Anamorphic Perspective in Illustrator or Photoshop?

I'm trying to find a way to distort artwork to emulate those crazy chalk art pieces you see all the time, like this:

I know how it's done:

...but I'm wondering if there is an Illustrator or Photoshop plugin available to apply the distortion for me.

Currently, I do the distortions manually with Mesh Envelope, but it's tedious. There has to be an easier way. Any ideas?

EDIT: Here is one of the recent real life projects I did that used this sort of technique, but calculated manually, stair by stair:

Here is the desired view point:

And here is an off angle view point:

Answer

Here is a software-independent great step-by-step guide. It's done by Wooden Palette, and their site has all the details to make it happen (this is more of a summary to explain the basic principles behind anamorphic art.

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STEP 1:

Create a simple grid (or use an existing one).

_{(source: woodenpalette.com)}

STEP 2:

Create a perspective plane. You can use a copy of your existing grid, and flatten it. The amount of flattening will depend on the position of the supposed person looking at the drawing.

http://www.woodenpalette.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/grid_2.jpg

STEP 3:

Place your art on top of the grids.

http://www.woodenpalette.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/grid_3.jpg

STEP 4:

Stretch both your art and the flattened grid back to full height.

http://www.woodenpalette.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/grid_4.jpg

STEP 5:

Stretch the art and former flattened grid to full width. Your second grid and your first one should overlap perfectly. Voila! Your anamorphic art is ready to be applied!

http://www.woodenpalette.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/grid_5.jpg