Rooftop, 12 m up
Figures, a car and two low buildings from 12 m up, tilted 30° down: the fourth-floor window.
What to look at
Figures are small ovals from here: shoulders and heads, almost no legs.
The two buildings' roofs read as rectangles on the ground grid.
Verticals converge to a nadir below; the further down you tilt, the stronger it gets.
What this scene is for
The fourth-floor window: figures, a car and two low buildings from 12 m up, tilted 30° down. Use it for street scenes observed from a building, rooftop chases, and establishing shots that need people small but still readable.
The mistake it settles
Drawing full-length figures. From 12 m, a person is mostly shoulders and head with the legs hidden under them, and the feet sit almost directly below the head. Drawing them as small standing figures gives the picture away as a normal view with tiny people.
The camera
| Lens | 28 mm on full frame |
| Camera height | 12 m above the floor (elevated) |
| Rotation | 32° to the scene's axes |
| Tilt | 30° down (three vanishing points) |
| Objects | 3 × 1.75 m figure · 1.8 × 4.5 × 1.5 m block · 8 × 10 × 6 m block · 8 × 10 × 9 m block |
| Floor | 1 m squares |
Measured off this render
Taken from the same camera model the tool draws with, on the 1340 × 754 PNG above.
| Angle of view | 65.5° across (28 mm on full frame) |
| Horizon | 225 px above the top edge — outside the picture |
| Depth-axis vanishing point | 82 px beyond the left edge |
| Width-axis vanishing point | 1,256 px beyond the right edge |
| Vertical point | Nadir 1,428 px below the picture |
| Object | Distance | Height on the render | Below the horizon |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.75 m figure | 14.1 m | 82 px | all of it |
| 1.75 m figure | 18 m | 73 px | all of it |
| 1.8 × 4.5 × 1.5 m block | 20 m | 59 px | all of it |
| 1.75 m figure | 24.2 m | 63 px | all of it |
| 8 × 10 × 6 m block | 26.7 m | 223 px | all of it |
Draw it from these numbers
- The horizon is off the top of the picture, 225 px above the edge. Mark it on a larger sheet, or work from the grid: it is why every roof and every head is below you.
- Two vanishing points on that line: 82 px beyond the left edge, and 1,256 px beyond the right edge — close enough to reach on a larger sheet.
- Nothing here is truly vertical: the uprights lean to a nadir 1,428 px below the picture.
- Set the scale from the 1.75 m figure at 14.1 m, 82 px tall on the render; the horizon passes above it, so it is shorter than the 12 m camera.
Open the reference in the tool to move the camera, change the lens, or add your own objects at real sizes; the share link keeps your version. Draw over the PNG at 30–50% opacity in any app with layers.
Question
How small is a person seen from four floors up?
Small enough that the body reads as a single mass: the nearest figure here, 14 m away with the camera 12 m up, stands about 80 px tall on a render 1,340 px wide. What sells the height is not their size but the angle — you see the tops of their shoulders, not their fronts.