Welcome to
Creating a Standard Asset! In this video we're going
to choose a style of chess set. Then, we're going to decide
on a construction method and then start creating
our asset. So I'm going to pick
a standard competition chess set, which is I believe
is pronounced Staunton chess set, and this photo
is taken from Wikipedia, the author down below there, Frank A. Camaratta.
Thank you for taking this wonderful photo for us! So we're going to use
this as, well I'm going to use this as my base. You can use a different type of
chess set, if you would like. Bear in mind, this is still going to be a low
poly chess set, we're not going to go over the top with detail at this level
in the course. Alright, our construction method! We're going
to split our models into two, so we're going to
make a standard base asset that we can work from
for all of the other models. If we just go back quickly to this
image, you can see that the bases across all of the models
are very similar. Some of them are slightly taller, before they
reach that little bump around the top where the neck comes out,
some of them are a little more squat, but essentially, they're the same
basic mesh and that's what we're going to create!
OK, so a challenge for
you, straight away! I'd like you to import a reference image!
So create a new Blender file named Chess Piece Base,
because that's what we're going to be working on. I'd like you to go ahead and,
if you haven't done it already, please download your asset pack and import the
Staunton Pawn.png as your background image. I
do suggest you use a cylinder of the right size for reference.
Since the base of the pawn is going to be 3
across, it'll have a radius of 1.5, a little hint for you there.
And finally, leave the cylinder in the scene, as we're going to use that
for block modeling later. Pause the video now and give that a
go! OK guys, welcome back! Let's
hop straight on over into Blender!
So here we are in Blender! I'm immediately going to get
rid of our cube, I don't need that in the scene. And I'm going
to Add a Mesh object that is a Cylinder,
and in the Operator Panel, before I do anything else, I'm
going to set the Radius to 1.5.
Once the Radius is set to 1.5, there are a couple of other
design decisions that I can make, like the number of Vertices, etc.
Now, at the moment in time, I think that's going to be plenty big enough for
the base of our pawn we're about to do.
So let's now import our image!
I'm going to go into our Properties Panel
on the 3D Editor, scroll all the way down to Background Images, and
Add an Image. I would suggest that you now go
to your Assets Pack. If you've not already downloaded it, please go
and download it, otherwise you won't be able to complete this task, and then,
grab your Staunton Pawn.
There we go, so we've got that there! Open the image, and of course, we won't see it
unless we're in Orthographic Projection and looking from one of the
side views. Excellent! So we've got our image in the scene and we've got
our reference cylinder here. So we're going to have to do a couple of things
to this image, and the first one's going to be scaling it down. So I'm just going to zoom
in, so I can see what's going on.
All the way there! OK, that's about right!
Now, I want the image on the base, where X and Y equal
0.
OK, so we'll just need to shift this pawn upwards
a little, this reference pawn, and let's lift it up.
Let's lift this up, as well, by 1.
I could have done that in a number of ways, I'm just going to translate it by 1 there,
and I'm going to change to Wireframe Mode, so I can just see our image behind, because
otherwise I can't see the image. [Laughs] It's as simple as that. Or I could put it in front,
of course, that would help and change the Opacity, just turn it
down a lot really, so I can just see where it is. Now, I've cropped these images
for you, so they're nice and easy to look at.
Let's just turn the Opacity up a little
bit more. Yeah, that's pretty much on the base, so I'm happy with that!
And the final thing that I'm going to do here is just
zoom in a little, and I'm going to grab this top and lower it to this
little ridge here, that's really, for me, where this base ends.
So I'm just going to rotate around a little and
grab this top edge loop here. So I'm going to switch into Edit Mode
and select that edge loop around the top, and then
flick straight back around, so I can see what we're doing. I'm just going to use the blue
arrow here and lower it to the right level. So there we go, we've got a
cylinder! We haven't modeled anything yet, apart from the general shape. We've got a cylinder
aligned to our reference image, and we're ready for the next lecture!
But before we move on, let's just make sure that we've named
our asset correctly. So let's scroll down. It's not called a Cylinder
anymore, we'll call this Chess Piece
Base. Why not, that sounds good to me! And then, finally
we will go ahead and save our
Blender file! So we will call this one...
Let's go into my project folder and call it Chess
Piece Base. I suggest you do that same now
and make sure
it is saved to your project folder. Brilliant!
Please share what you've done in the discussions, and
I will see you shortly!