Making of a Chess board

This time i will shou you how to model a Chess Board.

The two things you must remember when creating a chess board is that it is square and that it divided to 8x8 colorful inside squares.

So …

1. The first thing you want to do is to create a 100x100x6 box. Right-click any view and choose Editable poly. Go to Modifier list and choose Edge sub-object.







2. While standing on a Top view choose two opposite sides and Connect them (press the little square.





See image for parameters. Repeat this step with other opposite sides.

3. Press M and choose an empty slot. In a Material/Map browser choose a Multi/Sub-objects. This will allow us to use several colors on the same object. Choose Discard Old materials.


4. Since we will use only 2 colors, set the color number on 2. The first color will be a basic bright brown. I chose 254, 228, 171 for that matter.


5. The other will represent a chess board itself with two colors – bright and dark one. Click the Material # button. Now click the Diffuse color button to choose a Checker material. Use 254, 228, 171 for bright and 40, 23, 0 for dark. Make it visible. Notice that each color has its ID number. Remember that so we could work with it later.

6. Apply the materials to our board.
Whatever happened with your colors it might not look the way it should be. But we'll fix it in aminute.


7. Choose the box, go to the Modifier list and choose Element sub-object. After it chooses the entire box go to polygon properties. Remember the Material ID's? It was 1 for bright and 2 for Checkers. Set the ID's to 1.









8. Now choose the upper polygon only and set ID's to 2. Now you see your materials how they should be. Almost.





9. Go back to the Checker material and set the Tiling number to 12. You will see the changes immediately.










10. Change the background to white (8) and hit F9 to render.

That’s it.

If you have any question regarding this tutorial, don’t hesitate to ask me.

Car modeling

Now, it's not really a car modeling tutorial. But it is a reference for lots and lots car tutorials.

Some time ago I've decided to model a car. Nothing in particular, just a regular car. And since this seemed to be a somewhat complicated task, I've decided that this time I should find a good step – by - step tutorial that will allow me to create my car easily.

After a short search I found a Car Body Design , a cool site where you can find different car tutorials for almost any software, whether it is a 2d illustration or a 3d render. There are tuts for beginners, tips on modeling or sketching, tips on setting the blueprints and final rendering.
For my first model I chose a really nice green Mazda RX8 tutorial and I promise to post my final result as soon as it's finished.

So for those of you who learn how to create a car – this site is for you.

Have fun and good luck.

Making an umbrella with Illustrator.

There are several ways to create realistic umbrella with Illustrator. In this tutorial I will cover one of them.



This is the umbrella we will be creating this time. Make sure your reference image of umbrella is multi-colored divided to sections.





1. Open a new document (Cltr+N) and File-Place your reference image. It is always good to separate things at the beginning so Lock the first layer and open a new one. Set the Fill color to None.


2. Start outlining each section of the umbrella using a Pen Tool. Remember, that in order to create curved lines you should point and drag your mouse and only then release it. Each section should be outlined on a separate layer.



If your shape doesn't look exactly as your reference shape, choose the Direct selection Tool (A) and choose an angle on your shape. Then press Alt on your keyboard so you can work with each handle separately to adjust the lines.


3. After outlining all the umbrella sections add a handle and a top to the umbrella using a Rounder rectangle tool.
4. Hide the layer with the reference image.


5. To color the umbrella use either multiple base colors or create a nice gradient color.


6. That’s it – hope you found it useful.

If you have any questions - don't hesitate to ask. I will be happy to answer it.

How to make your object glow

One of my students came to me with a project that included some neon light in her interior.
Since I had no idea how to make a neon effect, I, as always, started the search. Among those simulating the neon effect I ran into this simple tutorial that allows you to Make the object glow.


I did learn the technique and found it really useful while making this Christmas tree.
See how the decorations glow? Nice, huh?

If you'd like to learn how to make such a tree – you are welcome to go to this Making of a Christmas tree tutorial.

Have fun :)

Let there be 3D!!!!!

This blog is to become a collection of links that are related to theoretical and practical applications of Computer Graphics and Animation, including tutorials, galleries, articles and sites. Since I was (and still am) eager to know as much as possible about 3D CG, I created my own list of essential CG info resources. As my list was growing, I found it equally hard to find the necessary material either on web or my computer. So the main purpose of this blog is to create a collection of all the info that I ever found useful (for me) without the need to search for it whenever I decide to use it again.

The first link will lead you to Tutorialized, a well known website providing all-kind and all-level tutorials including 2&3D graphics, web design, video editing, programming and many more. Since I'm basically self taught (except a short course in college), I practically (still) live there. If you're not familiar with this site, check it out. And if you're new to CG – this one is made for you.