How to use the Perspective Grid Generator
- Choose 1-point, 2-point or 3-point. The preview resets to a sensible starting layout for that type, with the horizon and the numbered vanishing points shown as handles.
- Set the canvas. Pick A4, US Letter, Full HD, Square or Custom size, then Portrait or Landscape. If you add a Reference photo, the canvas switches to the photo’s exact pixel size so the grid lines up with it.
- Drag the handles. Drag a numbered point to move it; dragging a point on the horizon up or down moves the whole horizon with it. In 1-point mode the purple diamond D is the distance point that spaces the depth grid. The preview zooms out automatically when you drop a point far outside the canvas. Keyboard users can focus the preview, press 1, 2, 3, H or D, and nudge with the arrow keys (hold Shift for bigger steps).
- Tune the lines. Set Lines per point, Line width (in pixels of the final file), and a color and opacity for each point. Toggle the horizon, guides, the 1-point depth grid and the 60° cone of vision.
- Export. Download PNG renders the grid at full canvas size with a transparent background; Download SVG gives clean vector lines grouped by vanishing point. The exact pixel positions of every point are listed under the preview.
One, two or three points
Every set of parallel edges in a scene that is not parallel to the picture plane converges to a vanishing point. How many points you need depends on how the main boxes in your scene are turned toward you.
One-point perspective covers scenes where you look straight at a face of the box: down a corridor, along a railway, into a room. Horizontals and verticals stay horizontal and vertical; only lines going away from you meet at the single point on the horizon.
Two-point perspective is what you see when you turn to a corner. The two sets of horizontal edges each head to their own point on the horizon, while verticals stay vertical. Most street corners, product drawings and interiors from a corner use it.
Three-point perspective appears when you tilt your view up at a tower or down from a rooftop. The verticals now converge too, toward a third point above or below. The steeper the tilt, the closer that third point gets to the picture.
The horizon line is always at your eye level. Lower it and the viewer becomes a child or an ant; raise it and they float above the scene. Keep it in the same place for every object in a drawing, even if the objects are at different heights.
Worked example: how far apart should the points be?
Beginners usually place both vanishing points just outside the edges of the page. It looks dramatic, but the boxes near the corners stretch like a fish-eye lens. The 60° cone of vision shows why.
Imagine your eye standing in front of the picture. For a 90° corner, it sits on a half-circle drawn between the two vanishing points, and its distance to the picture is the square root of the product of the two distances from the center of vision to each point. With a 1920 × 1080 canvas, the center at x = 960 and the points at −480 and 2400, both distances are 1440 px, so the eye is 1440 px away. A 60° cone reaches 1440 × tan 30° ≈ 831 px from the center of vision (960, 432) — a circle 1663 px across. The canvas corners are 1053 to 1158 px from that point, well outside the circle, so anything drawn there will look distorted.
Move the points to −1500 and 3420 and the distance becomes 2460 px, the cone radius about 1420 px, and the whole canvas sits inside the circle. The boxes look calmer and more natural. The rule of thumb: keep your main subject inside the cone, and push the vanishing points farther apart than feels comfortable.
The 1-point depth grid uses the same idea. Each step back is drawn smaller by a factor of D ÷ (D + k × tile width), where D is the distance from the vanishing point to the distance point — which is why the floor tiles stay square instead of shrinking at a constant rate.
Canvas sizes
| Preset | Pixels | Why this size |
|---|---|---|
| A4 | 2480 × 3508 | 210 × 297 mm at 300 DPI, standard print quality |
| US Letter | 2550 × 3300 | 8.5 × 11 in at 300 DPI |
| Full HD | 1920 × 1080 | Screens, video thumbnails, concept frames |
| Square | 2048 × 2048 | Social posts; the same size as Procreate’s Square preset |
For a canvas you have already started, choose Custom size and type its exact pixel dimensions, so the exported grid drops onto it without scaling. If you work in inches, the Digital Canvas Size for Print calculator turns print sizes into pixels.
Tips from practice
Lock the grid layer and lower its opacity. In Procreate, Photoshop or Clip Studio, set the imported grid to 20–35% opacity and lock it. You want guidance, not a cage.
Use the grid for placement, not every line. Rule the big edges — rooflines, table tops, door frames — and draw everything else by eye. Freehand lines that obey the grid look alive; ruled lines everywhere look like a technical drawing.
Find the points on a photo first. Load the photo, then drag each point until its lines follow two parallel edges in the picture. Paint over it knowing exactly where your eye level is.
Keep the horizon consistent across panels. In comics and storyboards, move the camera by moving the horizon and points between panels, but note the numbers under the preview so you can repeat a setup later.
Check your figures with the horizon. In a scene on flat ground, the horizon crosses every standing adult at roughly the same body height when the viewer is standing too. If heads float above and below the line at random, someone’s scale is off. For quick figures to drop into a scene, rotate a pose in the Random Pose Reference Generator.