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I want to use Blender as a sort of reference for making isometric pixel art. My game tiles are 64 x 32:

screenshot

I'd like to create an object in blender using this same view. I know I can move the camera manually with the mouse, but is there a way to position it so that it matches the view of the game world above? That is, so that each tile in the grid is twice as "wide" as it is "high"?

I will be using this view for everything I make, so it would be good if there is a way to quickly set it up like this instead of having to do it by eye.

Mitch
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    Set your Camera to Orthographic then edit the Camera Rotation to be 45,0,45 (X,Y,Z) – rob Mar 26 '19 at 08:36
  • related https://www.blendernation.com/?s=isometric – rob Mar 26 '19 at 08:37
  • Thanks, I got the orthographic part but setting the camera rotation doesn't do anything for me. I clicked on the camera in scene tree thingy and pressed N to open to the Transform editor, but entering those values doesn't affect the camera's rotation. The first result (video) on the page you linked just installs some add-ons, which is fine, but surely there's a way to do this without add-ons? – Mitch Mar 26 '19 at 08:54
  • I opened up a new Blender, went to Camera view, selected the Camera, opened the Transform editor and entered those values and it worked as expected. If you do all that and press 'r' to rotate the camera do you see the values change and does the camera angle change? – rob Mar 26 '19 at 10:22
  • I tried that and it almost looks right, but when I go back out of Camera View (I assume that's what's shown in the screenshot) it looks like the tiles are slightly too "tall": https://i.imgur.com/dlXQyiM.jpg – Mitch Mar 26 '19 at 11:49
  • Related https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/65425/how-do-i-achieve-the-traditional-3-4-perspective-of-jrpgs-using-the-camera https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/64914/setting-camera-to-position-where-it-can-render-a-seamless-repetable-orthographic and the wiki for some theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isometric_projection – batFINGER Mar 26 '19 at 13:44
  • I appreciate the links, but they're not helping in this case. I followed @rob's advice, but when I leave Camera View (assuming that is the mode where a section is greyed out and it uses perspective - my earlier comment probably incorrectly referred to it as the one shown in the screenshot, but I can't edit it) and go back to orthographic, it's not correct: https://i.imgur.com/dlXQyiM.jpg – Mitch Mar 26 '19 at 14:07
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    I think I got it. I was confusing the orthographic view with the actual orthographic property in the Camera property editor: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/42512/71058. When I set it to orthographic that way, the camera is orthographic even in Camera view, which is where I was going wrong. If I press R and then press X twice to get to the correct axis, I can then rotate the camera. Now it's just a matter of finding the correct angle... which I think is 60 degrees. – Mitch Mar 26 '19 at 14:12
  • Is there a way to force the "User Ortho" to be the same as "Camera Ortho"? Camera Ortho has the correct view, but it has that annoying greyed out background. I know I'm missing something fundamental here... maybe there is a way to increase the size of the rectangular viewport in Camera View instead? – Mitch Mar 26 '19 at 14:19
  • I can use Orthographic Scale to zoom out and show more of the scene as that answer describes, but it still leaves the greyed out background with the orange marquee. Good enough though. :) @rob, do you want to answer this or shall I? – Mitch Mar 26 '19 at 14:33
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    Be my guest and you can change the "greyed out" with passeportout in the camera settings. – rob Mar 26 '19 at 15:31
  • You can simply use the CreateISOCam addon: https://www.reinerstilesets.de/blender/createisocam.py – Phantômaxx Sep 28 '19 at 07:47
  • Should this question be tagged with pixel-art tag? – int_ua Jul 30 '20 at 01:16
  • I can add it, sure. – Mitch Jul 30 '20 at 12:15

2 Answers2

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In order to get an exact isometric perspective you shoud actually set as folllows:

enter image description here

Here's a comparison between (60,0,45) and (54.736,0,45) rotation:

enter image description here

Thanks to blender3darchitect.com: How to create a true isometric camera for architecture?

brockmann
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Rodrigo Carmine
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    Thank you Rodrigo! I've updated my answer with a link to your correction. – Mitch Jan 28 '20 at 10:08
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    While these settings produce a "correct" isometric projection, the OP was asking about fitting the tiles in 64x32. For that, 60 degrees is more convenient, even if it's less accurate. If you analyze some of the classic isometric video games (e.g. Diablo 1, Fallout 1) you will see that they use the 60 degrees projection to achieve tiles that are 2x1 too (presumably to make the most out of the usual power-of-two texture requirements of the time). – Ruben Mar 17 '21 at 14:18
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Thanks to @rob for nudging me in the right direction, I found out that this answer contains much of what I needed to know:

How do I make Front Ortho the Active Camera?

camera settings

Click on the Camera in the scene tree thingy, then under Lens (Screenshot of Lens settings in 2.8), select Orthographic. While I was there I played around with the Orthographic Scale too, which zooms in and out.

Then I set the X rotation of the camera to 60 degrees, which seems to result in the tile widths being twice as large as the height (feel free to correct me on that number - edit: Rodrigo corrected me; it is actually (54.736, 0, 45)):

rotation

The end result:

result

@rob also pointed out that the greyed out area outside of the camera viewport is called "passepartout". I disabled it so I can see stuff outside of it properly:

passepartout

Mitch
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