Alright… can we talk about how weirdly hard this is? You’d think telling an AI “make a top-down 2D image” would be simple. I tried something like “straight from above, no angles” bla bla bla… But nope. The AI just refuses to behave sometimes. Always seems to add tilt, or shadows.
Shadows are somewhat OK since they can be removed but if the image is seen in an angle, then there’s not much to do except try to generate a new image.
I’ve created some prompts that actually work pretty well. Not perfect. Not even close to perfect. But definitely the best I’ve managed so far.
Lets start with the first prompt. I needed some top-down 2D sprites of cars and ended up with some that looked like this. All of the cars isn’t that great but some of them could be used for the game I’m currently creating.
Example below:
Prompt used for the Cars:
Sometimes the prompts give you exactly what you want. Clean, flat, proper top-down tiles. Other times the AI just ignores half of it and throws in perspective anyway. Same prompt. Totally different result.
Flat 2D illustration, orthographic direct top-down view of eight cars: a red Fiat 500, a blue Renault Clio, a green Skoda Octavia, a silver Toyota Camry, a black Ford Focus, a grey Audi A4, a white Bentley Continental GT, and a dark blue BMW 3 Series, and a beige Hyundai Ioniq, and a dark green Nissan Qashqai. No perspective distortion, flat lighting with no heavy shadows. Texture map only, no 3D model. Rectangular aspect ratio, seamless edges, isolated on a pure white background.And here is another prompt I used when I needed Top-Down 2D bushes for the game. They aren’t perfect as you can see. Some of the sprites in image #2 could be used after removing the shadows.
Prompt used for the Bushes:
Top-down view of 4 distinct bushes: one lush, one spiky, one flowering, and one barren. Each rendered from a strict 90-degree angle, showing only the top surface with no visible sides, no perspective, and no shadows. Centered on a clean white background. The style is bright and colorful with clean, dark outlines, featuring detailed game assets in various shades of green. Presented with no isometric, angled, or tilted views.So yeah… you can improve your chances. But you can’t fully control it. That’s the frustrating part.
Free AI Image Websites try the Top-Down 2d Prompts
I used two websites to create the images above. Both are free to use.
Perchance
You’ve probably heard of this website since it’s very popular.
On Perchance you don’t even have to sign-up before you start to generate images.
Just type/paste your prompt and press a button.
Click here to check one of many Image Generators on Perchance!
NightCafe
NightCafe is a site I recently found. The images created is better than Perchance. You have to signup but you’ll be able to get free credits every day and you also get free credits when you create your account. Just enter username, password and email. That’s it.
Click here to get the free credits at NightCafe!
You might also want to check out how you can use negative AI prompts to get better results.
That’s it for now. I hope you’ll have luck with these prompts.
If you have some really good prompts you could share, please post a comment. :)