Chess Pieces Request

Community Forums/Showcase/Chess Pieces Request

_PJ_(Posted 2003) [#1]
Any 3d artists out there able to make Chess piece meshes?

Im sorry I cannot pay for this, and I'm only asking as a favour. I would make them myself but I cannot even make a cube in 3D lol!


Uncle(Posted 2003) [#2]
Try over at 3dcafe as they have 2 chess sets for download. If you are going to make a chess game then you would need load the scene into your 3d package and then save the sperate models.

Hope this helps,

Cheers,


Unc

http://www.3dcafe.com/asp/toys.asp


GfK(Posted 2003) [#3]
The ones on 3Dcafe are *very* hi poly though.

I know, because I looked at them myself when I was making my 3D chess game.


jhocking(Posted 2003) [#4]
Here's a start:
http://www.3darteest.com/chessy.zip

I just took one of the free chess sets from 3DCafe and ran a polygon reducer on it. Now I'll fix up the texture coordinates a little so that you can apply whatever texture you want.


sswift(Posted 2003) [#5]
jhocking:
Exactly hwo much did you reduce the polygons? :-)

I tried reducing the polygons with the optimizer in Max 3, and the results were less than ideal with anyhting over an angle size of 6. At 6, it reduced the polygon count roughly by half... But that still leaves you with around 60,000 polygons for a complete chess set.

Which is why I didn't bother expeorting the peices. That's still too high. If I set the optimzier any higher the peices broke down into shapeless blobs.

Seems to me that an optimizer should be able to do a much better job than this.


_PJ_(Posted 2003) [#6]
Theyre great! Thanks a real lot!

I was able to load the scene into 3D Canvas and export one of each mesh.


jhocking(Posted 2003) [#7]
That the optimizer didn't give give you very good results doesn't surprise me. Even really good optimizing tools take a lot of "massaging" (tweaking values, scrubbing detail settings, etc.) to get halfway decent results. This assumes the model is a good candidate for optimizing in the first place (eg. a dense mesh of nearly coplanar polygons.) The default optimize modifier in 3D Studio Max hasn't got a prayer.

I've done a LOT of polygon reduction so I know the tricks; I've worked for several clients who insisted on purchasing high pol models from Viewpoint or Turbosquid and had me reduce the polygon counts even though I pointed out that it would be faster and look better for me to just model the objects from scratch at low resolution. Usually I use some combination of Multires and Polychop (both tools preserve texture coordinates) but since I don't own 3D Studio Max I had to use some free tools which munch polygons pretty well but screw up texture.

Oh, and I got it down to around 23,000 polygons for the scene. Considering there are 22 pieces that's about 1,000 polygons per piece. Assuming the chess set is pretty much all that is onscreen (for a chess videogame that makes sense but for a chess game within a larger videogame that won't be the case) that should be a good poly count.

****

Malice, are you going to need texture coordinates? If not I won't waste my time but if you want to apply any textures (something like marble or wood to indicate what the pieces are made of) it shouldn't be hard for me to throw on some mapping planes and cylindrical mappings.

Note that you really wouldn't want to ship with these models. These are fine for testing and/or freeware but there are a lot of little errors. There's a reason 3D Cafe is giving them away for free ;) For example while reducing I noticed the meshes have a lot of cracks and seams.


sswift(Posted 2003) [#8]
"I've done a LOT of polygon reduction so I know the tricks; I've worked for several clients who insisted on purchasing high pol models from Viewpoint or Turbosquid and had me reduce the polygon counts even though I pointed out that it would be faster and look better for me to just model the objects from scratch at low resolution."

Well then, why did you bother redusing the resolution of the chess set, rather than modeling a new one from scratch? Even I can model a chess set, though I would never claim to be as fast at building a new model as applying optimizations to a high poly one. :-)

Oh and I know how to "massage" a model too, but I wasn't about to spend several hours selecting individual sections of the chess peices and optimizing them, I'm not being paid for this. :-)

I took a look at your optimizations and you kinda mangled the base of the peices. Of course beggars can't be choosers, but I'm not the one looking for the chess peices. So I can be a chooser. :-) That mangling of the base is why I didn't go down below an optimization of 6 degrees.

