There is a thing I call the "Hollywood Effect".That's where you put your most detail buildings,vehicles and figures in front and use mediocre detail buildings,vehicles and figures in back and just like in a movie nobody will notice.
Mirrors can be used to fool the mind as long as the mirror image of the objects is drawn away from the viewer by blending in.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
CNJ831 As I have pointed out previously on this forum, in all honesty forced perspective, as applied to the typical model railroad, simply does not work...except in appropriately arranged photographs. Since, in person, the scene is viewed with binocular (3-D) vision, the mind immediately understands and appreciates that the objects, regardless of any gradation in size with increasing distance from the viewer, are no more than a couple of feet away, no additional depth will be preceived, regardless of claims otherwise by some. It is an implied effect, not a truly illusionary one.
As I have pointed out previously on this forum, in all honesty forced perspective, as applied to the typical model railroad, simply does not work...except in appropriately arranged photographs. Since, in person, the scene is viewed with binocular (3-D) vision, the mind immediately understands and appreciates that the objects, regardless of any gradation in size with increasing distance from the viewer, are no more than a couple of feet away, no additional depth will be preceived, regardless of claims otherwise by some. It is an implied effect, not a truly illusionary one.
While I generally agree that forced perspective is more successful in model photography than it is in "reality" I have seen examples that were effective in layout tours (admittedly, where perhaps the sheer lack of time to focus attention on any one thing helps further the illusion; if you had to live with the layout 24/7 perhaps again the eye would not be fooled)
The best example was an incredible illustion -- a 'dummy" nonpowered track that curved around a rock outcropping and essentially disappeared into the woods. The modeler started the track in HO and gradually made the rail smaller, the gauge narrower, the ties smaller and closer together, and by the time the track was disappearing around a bend into the trees, it was N gauge and scale. But you could not detect any sudden change whatever. A masterful illusion of depth. He was careful to keep structures away from this area so it was all trees and foliage.
Another example involved distant buildings and vehicles where the colors were toned down and the details were also toned down. So for example the distant structures, which were perhaps smaller than N scale, did not really have any 3D details like window frames, brick mortar lines, lapped siding -- it may well be they were paper and perfectly flat, and definitely had no shine. I think the lesson here is that plunking down a nicely detailed N scale house or N scale automobile on an HO layout is not going to work well because, as the above poster points out, the eye sees the detail and the mind fills in a calculation of the actual distance. Take away almost all the detail and the mind has a harder time doing that (of course at my age the mind has a harder time doing anything).
Also you could not look directly at the houses and vehicles but saw them through tree branches, behind or around a hill, and other camoflage. There was a very good illusion of distance to the point of placement -- so less 3D detail, subdued colors, no shine, and partly obstructed views were my takeaway lessons from that layout.
This might seem counter intuitive (because I know some people think it is best to have a forced perspective distance behind a very "busy" closeup scene) but my own thinking suggests that perhaps forced perspective works best where there is not much full size modeling in the foreground, on the theory that if the mind is more or less "bored" with the scene in general it may not labor to notice changes in perspective but will take in stride what few things there are to look at and accept the illustion of distance.
Model railroading is one of the few activities where fooling people is a noble endeavor. If only Bernie Madoff had turned to model railroading instead of the world of high finance!
Dave Nelson
There are a number of visual clues the human mind automatically and unconsciously invokes when viewing a scene with implied depth and comparing it to previous experience. One that few folks are normally aware of is the presence of atmosphere between the viewer and objects at increasing distances, which tends to ever so slightly but increasingly soften them and alter their color. The lack of these effects is one of the reasons why virtually all model photos look like photos of models, not the real thing. The mind will immediately key in on such errors and realize that there is no unusual depth present to the scene. These effects can be painted into a background but are not present when one implies distance simply by employing smaller scale, 3-D models to suggest distance on the layout.
While the scene's viewer will understand that distance is being implied by the layout builder when he employs progressively smaller structurers, or trees, toward the rear of a scene, the viewer will never for a moment be tricked into believing that there is any greater distance to the rear of the scene than there actually is (unless the scene is already unusually deep to begin with).
On the other hand, the clever use of mirrors will indeed convincing trick a viewer into seeing depth in a scene that really isn't there.
CNJ831
Forced perspective can be very tricky since we are trying to fool the eyes into thinking its a long distract when our mind might say other wise.
Look at this picture I took..No fooling the eye there..Those houses is up a embankment,across a small triangle shape park and across a street.Those that live in Columbus,Oh thats North of the intersection of South Front Street and Greenlawn Ave...
And now in comparison lets look at Grampy's Trains picture-I am not picking on you DJ.
