Hi, this is the first time I post something on this forum , I hope my work is good enough for it . I made all of the pieces using NURBS (by drawing the siluete and then revolving it, except for the knight of course) and the board itself is polygonal. This is all very simple, but at least I didn't followed any tutorials to do it . Well, I just wanted to share it with other people (I got all exited about it after finishing ), and see what the experts thing. Good? Bad? How? What did I do wrong and what should I have done instead? Thanks for looking.
I like the wood texture around the board alot. Did you make it or did you use one you found? Is this your first model or have you done this before? The pieces are very basic and not to be mean, but you need add somthing to it to make it more individual. perhaps an interesting perspective or may be set the pieces up in an odd way. You have created a good starting point for a scene, do somthing with it, perhaps put it on a table with some extra stuff around it? Glasses? magazines? Add some lights and shadows, i dunno. I also am a newbie, and have recently made my first post on this same board. But no one seems to really do any critiquing here. But i think you are off to a good start. The models, as simple as they are, look clean, the reflection looks a bit aliased, though. But all in all, its looks like a good first attempt
It's okay .. you have done a decent job modellign the pieces.. the reflections on the surfaces are pretty noisy though. The wood could have more of a bump and the checkerboard pattern is too flat.. either make it reflective or a little dirty.
Okay so this is your first project.. so I don't want to sound harse but checkboard patterns and chess boards are one of the biggest cliches in computer graphics ever. So this is the last time you will ever use a check board pattern.. say goodbye to it. So for your next project you will not be doing anything from star wars .. or for that matter anything from any movie your ever saw. Don't recreate your bedroom or your comptuer workspace those are also bigtime cliches. Naked big boobed women.. cliche, Orcs, Ferrari's, Audi's, VW Bug, anything with Poser and etc.
If you need some ideas just ask.. decide if you want to do a character, vehicle, environment or object and take it from there. Common place objects aren't very inspiring.. what would make it inspiring? This chessboard for example would be more challenging and interesting if the peices were more anthropomorphic (IE had living human qualities to them) and the chessboard was made of computer chips instead of dull white and black squares... maybe instead of a wood frame it could be a stone with strange symbols carved in it.
You are right, the reflections are very noisy. How can I fix that though? For the pieces I used a black Blinn material and a white Blinn material (this is in Maya by the way), how can I make the reflections smooth?
About the wood texture, I don't know where it's from. I mean, it was already on this machine, I think it comes with Maya, I found it under Shader Library>Building>plank3.ma. I don't think it needs any bumps though, because it's supose to be flat, I mean, it was sanded and then coated, right? (a real board I mean)
The checkered pattern is also from Maya, I just chose Checker, under 2D textures. You are right about it needing to either reflect or look dirty. I knew something wasn't right about it but I could figure out what, thanks.
Sorry about the cliche theme , but I'm just learning to model, so I figured I would start with something simple. Eventually I'll move on. Right now I have already started a sword; a rapier to be exact. I'll post it when it's finished, which shouldn't take too long, but I can only work on this stuff during the some part of the weekends :-/.
Well, I'll fix the reflections and post a new picture as soon as I get a new reply with the "how to do it", it shouldn't take too long to fix, right? I mean, probably just change one or two numbers here or there.
You need to increase the Sampling Rate in the render globals
I don't think it needs any bumps though, because it's supose to be flat, I mean, it was sanded and then coated, right? (a real board I mean)
Actually wood has pores.. so even though sanded wood wil absorb the varnish and lacquer creating slight pits. You could also probably acheive a simlair effect with a specular map in any case in it's current state the reflections Are too harse like it was made of plastic or faux wood. Even the lacquer coating would have some unevenness in it;s surface that would cause variation in the highlights.
The checkered pattern is also from Maya, I just chose Checker, under 2D textures.
As a friend of mine used to say.. don't live with the presets.. twirl some dials or something at least.
You could add dirt to the checkerboar din several ways one would be to map a fractal noise pattern tot he color offset channels of the checkboard node.
So, what about this one? I increased the number of samples (the difference wasn't very obvious at 6x12, so I went to 8x16). Also, I changed the material in the board to be reflective (I didn't added dirt, sorry, I'm still figuring that out...), and I changed the bump maping and filtering for the wood texture. I can see it all looks much better know (what would I do without you guys? )
, I hope my work is good enough for it 
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), and see what the experts thing. Good? Bad? How? What did I do wrong and what should I have done instead?
. I can't see it on the material's properties.