If I was more skilled with Max, then I would consider modelling new peices for him, but I'm not that good with it and it would take me hours to do some of the more complex peices like the knight or the castle. The others can be done with a surface revolution. Though I suppose it might be easier to work with primitives and try to hack sommething together since I don't know how to make shapes or do lathing.


_PJ_(Posted 2003) [#9]
I have one small problem with the meshes. They seem to have a pivotal point outside the actual mesh - This means none of them are positioned accurately. I guess I can remedy this by assigning pivots myself and parenting these with the meshes themselves.


jhocking(Posted 2003) [#10]
"These are fine for testing and/or freeware but there are a lot of little errors"

I wasn't referring to the bases specifically but that is a fine example of what I was talking about. This was a quick and dirty polygon reduction.

Malice, the pivot points are determined by your modeling tool. I'm not familiar with 3D Canvas so I can't give specific advice but you will need to do something (possibly move the piece to the origin) when saving out the pieces.


Warren(Posted 2003) [#11]
But that still leaves you with around 60,000 polygons for a complete chess set.

Right ... and? If that's all that's on the screen, save for the board, hud and some GUI thingies here and there, why would 60,000 polygons be a problem?


sswift(Posted 2003) [#12]
"Right ... and? If that's all that's on the screen, save for the board, hud and some GUI thingies here and there, why would 60,000 polygons be a problem?"

Well it depends on what sort of PC you're aiming for, doesn't it.

If you are making a chess game for fun, you can aim for whatever minimum system requirements you want. However, if you intend to sell this as shareware, then you should aim at low end systems.

You MIGHT be able to just squeak by with 60K polygons on a TNT2 card. Your framerate won't be spectacular though. Of coruse, I could be mistaken. I am basing my estimate on a test I did with 50,000 trees on a Blitz terrain a while back. Now that I think about it, that would be between 100-200K polygons, and Blitz terrains are slow as hell.

Sooooo maybe 60K polygons for a chess game is a realistic benchmark to aim for. But it may not run so hot on the systems of people who still have Voodoo 2's.


rsbrowndog(Posted 2003) [#13]
Malice,

I have one small problem with the meshes. They seem to have a pivotal point outside the actual mesh - This means none of them are positioned accurately. I guess I can remedy this by assigning pivots myself and parenting these with the meshes themselves.

You could always do a fitmesh on the models, or use the following code from the code archives:

http://www.blitzbasic.com/codearcs/codearcs.php?code=14

By BlitzSupport:

Sometimes models are offset when exported from editors, with the effect that rather than rotate around the mesh's centre, they rotate around some weird offset point way outside the mesh. This function will reposition the mesh at world co-ordinates 0, 0, 0 and centre it properly on its pivot.

Use this *before* trying to position a weird-offset mesh, as it will place the pivot on 0, 0, 0!

Now you can use those weirdo-offset models as you'd expect to!

Finally, if you want to have a go at making your own set of pieces, but (like me!) lack the skill to do it, try using Doga:

http://www.doga.co.jp/english

Cheers,

Ryan


_PJ_(Posted 2003) [#14]
Great help thanks!

Fitmesh doesn'tr work with Types, I think, but you guys have been real helpful!


Bolo_Loco(Posted 2003) [#15]
Free to use :






Download :
http://www.boteco.de/bolo/upload1/Chess.zip

Bolo Loco


rsbrowndog(Posted 2003) [#16]
Malice,

Fitmesh doesn'tr work with Types, I think

What you would do is perform fitmesh on the model, like this:

pawn=loadmesh("models\pawn.3ds")
fitmesh pawn,-.5,0,-.5,1,2,1


That would give you a pawn mesh that was 1 unit wide, 1 unit deep and 2 units high. It's offset would be at the bottom centre of the model.

Cheers,

Ryan