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I recently designed a football boot concept as part of a series of concepts that I am creating and wanted to showcase the breakdown from a CGI/Rendering standpoint of how it was done, and what I did to make the final results look as close as possible to a realistic boot. The way the shoe is designed, material application, lighting setup, camera placement, and rendering settings all play a role together in the final outcome and rendering that you see.

In this post, I will try to break the project down into these different parts of the process that play an important role in creating a render that looks very realistic.

Displacement

The foundation of every render is the model that you are working with, no matter how real your materials and lighting setup looks, if your model looks funny or the proportions are off, it won’t really matter, as that is the first thing that will get noticed and come off as an inaccurate and unrealistic object. Once I finished modeling the shoe, I added a basic level of detail to it using displacement maps, something that you can do nicely and control in Substance 3D Painter or your software of choice. Breaking the flat surface up with some unexpected textures will make it one step closer to a real shoe, which most of the time has something going on in the materials.

I decided to create the displacement in Substance rather than going the traditional route of 3D modeling, mainly because it is much faster, just as efficient, and, most importantly, it gives me the freedom and flexibility to change and adjust it really quickly if I end up not liking the final result or get new ideas.

Future Projects

Looking at future projects, I’m very optimistic, as the technology in our hands keeps improving and progressing really fast, and it’s a very exciting time to be a designer, as the possibilities of what you can do are endless and very fast. Being able to find a workflow that best suits you and fits within your comfort zone is key, and luckily, there are many different ways to try to achieve the same results.

Since I have introduced Substance into my workflow in the past two years, it has both elevated my work and allowed me to do so much more. It is a great tool for footwear, product design, CGI production, and everyday explorations and R&D.

Finally, I will leave you with some more shots from the project:

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All images courtesy of Hussain Almossawi.