Well i finaly found the register button. grumble grumble
well i’ve only started using blender perhaps a week ago so i’m extreemly newbie. (Although i have worked with 3dmax,maya,freespace and povray but with little to no luck (except for maybe povray where i did do some funny images)
I also have no drive to become as good as some of you, but i just like tinkering with the 3d things.
well enough about me, here’s my crummy chess board. (not finished btw still need the knight, dame and king)
Ack!!
first of all, turn on AA and get some higher-res textures. then, add some more lights. finally get yourself a copy of yafray and yable. [>] That’s where you can render from. %|
nice try, but you need to learn a lot…and im not trying to put you on the spot, mind you.
i’ll turn on AA the second i find the button for it.
and the textures where just downloaded from google, din’t realy thought there was anything wrong with them realy. perhaps they look a bit grainy but i thought that was just settings i still needed to find.
and while i do have yafray and yable (And actualy succeeded at rendering with it) i was told by someone else that for starters i could better just use the blender render since it aint half bad.
and about the lighting, well i do agree fully with you on that.
i’m now trying to create fakeGI with a hemisphere.
there’s already a fakeGI spotlight pointed on the board, but i still have to learn what all the settings accomplish.
and no your not putting me on the spot, i did that myself when i posted here.
and i don’t mind criticism, since it only gives me insight in my own mistakes and in other posibilities i should consider.
-edit-
ouch, just found the AA button, and hot dignedy dang that realy makes a world of diffrence.
StratoS
Welcome to the Blender Community.
I think what you have is a good start. I see that you’ve found the OSA button already. I’d like to offer a couple of tutorials that might help out.
If you want shadows in your image, you need to use spotlights.
Here is a good tutorial on Blender spotlights and how they work.
If you want reflections in your image you will need to use Env Maps.
Here is a good tutorial on Blender’s Environment Maps and how they work.
Here is a link to a list of available Blender Tutorials in the Question & Answers Forum.
Lastly I read that you have used Povray in the past? I’m not sure how familiar you are with it. However there is a excellent Blender to Povray export script you may want to try out. Its by jms and its called Povanim.
Jms’ site (previous link) has extensive info on how it works. Feel free to check that out also.
Again, welcome and good luck.
i’ll turn on AA the second i find the button for it.
and the textures where just downloaded from google, din’t realy thought there was anything wrong with them realy. perhaps they look a bit grainy but i thought that was just settings i still needed to find.
and while i do have yafray and yable (And actualy succeeded at rendering with it) i was told by someone else that for starters i could better just use the blender render since it aint half bad.
and about the lighting, well i do agree fully with you on that.
i’m now trying to create fakeGI with a hemisphere.
there’s already a fakeGI spotlight pointed on the board, but i still have to learn what all the settings accomplish.
and no your not putting me on the spot, i did that myself when i posted here.
and i don’t mind criticism, since it only gives me insight in my own mistakes and in other posibilities i should consider.
-edit-
ouch, just found the AA button, and hot dignedy dang that realy makes a world of diffrence.[/quote]
you certainly a very open person. pardon my first post, but we’re getting a lot of wannabe’s here…not saying your one. dont worry, it took me about a month to learn basic stuff in blender…not to mention all the fancy stuff. keep working, there’s not much more to say im afraid. 
i’ll turn on AA the second i find the button for it.
and the textures where just downloaded from google, din’t realy thought there was anything wrong with them realy. perhaps they look a bit grainy but i thought that was just settings i still needed to find.
and while i do have yafray and yable (And actualy succeeded at rendering with it) i was told by someone else that for starters i could better just use the blender render since it aint half bad.
and about the lighting, well i do agree fully with you on that.
i’m now trying to create fakeGI with a hemisphere.
there’s already a fakeGI spotlight pointed on the board, but i still have to learn what all the settings accomplish.
and no your not putting me on the spot, i did that myself when i posted here.
and i don’t mind criticism, since it only gives me insight in my own mistakes and in other posibilities i should consider.
-edit-
ouch, just found the AA button, and hot dignedy dang that realy makes a world of diffrence.[/quote]
Hey StratoS. great to see you followed my advice. welcome to Elysiun! 
Always nice to have some Dutch people around (some day we will rule the world…buwahahaha)
you already got the shapes down. now the rendering!
good luck 
Roel
<Dutch talk>
ps. welke school ga je? ik doe informatica in Rijswijk.
</Dutch talk>
<secret russion encrypted dutch talk response mode>
informatica in ROC vlissingen.
(zuig, zuiger, zuigst maarja alles voor een diploma)
</secret russion encrypted dutch talk response mode>
also made some new additions, including AA rendering, fakeGI indoor light (Although i’m unsure if i’m happy with it) and i put a coffee stain on the board. (made with the gimp-fu script)
defenitly looking beter then the first 3 
Ahhhh smooth image, no jaggies 
Looks so much better now.
And welcome aboard to you
that last one was major improvement. coming along real nice! 
samller things to look at: those weird shadows. they are very jagged, try playing with the spotlight’s shadow buffers maybe. might also fix those lines on the white squares.
keep it up!
you know, your super secret russian dutch mode is not that hard to decypher to be honest… %|
i can speak german, and dutch doesnt seem that much different (please keep your guns in their holsters…)
defenitly looking beter then the first 3
Welcome to blender
nice start, I’m sure you’ll get great results soon. I also notice you’ve found the AA button
Now,
what an anarchic chessboard… Where is the Temporal (King & Queen) and spiritual (Bishops) power?
