Looking for a plugin for "drawing on a surface"

[GameSpirit]

Hello everyone,

 

Firstly, english is not my native language, so excuse me if you don't understand erverything.

 

 

I'm a fervent user of plaint.net, i discovered recently the plugin to improve it, so i'm looking for a plugin to do something particular, even if this plugin probably doesn't exist.

 

I want to do some enhanced reality graphics, on a football pitch, like they do on TV. Here is an example :

 

 

Look how the arrow, the numbers respect a certain perspective, as if they were ON the pitch.

This result is more or less good looking, but it's total struggling to do, I tested different plugin to do this, "Distort this!", "Quadrilateral reshape" and even "3D object", none of them is adapted for what I want to do, none of them can understand the perspective, so it's impossible to place correctly an arrow, to keep his A point and B point in place, and to conserve his curve... Plus for the numbers, it was also a complete struggle to do correctly, given that those 3 plugins cannot respect the images format. I have to do these things many times and I cannot struggle like that every single time.

 

 

So what i'm looking for, is a plugin wich i could explain on wich surface/plan/perspective I want to work, maibe by suggesting some directive lines, so he can see thing like that and understand the surface :

 

 

And then, when I will draw a line / put some text, It apply directly on the good perspective, in real time.

 

If this plugin doesn't exist, if you know if some software that can do it, please tell methanks for your help.

Edited November 10, 2015 by GameSpirit

[Ego Eram Reputo]

I'd suggest you try rotate/zoom (Ctrl + Shift + Z).

You'll need to place your arrow on its own transparent layer. Then use the roll control & pan to position it.

Tip: record the settings so you can duplicate the perspective effect on other elements (like additional text/arrows).

[GameSpirit]

Thanks but rotate/zoom is way too basic for what I want.

 

How can I record the settings ?

[AgentGoodspeed]

I can confirm that, having tried something similar for a book cover, Rotate/Zoom is not really awesome for this purpose. Getting the angles right is HARD and then it distorts the size. You try to fix the size and the angle doesn't work anymore. Vicious circle of hell.

Hypothesis #2: I suck at this which, according to Occam's Razor, is probably right on the money

[Ego Eram Reputo]

The trick here is to create the new graphics on separate layers. Make all the graphics along (imaginary) horizontal guidelines. Then you can apply the same rotations & tilts. Pan the layer following rotations/tilts to move the overlay into place.

 

In this image I created two extra layers, one for the arrow and another for the text. Both were originally laid out horizontally.

 

 

Embellishments:

 

1. Arrow was a custom filled Shape.

2. Added a drop shadow to the arrow to give it some depth.

3. Text layer had the opacity lowered (press F4) - it looks nicer as it gives the appearance of being overlaid over the pitch.

4. Erased the parts of the 'm' which overwrote the player.

[Ego Eram Reputo]

Thanks but rotate/zoom is way too basic for what I want.

Really? I think it's incredibly powerful.

How can I record the settings ?

Tip: You only need record the top three (manually write down the figures). An easier method is to run Rotate/Zoom on multiple different layers without changing the settings. The same rotations and tilts will be applied.

[MJW]

I almost hesitate to mention it, since I've promised to put it in a presentable form so many times and haven't yet done so, put there is the beta Perspective Transformation.

 

The problem with Rotate/Zoom for this type of use is that it only covers a limited subset of perspective transformations. To allow all transformations, moving and scaling in screen space have to be separate from moving and scaling in world space, since the first change only the screen size and location while the second change the shape. So while Rotate/Zoom can produce a variety of useful perspective transformations, it can't achieve a specific transformation.

[GameSpirit]

@MJW : Your plugin is maybe the best of the "Perspective" plugins (especially for the anti aliasing), congratulations, I didn't know it, but i think paint.net is just too limited for what I want to do, even with plugins. The principal problem I have with all the perspective plugins, is to start from an entire layer and not just the affected part (ex : an arrow), so the "perspectivable" part had to be in 16/9, and I have troubles to place the control points with the classic paintn.net tools.

 

But if I had to use one plugin, it would be yours, by far the most powerful and well thought plugin, i made this with it, i think it look better thant the previous :

 

[MJW]

Thank you. I keep promising to improve it, and intend to to so. The improvements I want to include are:

1) Put the starting positions in the corners instead of in the middle. Ideally, all four corners would be in the same control.

2) Increase the precision of the corner controls. At present there are only 200 positions, which for most windows means it can't position to a pixel.

3) Allow the corner controls to extend outside the window. Currently this has to be accomplished (rather unsatisfactorily) by scaling.

4) Change the way the XY proportion scaling works. Right now it's kind of awkward the way it switches between scaling X and scaling Y.

 

If you have any other suggestions, I'll consider them.

[GameSpirit]

Thoses 4 improvements are pretty good, there are 2 other issues that comes to my mind after practicing those plugin

 

- I use the plugin only on transparent layers, so they have no visible corners, i have to draw control points to the corners to see where they are, it would be good to make them appear, don't know if it's possible to custom something outside of the plugin toolbox.

 

- The format : after moving the 4 controle points, it's hard to recover the correct format, an option to make a = b and c = d (in fact, just change the angle) would be very helpful, and even be able to adjust control points after, according to the perspective.