Chess Set

Chess Set

For this assignment I was tasked with coming up with a whole chess set that could be 3D printed and used to play chess. I really enjoyed this this project because I was given creative freedom to make what I wanted.

Research

I was really unsure what I wanted to make in the beginning and worked on three different ideas before finally selecting one. My initial idea was a senses set (i.e. nose for smell, mouth for taste, etc), this idea became draining and I lost interest in my own design which I was not happy about. I think I will eventually return to this set to make something else out of the elements I have created.

I then tried to do a Steven Universe themed design. I made a lot of progress on this set but did not find myself wanting or sure how to best make them into pieces of a chess set.

I then came to my third and final design, rain. Thunderstorms have always been my favorite form of weather. It is nice to watch the rain and hear the thunder as it is a soothing sensory experience for me. I thought of how to make the pieces look like rain and little puddles splashing which in the end became my idea for the project.

Making It Rain

To make my chess set I started out by first creating the little splash cups. This turned out to be far more difficult then I anticipated... I first created a a line that had the shape of a straightened out splash, I used images as reference. After that, this is where the tricky stuff occurred, I flowed the line around a circle. It took awhile to adjust it properly so it flowed into a proper closed shape.  From there I lofted my circle and splash line. To create a solid form I tried to extrude and offset the polysurface into a solid and neither idea produced results. Every cup was coming out crazy or not solid. I ended up going back to make a proportionately smaller circle and splash line, lofted them and used my two polysurfaces to create a solid.

After that I toyed with the rain drop shape I wanted to use and came up with this as the basic design.

From this point I created the basic chess pieces from a reference and used them in my design to allow for each piece's purpose to be clearly distinguishable.

I then began resizing the different forms till I created each of the basic pieces being sure to incorporate a rain drop in each one.

To really differentiate the King and Queen I added rain clouds and falling rain. This made them unique and they were also sized appropriately.

From this point I added materials for rendering and later I unioned the pieces to be exported as STL's and 3D printed.

Renderings and Screen Captures

I feel that in this project I was able to improve my rendering and environment skills from the last assignment. They could still use some work but I am still very pleased with the results.

If I were to return to this project I may choose to stagger the rain on the King and Queen pieces so they are more natural and less symmetrical as well as making splash variations. I also hope to return to my partially completed sets and use them for other projects.