Images of chess pieces

I am currently working on writing an online chess program using MySQL and PHP. It is nothing big, just something so that my dad and I can play chess from 1000 miles away. Anyway, I need some images of the chess pieces, as I’m too lazy to construct them from scratch. However, I’m having some difficulty finding anything online. Does anyone know where I could find some images of chess pieces that would be good for an application like this? Preferably simple jpg’s or gif’s on transparent backgrounds, and looking cool wouldn’t hurt. I appreciate any help you could give on this matter.

-b

PS- This may be mundane, pointless stuff. If so, please move this thread.

This site selling chess fonts has symbols for each piece at the top:
http://www.partae.com/fonts/hastings/hastings.html

Is that the sort of thing you want?

Have you tried a Google image search?

silverfish – Well, that’s a start. I was hoping for maybe something with a little color or shading, but that’s better than nothing.

Podkayne – Yeah, I went through about 25 pages of images from a search on “chess pieces” but didn’t find what I’m looking for. sigh

I’ve made a model of a standard Staunton chess set I use for ray tracing, you can find an example of it here. If you want, I can trace some images of the pieces for you from any camera angle, lighting condition, size, and background color/transparency. I can even change the color and/or material of the pieces if you want.

You might want to try searches for “rook” or “pawn.” If you find an image you like, it might lead you to a page that has an image of each piece.

While Googling, the most obvious search term is not always the best. The key is often isolating the quirky term that relates to what you’re searching for but doesn’t give a lot of hits to stuff you don’t want to see.

Good luck, anyway.

I might also mention, that unless you are doing the online chess game for a programming excersize, it has been done before.

There are many programs that will allow you to play chess across the internet.

If you just want to do it for the experience, etc… never mind.

scott, yeah, I realize that there are plenty of on-line chess games, but I wanted one that I could personalize. Also, we’d like one that is more private. And hell, writing it is cool and a lot of fun. Cheers.

-b

Good enough then… sounds like a fun project.

How would scanning some pieces you have at home work?
I have tried scanning 3D objects with some success.
Using some fairly thick black foam over the piece usually works.

Don’t know if this is what you are looking for, but there are tons of good looking (but 2-d) images of all the chess pieces here.

http://www.chess-poster.com/graphics/king_graphics_1.htm