degree angle, then clean up your lines.
Took some heavy thinking on this.
 If you need any more help or just don't understand feel free to ask. Programs like photoshop and graphics gale should allow you to rotate those ellipses into the proper angle. I'm a bit excited myself for solving this. I've wondered how to draw them in the proper proportions myself. ------------- http://www.shmup-dev.com/forum/">
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Posted By: Inventrix
Date Posted: 15 February 2008 at 3:04pm
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Originally posted by Tillimann Hi, I just want to say that you should use a different program to draw your images, "Graphics Gale" (the version without GIF support is for free) for instance. You will save much time I guarantee. Lots of people here swear by MS Paint. Careful not to get their hackles up.  |
Posted By: Tillimann
Date Posted: 15 February 2008 at 3:22pm
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But how can he swear by Paint when he never tried other programs?
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Posted By: Pixel_Outlaw
Date Posted: 15 February 2008 at 3:46pm
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This should explain the difference between your top and bottom circles and the side circles. This shows them in the most used directions or the cardinal directions.
The side circles are different than the top and bottom because pixel art isometric is not standard isometric. If it was, all of the circles would be the same proportion. We see less of the top and bottom in pixel art isometric so the top and bottom ellipses are more foreshortened.
 ------------- http://www.shmup-dev.com/forum/">
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Posted By: surt
Date Posted: 16 February 2008 at 12:29am
P_O: That's not what I'd call pixel iso. Pixel iso should just be a 2D transform (Y scale) away from true iso, yours requires a 3D rotation and also loses the nice grid fitting. ------------- 
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Posted By: HHXplorer
Date Posted: 16 February 2008 at 12:57am
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Thanks a bundle for the help guys! So I guess it's basically the golden ratio. And I ain't going to stop using Paint! ------------- |
Posted By: Tillimann
Date Posted: 16 February 2008 at 1:41am
| @surt: How did you rotate the rectangles/circles? Did you draw it by hand? |
Posted By: Metaru
Date Posted: 16 February 2008 at 4:12am
and if everything else fails, you can do it Zoogles's way. ------------- I ate leel's babies |
Posted By: Pixel_Outlaw
Date Posted: 16 February 2008 at 1:02pm
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That drawing was done in 2D space surt. I used a rotation. It isn't 3d. Also, I can tell by the height that your side faces are not square they are rectangles. This means that your side ellipses are off and out of perportion. If you draw a cube in pixel art iso you will never have the "inside" points appear to touch. Yours do touch meaning that the "sides" are longet than they are tall. Your side ellipses would be slightly bigger too because of this. In a nutchsell your sides are not tall enough on your cube and it throws ovv the side ellipses. Yes I have adjusted mine for the Whole pixel art iso and not traditional iso. Surt I can see where you were going but please realize that your side faces would be longer than tall meaning you have just drawn a cuboid. You can see from my first image that I drew the cube from the top to get the side lengths then used those in a projection to get the proper shape. To finish the iso cube I had to draw the profile at the required angle then project that back over.
You need to base the side ellipses on a true cube or you will be drawing them incorrectly. The visual intersection in your drawing should never happen. Since it is not a cube your side ellipses are wrong. HOWEVER if we were using TRUE isometric and not pixel art isometric your visual intersection would happen. Bu "visual intersection" I mean intersection of the center faces visually.
http://imageshack.us">
The following is a true proof. THIS cube was done in true 3D to show how the visual intersection DOES not happen. You can hopefully see that it is out of porportion with your cube meaning that the side ellipses in your drawing are incorrect. In pixel art iso we see less of the top face and more of the side faces meaning that the top ellipse is thinner. Your cube like shape has smaller side ellipses than the top face (which we see less of). http://imageshack.us">  ------------- http://www.shmup-dev.com/forum/">
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Posted By: theoxygenthief
Date Posted: 16 February 2008 at 6:13pm
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Pixel Outlaw you are a lifesaver!!!!! I have been suffering for days now trying to figure out a pixelart side elipse. I did a pitch to a client and we decided to use a style similar to pixelart but vector-based for the job. Everything was going well until i tried drawing a side elipse and no matter WHAT i did it looked wonky. I've been stressing my arse off about it! I still don't understand all the math and the lingo (what do you mean by projection?) but it works and i can finally get on with it!!! thankyouthankyouthankyouTHANKYOU! |
Posted By: Pixel_Outlaw
Date Posted: 16 February 2008 at 6:20pm
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Originally posted by theoxygenthief
Thanks. Glad my math tecniques helped. Writting a .pdf guide as we speak.Pixel Outlaw you are a lifesaver!!!!! I have been suffering for days now trying to figure out a pixelart side elipse. I did a pitch to a client and we decided to use a style similar to pixelart but vector-based for the job. Everything was going well until i tried drawing a side elipse and no matter WHAT i did it looked wonky. I've been stressing my arse off about it! I still don't understand all the math and the lingo (what do you mean by projection?) but it works and i can finally get on with it!!! thankyouthankyouthankyouTHANKYOU! 
EDIT Finished!
here: http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=6037 - http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=6037 ------------- http://www.shmup-dev.com/forum/">
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Posted By: theoxygenthief
Date Posted: 17 February 2008 at 5:33am
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Can you tell me more about the 1:1.61 aspect ratio? How did you work that out? i think there's something wrong with my grid....using you're method of drawing things they look right placed on the grid i made, yet when i draw a cube 10x10x10 squares manually the aspect ratio is not the same as your 1:1.61 cube, which looks like a 10x10x12 cube (roughly) on my grid.... :-( i'd send soem pics if i could but my home computer crashed and burned this morning :-( I drew my grid by drawing evenly spaced horizontal lines, rotating them 25.565 degrees, creating a mirrored copy and then drawing vertical lines wherever these lines intersect. Is that the right way? |
Posted By: Pixel_Outlaw
Date Posted: 17 February 2008 at 12:56pm
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Everything can be done with some very simply multiplication. You only need one value to find everything. That value is A the horizontal distance frome one edge of a grid square to the center of the square. It is easly found. Now, you will only care about B if you are making cubes. If you just want the side-facing circles simply construct the ellipses then rotate them.
I've killed about an hour doing the math in hopes that it will help. All you need is A.
I've made a vector diagram however I have tried the math in a pixel art form.
 This should help:
 ------------- http://www.shmup-dev.com/forum/">
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