Hello everyone,

I am very new to 3DS Max and am currently working through the tutorials (using 3ds max 9.0). I have made the chess peices, and have gotten as far as making the knight (see image - its by no means the best, but for a first few hours I'm pretty pleased - please feel free to be as blunt as you like when commenting on it).
The next step simply jumps to modelling apples and other objects, so I thought I'd jump onto the texturing, so that I could have a nice rendered image to show off my hard work (as opposed to a genericly smoothed chess piece) so decided to move to the "textured" section of the tutorial. I made the chess board (again see images) and was able to use my chess pieces as a base size to alter the tutorial sizes.

The problem I am having is that when I texture the chess pieces, they just seem to appear as 4 totally different textures on the 4 peices which I have made; the pawn and castle (rook) seem to texture ok, although a little more like the examples which I used initially in the tutorial (provided on the CD to be used with the texturing tutorial). The Knight however, simple models as a plain colour (similar to when I rendered the models initially, without any texture applied - it just seems like a brown flat colour. The Bishop, which was created using a lathe, in the same way that the pawn and castle were made, does texture, but it seems to texture in a way which is far finer (sorry if that doesnt make sense or use proper terms - as stated, I'm new to this) texture than the pawn and castle pieces.
I am assuming that it will simply be a case of texturing each of the chess pieces seperatly - but in the examples given (the tutorial default collection of 16 chess pieces all laid out) they seem to have all been textured using the same way - the grain is identicle in each peice - which is what I would like to achive with my pieces, rather than just using pre-made peices and passing them off as my own work, simply because I have added a board - I'd rather make each of the chess pieces myself, add them to the board THEN show it off, knowing that I have made everything, and can genuinly learn from it (the way I see it, in the real worldyou will not be given a set of pre rendered objects / things and be asked to simply add a little section to it - this may be wrong, please correct me if it is the case)
Please see the images for a better idea of what I am talking about - I have provided links to the images, as opposed to embedding them as I was unsure of rules regarding to posting of images within the forum threads

Image 1: My first attempt at 3DS max - chess peices on a chess board (with reflection)
[Link to img188.imageshack.us]

Image 2: how the 4 chess peices render when a wood texture (from a bitmap)
[Link to img40.imageshack.us]

Image 3: Ideal output (well, similar style to what I want - all of the pieces having the same style of wood effect, similar grain style etc)
[Link to img146.imageshack.us]


I have tired to use the in built "wood function" but (again - I'm sure the answer is simple...the more I think about it, it prob will be a simple solution) the pieces all seem to texture in totally different ways (odd angles of texture etc - which is not visible until the image is rendered)

Any help (although it may be a simple thing which I have missed, due to being new to 3DS max) would be greatly appreciated

Thanks in advance,
Dan

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Damn Walls...so hard to make look nice