A chessboard

I’m planning on making an animation of a game of chess being played, mostly to familiarize myself with the animation and particle functions in blender.

The image below shows about where I’m at, just about ready to start animating. I know the the textures kinda suck, but my primary goal in this is to ‘finish’ something, rather than make it perfect this time. I’m one of those people that tend to start several different things, and finish very few of them. It’s kinda hard since I’m deprived of time as well as talent for this sort of thing.

Anyway, here’s a test render. I’ll tweak it a bit before starting any of the animation. Any questions or comments would be awesome. I already know the knight sucks. ><

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There’s something off about the materials… as though the pieces are made out of balloons. You might want to try for a harder specularity, but less of it. A little bit of fresnel could help, too.
Also might have something to do with the lack of shadows.

Personally I’m more concerned by the pawns and rooks than the knights.