In this third tutorial of the My House Project we shall estimate the dimensions of the house from the reference photograph. This will enable us to keep the model in proportion.
This is the reference photograph. Click on it to get to a much larger image.
The reference photo. Click on it to access a much larger image.
Opening this image in Photoshop or other image editing software will enable us to measure parts of the image and convert those into units we can use for our modeling.
It is important to know or estimate with some degree of precision the size of an element in the image. In this case we know that the floor tiles in the front porch are 1.6 ft. in size, so we can measure pixels with the ruler tool.
Measuring pixels
We are lucky in this case. 1.6 ft are 164 pixels in the image. We can say that 100 pixels in the image are equivalent to 1 foot, and that greatly simplifies our estimations.
We need to be aware of perspective, though. 100 pixels are equivalent to 1 foot only in the front of the house. As we recede, the scale changes
To have a measurement grid for the different elements of the house, we can use the Vanishing Point filter in Photoshop.
The Vanishing Point filter in Photoshop with a Grid Size of 100.
We now have a reference grid for measuring.
