Fish eye lens experiment

[Ascension]

I wanted to try something like what you see in those photographs taken from the top of a skyscraper, pointing straight down. Not the greatest thing ever, but a neat thing to experiment with.

Starting with the bison grass I added some squares (scattered and size jitterred) then a chisel soft inner bevel and some color to make some rough thatched roofs. Copy this layer and put it under the roofs.

For the walls, at first I tried the spin blur (set to zoom 25%) but that blurs in two directions like a motion blur. So what I did was to copy that layer and reduce the scale by 1%, copy then reduce 2%, then 3%, then 4% and 5%. Merge those layers together and then give it a color. Blur 2 pixels (to remove jaggies) then noise - median to sharpen up the shape.

Next a layer of 100% noise then did the spin blur (set to zoom 100%) and set to overlay 50% opacity to create the wood planks.

Then added shadows; copy the walls layer move up and left 1 pixel, repeat 19 times, merge the layers and set it to 50 opacity. Then some erasing on walls facing the sun (lower right).

Lastly, I added some edge lines for defining the edges of walls and some roads.

The only thing that I can't figure out is how to get the roofs to have the same tilt/distortion as the walls (so this would be good for flat topped walls and buildings) but otherwise I think this turned out pretty good for a quickie experiment on something that might not ever be used but could probably be developed into something. Oh well, time to make some dinner.