Scrabble3D should become volumetric. Pieces have a certain height, edges are smooth and and they are wooden. That might look like this: Link. To define board and pieces as you like (or better: in order to allow experts with creative and graphical skills to create and to share), I'm currently working on a so called 3D model loader.

A 3D-model consist of vectors that define the appearance and some material which defines how to deal with light and textures. There are a lot of programs that can be used to accomplish this task. I tested Blender and Wings3D (reasonable operable was only the latter to me).

Two models should be created: a game board and a piece. To provide those models for Scrabble3D, results needs to be exported as Wavefront Object File. For my test I created a cube, flattened it, did some edge bending and mapped a texture onto (which turned out to be quite difficult).


This program is made for testing purpose. It loads a board model, generates 15x15 colored fields at level 0, and shows pieces above. It can be obtained along with the models at Sourceforge for Windows and Linux. It's possible to load models, to turn the scene (left mouse), to zoom (mouse wheel), to translate all (press ctrl and move with left mouse button) and to reset all completely (ctrl + 0 at keypad). And light's position can be adjusted.

To do's: shadow and reflections, letters on pieces, label on board, drag'n drop with position tracking. And, of course, nice models.