Making of a Chess Pawn

This tutorial is one of a chess set tutorials explaining how to create a pawn, a rook, a knight and a chessboard itself.


In this tutorial you will learn how to create a chess Pawn.

As usual, you will need a reference image before you start creating anything. You can upload this one or find/create another one.







1. On a front view create a 150 x 100 (Generic units) plane. Then right-click the Front View and check Smooth and Highlight. This will allow you to create your pawn easily.



2. Press M and choose an empty slot. Go to Diffuse color, hit the grey square near it and choose a Bitmap to import the reference image. Apply the image to the Plane.





3. On a front view outline only a half of the reference pawn using a Line tool. Close spline when you finish outlining. If the outline is not as accurate as it supposed to choose Vertexes (Modifier menu) and right click your mouse. Click Bezier Corners. Now u can adjust each corner handle separately.







When finished outlining go to interpolation and change to 20 steps to make the line smoother. If you need to add some vertexes, press Refine and hit the line when little white cross appears above it.









4. When you are pleased with the outline, go to the Modifier menu and choose a Lathe modifier. You will see that your outline became 3 dimensional.


In Parameters press Min button to set the pawn right. Change Segments to 40. Keep smoothing the corners, if needed.

5. Basically, the pawn is ready. Apply an ochre color to it (177,148,26) and that's it.

Notice: Another way to create a Chess pawn is to use a Loft Deformation .

If you have any questions regarding this tutorial, do not hesitate to ask me.

Enjoy,
Dalia

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.

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.