Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Isometric Projections
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Now that you have familiarized yourself with orthographic projections, you're wondering how this could possibly get any more difficult to visualize. Well, fret not, for another type of projection can do the job of orthographic projections, and is just as precise, though more ambiguous in some cases. I speak of isometric projections. It is likely that you have already seen an isometric view of something but may not have realized it. Indeed, many older games used isometric views in lieu of actual 3D.
The word isometric contains iso meaning same and metric meaning measurements. Simply put, it is a way of representing a three dimensional object in one view rather than three. To do this, one draws a set of axes such that each is at 120 degree angles with the Z axis vertical. Then, if one is drawing from orthographic projections, each view is represented in a pseudo-3D manner with the measurements intact, but at skewed angles.
In Blender, the isometric view is slightly different: it is not simply constrained to 30, 60 and 90 degree angles as conventional isometric drawings are. One may move the camera around in Blender's 3D space to view different facets of the object. Despite being able to zoom in and out, every line remains to scale.