Keep blending
Stefano
thanks,
i think you mean the knight and the king and queen.
there basicly not there yet becouse i haven’t made them yet 
there the only ones who aren’t fully round. (especially the knight)
So i poseponed them.
i’m now going to do the knight. but i’m unsure if i’ll succed.
i have trouble with non geometrical shapes.
i appologize for being picky, but its “postponed”. 8)
shrugs it’s not my native language. so basicly i don’t care
if it can be read and understood without a problem it’s good enough.
done modeling my horse piece.
it’s not perfect but its good enough for now.
evry single vertex put into place by hand
(well exept for the side where i just copy paste and mirrored it.)
(bah i hate the ‘search the vertex’ game when you try to glue two halves to eatchother)
next will be the queen and/or king and tweak the lighting a bit so it isn’t so bright on the white pieces.
I’m not quite sure what you mean by the " ‘search the vertex’ game" reference, so perhaps the following advice is not usefull to you, but anyways, here I go :
The middle “line” of vertices should all be vertically aligned. If this is not the case you can bring them into line by doing a constrained scaling.
[>] First select a vertex that you wish to align the “line” of vertices to,
[>] snap the 3Dcursor to that vertex by pressing Shift_s > Cursor to selection
[>] Press the dot/period key on your main keyboard set of keys (this will cause scaling/rotating operations to be performed with respect to the 3Dcursor)
[>] Start scaling by pressing [s], then while dragging your mouse horizontally, press your middle mouse button, and while holding down the Ctrl key, scale down to 0 .
(Now all your mesh’s middle vertices should be vertically aligned)
Now press Shift_d to duplicate the vertices. Scale [s], and [x] OR [y] (depending which view you are mirroring in, to flip the vertices across the axis.)
[!] Note that since we were in ‘scale with respect to the cursor’ mode, all vertices were flipped exactly across from where the cursor is.
Now all that remains is to do a ‘remove doubles’ operation ( [w], [4]) to weld the two halves together.
(By the way to put your scaling rotating mode back to the default, press the main keyboard [,] key - you should see the icons in the 3Dwindow header change when this is done - which is another way to change this option).
Hope that helps - it takes alot longer to explain then to actually do it
To comment on the horse chess piece, it looks nice except for the ears (a little too pointy) and where the top part meets the bottom part.
Nice work, keep going.
thanks that could realy come in handy.
but it wouldn’t be usefull for my horse though.
i first made a outlining of the horse and then filled it in with faces and also doing depth already.
if i would have used your techniek it would end up very strange since there would be no real space between the two sides.
(i hope you understand what i’m trying to explain)
and with the ‘finding the vertex’
I ment when i was trying to let the two sides join eatchother i needed to hand pick (or atleast that was how i did it) two vertexes and give it a face.
(and also put in a new vertex here and there to create some upper depth.)
but when i sometimes looked from upper angles. (especially on the head) there was truely a forest of vertexes that all looked just about the right one.
so i then just select the most likely and spin around it a bit to see if it looks right.
here’s a picture to see what i mean.
search the dot 
[1600x1200][~100kb]
I see. You are modelling a little differently than I normally do. When an object is symetrical, I usually just model half ( half the work 
) (though harder to visualize the final product) and then mirror it over at the end.
To make it easier to select vertices, there is the ‘Hide’ function.
Select the vertices you wish to hide, then press [h]
Alternatively, you can hide unselected vertices by pressing Shift_h.
Press Alt_h to reveal the vertices again.
Another alternative is to enter face selection mode [f], then select the face, and tab to edit mode.
Unfortunately, Blender still has no automatic face removal feature (geometry which is “behind” what is facing you is automatically hid/not shown) Hopefully, someone is working on adding it
no i did do only half of it.
but then i just copyd it and mirrord it. put in almost against the original and connected the dots. (and added a few dots in between since i hadn’t modeld te upper part of the head yet. (i just left the rest flat to get rounded at smoothing)
i’ll try to fix the ears now, while it wouldn’t realy matter (since the piece wel prolly never be very up close anyway.) it could be good exercise to do a edit on a existing piece.
(nd happely i only have to do 2 of them since the other 2 are duplicates of there brothers in color)
made a few new aditions, put some carvings and dirt on the table.
and added a knife & redid the lighting to make it a bit darker.
tryd to put some rust/aging on knife with UV maps.
worked fine in normal view but din’t show up on render.
finaly know what i’m going to do with this scene.
change to a medival game of chess in a seedy bar.
already started modeling a gountlet to move a piece.
things to do
*build the king and queen. (hehe kinda have a feeling this will be the last thing i do)
*finish gountlet and texture it.
*break down the table some more
*build a bar room for the table to be in.
*put some bottles on the table and some rubbish.
far far in the futur.
*animate a game of chess played by two knights in a seedy bar.
here’s the WIP of current situation.
chess6
and for my own amusement
horribly large picture of it for idiots like me who have there res on 1600x1400
[chess6-bg]background version](http://217.172.174.210/~erik/3d/chess6.jpg)
-edit-
also a current on my gauntlet.
(not much -YET- )
gauntlet
Cool Chessboard.
For the gauntlet, as far as I can see you are making the basic error of modelling volumless meshes.
Never model a thin strip as a plane, always as a scaled down cube. You will be happier when rendering.
Stefano
