Drawing a Chess Piece: The Queen

Created by Gordon Patterson

Instructor Hudson’s Bay High School

July 7, 2006

Rhino Skills: Placing a picture as a background in Rhino, tracing with a curve, using the revolve command, using the array polar command, split, hide or change layer and turn off. Split a 3d shape with a 3d shape. Rendering with materials and changing the environment.

1. Start a new file, go with default setting. Save as Queen etc.

If you want to choose a different setting, type units and hit enter, the dialog box will open. The Default setting for Model units is Millimeters. This can be changed to other metric units or SI units like inches, feet etc.

If you change to inches it is recommended that you also change Absolute tolerance to .001.

2. Start by finding a Profile view (front or right side) of the chess piece that you are drawing. Below is an image that I created of a queen that you can use. Save the image as a bitmap or jpeg to your picture files.

3. In Rhino right click on the Front view and drag down to Background Bitmap and over to Place.

4. Find the picture you saved to use and open it.

5. Zoom out in the front view so you can see the entire grid.

6. Turn on snap and snap on to the upper left corner and Stretch the image until your cursor in on the right side of the grid. After you click you image should appear.

7. Double click on Front to maximize that view

8. To turn off the grid press the F7 key.

9. Change to a bright layer, for this tutorial I will use red.

10. From the top center we are going to trace the profile of the queen. To do this us a control point curve.

11. Note at the crown the red line goes down below the profile, I do this to create the scallops in the crown.

12. If you are not satisfied with your tracing you can turn on control points and move the curve more to your liking. Make sure that you have the planner button on when you move control points. Selecting a curve and pressing F10 will turn the control points on, F11 will turn them off or press escape twice to turn them off. Note I will not move the control points in this tutorial.

13. Turn off the control points and revolve the curve. You will want to revolve from the top end point with ortho on. You can activate ortho by holding down the shift key while you move the curser after you have selected the curve. Note the curve has been selected before starting the command.

14. Note that the Osnap and Planar buttons are on and with Osnap on End has been selected. You need to grab the end point of the curve. Again I have activated Ortho by holding down the shift key, that is why the red line which is my revolve axis is at 90 degrees or straight up.

15. At the End of revolve axis command left click your mouse and the curve will become a 3d solid.

16. Double click on Front to bring back all your view ports

17. Click once in the perspective view port and click on the gray sphere near the top right side of the command window to shade.

Creating the scallops in the crown.

18. First change layers to a good contrasting color to red. I am going to use blue.

19. Maximize the Front view port by double clicking on it.

20. Right click on the ellipse and drag over to the second option ellipse by diameter.

21. Draw an ellipse that will be about the size and shape of the scallop in this picture.

22. Double click on the Front tab to bring back all four view ports.

Note that your ellipse is on the X, Z drawing plane

23. Move the ellipse in the right view port so that it is in the rim of the crown.

Note hold down the shift key while you make the move.

24. Rotate the ellipse from its center in the right view. Note that Center is the only Osnap that is on.

25. The ellipse has been rotated 15 degrees in this tutorial; yours might not be the same.

26. Extrude the ellipse both sides.

27. To extrude both ways start with extrude straight, select the curve, when prompted at the command line “Extrusion distance” type B for both sides. Note in the right view you can see that the surface only goes through the rim of the crown.

28. Array the extruded ellipse. Go to Transform, pull down to Array and over to Polar. You will need your select End or Cen in the Osnap.

29. After you have selected the object and picked the center of the polar array, which is the end point of the top of the curve that was used to create the queen, you will need to decide how many items you want to end up with. I used the number 6. At angle to fill hit enter. You want to fill or array 360 degrees.

30. Right click on perspective and drag down to shaded display.

31. Use the split command to cut out the scallops.

32. Select the queen first press enter or right click the mouse.

33. To select the 6 arrayed objects click in the upper right corner of the top or front view port and drag down to the left corner of the same view port that you started in. this is a nice way to select everything that the crossing window comes in contact with. Press enter when done.

34. Double click on the perspective window.

35. Select the queen well below the green arrayed objects, then click hide.

36. Delete everything that is left except the red curve that you started with.

37. Fill the holes with a surface, if life is good you should be able to do it in one step with a patch.

38. Select the very edge of the hole that you cut out and press enter.

39. Array polar the surface that you just created.

40. Select everything and group it.

Rendering

41. Set the render to Flamingo Raytrace or Photometric. Go to the Render tab pull down to Current Render and over to what you want.

41. Select the main body of the queen and click on object properties.

42. You will see a properties dialogue box. You will need to place your cursor on Object and pull down to material.

43. Next select plug-in and click on Browse. You will see a Material Library dialog box.

44. The queen that we started with was rendered in CAR PAINT. I used Blue Metallic.

45. Hide the main body of the queen again and select the scallops. You will need to ungroup the queen and scallops first.

46. Select the Scallops and put a material on them different from what you used on the queens body.

47. Render click on the blue sphere.

48. If you want a ground plane or background etc. start by right clicking on the blue sphere.

49. You will see a Document Properties dialogue box, click on Environment next to Sun near the bottom of the box.

50. The Environment dialogue box will appear.

51. Click on Ground Plane.

52. Click on Material.

53. Click OK about 3 times to get back to your screen and render.