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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.

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    $\begingroup$ Set your Camera to Orthographic then edit the Camera Rotation to be 45,0,45 (X,Y,Z) $\endgroup$
    – rob
    Commented Mar 26, 2019 at 8:36
  • $\begingroup$ related blendernation.com/?s=isometric $\endgroup$
    – rob
    Commented Mar 26, 2019 at 8:37
  • $\begingroup$ 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? $\endgroup$
    – Mitch
    Commented Mar 26, 2019 at 8:54
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    $\begingroup$ I think I got it. I was confusing the orthographic view with the actual orthographic property in the Camera property editor: 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. $\endgroup$
    – Mitch
    Commented Mar 26, 2019 at 14:12
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    $\begingroup$ Be my guest and you can change the "greyed out" with passeportout in the camera settings. $\endgroup$
    – rob
    Commented Mar 26, 2019 at 15:31

2 Answers 2

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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?

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    $\begingroup$ Thank you Rodrigo! I've updated my answer with a link to your correction. $\endgroup$
    – Mitch
    Commented Jan 28, 2020 at 10:08
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    $\begingroup$ 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). $\endgroup$
    – Ruben
    Commented Mar 17, 2021 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

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