Room in fisheye
Sofa, table, door and a figure inside a 180° fisheye view of a room.
What to look at
Every straight edge is an arc; only the line through the centre of view stays straight.
The whole room fits: floor and ceiling in one picture, which no flat grid can do.
The figure near the edge is bent, not stretched; compare the 20 mm alley.
What this scene is for
The living room again, this time through a 180° fisheye. Use it for security-camera and door-viewer shots, VR and 360° work, skateboard-video looks, and as the demonstration of why some views cannot be drawn on a flat grid at all.
The mistake it settles
Bending some lines and not others. In a fisheye every straight edge is an arc except the ones passing exactly through the centre of view. Half-curved drawings read as mistakes; fully curved ones read as a lens.
The camera
| Lens | 180° angle of view (curvilinear) |
| Camera height | 1.5 m above the floor (standing) |
| Rotation | 20° to the scene's axes |
| Tilt | 8° down (three vanishing points) |
| Objects | 2 × 0.9 × 0.8 m block · 1.2 × 0.6 × 0.45 m block · 2.1 m door · 1.75 m figure |
| 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 | 180° across (curvilinear) |
| Horizon | 345 px from the top, 46% of the image height |
| Image circle | radius 354 px, 0.25° per pixel |
| 90° ring | 354 px from the centre |
| Object | Distance | Off the centre of view | Height |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.2 × 0.6 × 0.45 m block | 3.8 m | 14° | 0.45 m |
| 2 × 0.9 × 0.8 m block | 4.2 m | 37° | 0.8 m |
| 1.75 m figure | 5.5 m | 43° | 1.75 m |
| 2.1 m door | 6.5 m | 6° | 2.1 m |
Draw it from these numbers
- Draw the image circle first: on this render it has a radius of 354 px, which works out at 0.25° of the world per pixel.
- The rim itself is the 90° ring, so everything in front of the camera lands inside the circle and nothing behind it appears at all.
- The horizon crosses the centre line 46% of the way down and bows away from there; only a line through the exact centre of view stays straight.
- Scale check: the 1.2 × 0.6 × 0.45 m block at 3.8 m sits 14° off the centre of view, so it lands 56 px out from the middle.
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
Why can a fisheye show the whole room when a wide-angle grid cannot?
Because a flat projection stretches toward its edges and reaches infinity at 180°, so it simply cannot fit a half-sphere on a flat picture. A fisheye maps angle to radius instead — in this render about 0.25° per pixel — so the whole 180° lands inside a circle.