Chessboard

[simsmj]

Egg, Gidgit,

Re: the patience of a saint.

My wife would say I have a touch of Asperger's Syndrome, pretty much like all males, she thinks!

I like to think of it as the ability to concentrate. http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

Mike

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Mike Sims

[simsmj]

I struggled for hours with the knight, and this is the best I've come up with. It looks OK at first glance from this angle, but it is actually quite a crude model. I suspect it will not get significantly better until an X3D 6 comes out with additional features, like z-axis translation or asymmetric extrusion, fractional values for extrusions/bevels, etc, and hopefully 3D-shape subtraction, too.

Enjoy!
Mike

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Mike Sims

[Egg Bramhill]

3D subtraction.. yum! Excellent knight. I can see you sitting there at your computer...I'll just try this.. there goes another three hours etc...
Egg

[simsmj]

That's just how it goes, just one more tweak, ah, I'll try that, hmmm, maybe if I try that, nope, but that looks like a good idea.... Five minutes later, three hours have gone.

Mike

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[songsteev]

How are you doing that with Xara3D? Is it V.5?

[simsmj]

Yes, it is Xara3d V5 I used to create the 3D chessboard etc. But the initial shapes were imported from XaraX as simple flat 2D shapes, which were extruded and bevelled to give the 3D shapes in the images shown. The imported objects always all sit in the same plane, and extrusions are always symmetrical on both sides of that plane, but for this image I only wanted one side to be visible, in order to get a normal viewpoint, hence the tabletop, and the final images were cropped before I posted them. I hope this helps. http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/smile.gif
Mike

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Mike Sims

[simsmj]

Welcome to the Xara forums, Songsteev.

Mike

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[simsmj]

Sorry about the tabloid subject line http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

Just a piccy to show how the Queen chesspiece was built up from an eight-point star and six identical small circles in Xara, and assembled in her full 3D glory in Xara3D, using simple bevels.
Mike

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[ProblemGirl]

Mike,

It has been increasingly impressive to view your work. I hope that your genius is due to experience, so that maybe I will be able to create such master pieces in due time.

[simsmj]

Thanks Jennifer,
I am an inveterate tinkerer, and I like playing with Xara3D, and occasionally produce something that works (a lot doesn't, and these don't get posted). If there is any talent involved, it is in recognising and choosing the sort of subjects that a more sensible person wouldn't dream of using Xara3D for, like chess sets, but which I think are amenable to the X3D treatment.

Xara3D has some serious limitations when compared to a real 3D program, and it is great fun to try to see past those limitations to those images that it can produce. Sometimes I get it wrong, and a graphic doesn't turn out the way I hoped, but other stuff can come out surprisingly well, and these are very satisfying, and get posted. If I didn't enjoy it , I wouldn't be doing it. It is something I do in my spare time, among other things, and my main problem is getting inspiration for the next image.

I don't have the right kind of creative imagination for that to happen very often, but once I do have an idea for a subject, then I can think about it, imagining it in my head while driving to/from work, for instance, and either I have a good idea how to tackle it by the time I next sit down at the computer, or it gets discarded as unworkable. And sometimes this forum can suggest ideas, and I learn a new trick. Indeed your Citraceutic post did just that, as I had never tried a multi-page animation before, and didn't know what a step animation was. It led to some other useful tricks, too.

So, keep trying out ideas, and have some fun in the process, and your own masterpieces will follow.

Mike

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Mike Sims