We can see the houses across from the interlocker is smaller then they should be because the houses on the backdrop looks larger at a longer distance since they are over what appears to be a small raise..The houses across the road from the interlocker should be near HO size and the backdrop houses near TT or N Scale size.
Again force perspective is tricky at best but,not impossible to do.
Heartland Division CB&QFeel free to post photos of yours
OK, here are two ..
The mind is like a parachute. It works better when it's open. www.stremy.net
Mononguy:
It can be a tricky situation. Most of my 'forced perspective' is at eye level or above, or in a situation where there is enough depth of field toward the background to fool the eye into thinking that thinking that the scene is going on further back than it already is. I'm still experimenting with it. It's a matter of GRADUALLY shrinking the background into fooling the eye, not suddenly doing so. It's not easy to do, it takes quite a bit of trial and error.
And you're right, it works a lot better in two dimensions. I think the idea originally came from Hollywood, where miniature specialists used gradually smaller and smaller scales to extend the studio-based 'sets' for filming depth.
Tom
Tom View my layout photos! http://s299.photobucket.com/albums/mm310/TWhite-014/Rio%20Grande%20Yuba%20River%20Sub One can NEVER have too many Articulateds!
Forced perspective can be very effective in photography, where the final product is two-dimensional and thus lacking any natural depth. What little I've seen in person, though, I've found to be much less convincing. Being able to perceive the actual depth of the scene, the smaller stuff in the back just looks out of scale to me.
"I am lapidary but not eristic when I use big words." - William F. Buckley
I haven't been sleeping. I'm afraid I'll dream I'm in a coma and then wake up unconscious. -Stephen Wright
~G4
19 Years old, modeling the Cowlitz, Chehalis, and Cascade Railroad of Western Washington in 1927 in 6X6 feet.
Thanks for the remarks, and inparticulare, thanks to Tom and Grampy for photos from their great layouts.
Again, I recommend people read the articles in the current edition of MR.
GARRY
HEARTLAND DIVISION, CB&Q RR
EVERYWHERE LOST; WE HUSTLE OUR CABOOSE FOR YOU
Hi: Looks good, Gary. Here's scene from my layout using N scaled houses and that same 59 Ford. (different color)
I am in the process of building the largest hill on my layout. It's in a corner and decided to do my first attempt at force perspective. I bought a couple of N scale ready built houses and place just below the summit. I paved a road a little more than half the normal width. I'm using polyfiber trees and made the poly balls smaller near the top and they will get gradually larger as I work downhill. I'll use WS armature trees and Super Trees at the base of the hill. Since I've only worked about halfway down one side of the hill I really can't say how effective the trees will be but I am happy with the the look of the small houses. I think it is an effective illusion. I realized just this week that I had no utility poles for those houses so a trip to the LHS took care of that. Set me back all of $2.65.
The two LHS's I freguent didn't have a lot of choices for N scale houses that were right for my era. One of the ones I did use was Model Power's Sinatra House. The funny thing is I already have an HO scale Sinatra House in the neighborhood at the base of the hill. I'm going to leave both where they are and see how many people notice that the two houses are identical except in scale.
I've talked with the owner of a local hobby shop who uses forced perspective on his home HO layout; he has an n-scale track across a fore-shortened "valley" . I haven't done that, though I've thought about doing it with z-scale on my n-scale layout, but the cost of a separate z-scale system is a big hindrance. You fellas have carried off the effect well in these scenes. [Off topic] Garry- I really like the covered bridge. It reminds me of one a few miles from where I used to live in Ohio. My wife bought me an n-scale laser kit of a covered bridge for Christmas, and I'm anxious to get started on it.
Garry--
Good show! I've used a lot of forced perspective on my Yuba River Sub especially with tree-height to make my Sierra Nevada look actually higher than they are. One of my planned projects is to use Z-scale buildings to represent a mining town WAY up on a mountainside. When I read that article in MR I kind of smiled to myself and thought, "Gee, I've been doing that for a LONG TIME", LOL! I remember going into my LHS when I started the scenery on the Yuba River Sub and one of the guys grinning and saying, "Boy, you're sure buying a bunch of N-scale trees for an HO layout." I chuckled, "Mountains." He nodded, "Got'cha!"
It really works.
The March edition of MR has some good articles explaining how to make a layout look bigger. I recommend you read those article.
My latest village scene has forced perspective to suggest depth to it. The houses and roads become smaller at the rear of the layout. The stream also gets more narrow as it curves to the right behind a hill.
I suspect many of you have done some forced perspective on your layouts. Feel free to post photos of yours. I have heard of one idea of having operaing smaller scale trains in the distance.
I will include a view with the camera held above my scene. You may notice the N scale 1959 Ford in the background of my HO layout.