#27 A Chess Set In Cinema 4D, The Rook Piece

In a previous post, I showed you the basics of making chess pieces in Cinema 4D. Now we are kicking it up a notch and making a Rook piece.

First, take a look at the shape. It’s different from most of the other pieces. Obviously we can use the Lathe NURBS tool to make most of the Rook, but not the top. So we will model the body first, and leave room for the tower-like top. Image taken from Wikipedia.

You can use the above reference for the Rook’s shape, or you can make one yourself. I improvised. In case you haven’t read the previous chess post, I’ll run you through the basics:

Set your view camera to Top, and use the Spline tool to make a shape that looks like the outline of half of the Rook(without the top). Now just put that Spline to be a child of the Lathe NURBS object. My result below:

Now that you have this, you can proceed to model the of the Rook. I can tell you 3 ways to do this(of the top of my head).

One way is to use multiple Cube objects to shape the top. Another way putting a Cube object into an Array Object(I’ve showed you this tool before). And the third way(the one I am going to use) is as follows:

First thing you need to do is create a Tube object. Take that tube object and put it on top of the Rook’s body. Set it’s Inner and Outer Radius so it matches the position of the tower walls that you want.

Now take make the Tube editable(the shortcut key is C) and select the polygon tool. Proceed to delete the polygon blocks two by two, skipping every other pair. Something like this:

 

 

 

You have these gaps now. Close them using the Close Polygon Tool, and you have yourself a Rook!

I added a Plane object beneath with a checkerboard material. Cinema also has a wood surface generator included, so I used that too.

I showed you how to model another chess piece. Soon(once my exam week ends) I will show you how to model the other pieces.

Checkmate.