Footwear Photoshop Rendering Tutorial

Footwear Photoshop Rendering Tutorial > parts 1-6

While every designer has their own method for Photoshop renderings (and I'm by no means an expert), I do get a lot of requests for the process that I typically take to create a presentation rendering. I've put together a little tutorial to show the steps I use.

Click the Read More link below for all 6 parts of this tutorial.

**one note- im doimg this tutotrial from a finished rendering "in reverse" so if you look at the layers or path palettes you will ALL the final layers/palettes that exist at the end of rendering. ive just "un-viewed" the layers to work backwards to show how its done forwards. just so nobody gets confused. (R)

To start with, I make do a sketch of the shoe I am going to render to use as an underlay. The more in proportion and

accurate this sketch is, the easier it is to do the required line art which will be used as a template for the rendering.

Using illustrator, I place the scanned sketch in a layer and dim the image (under layer > properties). Then using the pen tool, I draw over the image, making frequent use of the pathfinder (cut, intersect shape areas, add to shape areas) tools.

This line art can then be cut and pasted into photoshop. I cut and paste the same artwork twice. Once as a Path, and once as pixels. The paths are used as cutting paths and masks for the rendering, and the pixels just give a good quick easy overlay/underlay to the rendering so you can see whats going on.

From the path palette, you can select (using the black arrow path modifier tool) different parts of your work path (I usually rename to "All", or something like that). Once you have part of the body shape you want (I start with an outline shape that is whole upper), you can cut and paste that path to create a new path (renamed Body).

This path can then be selected (the little button at the bottom of the Path palette with the dashed line circle), and you can make a new layer to start painting into. As I work, I find it important to keep my layers and paths well organized and named (instead of "Layer 38"), so its easy to find them later. By the end of the rendering I typically end up with something like 30 paths and 60 layers, so having some meaningful name helps a lot.

Once you have a new layer, and a selected area, you can use the paint bucket tool to paint a solid color base for your rendering.

footwear Photoshop rendering tutorial > part 2

Rendering tutorial continued.

Click the read More link below for another edition of the tutorial.

After the solid area is of the upper is made as a base, I then make a new layer (called something like Body Shadow) and use the airbrush tool to lay in some general shadows that help give the idea of form. I do this step early so I can start to picture the shoe 3D and get a feel for where the light is coming from and overall shape and form. This is done with the same body path selected.

Next, I go back to the ALL path and again use the black arrow path modifier tool to cut and paste out another panel of the upper into a new path. This one is a quarter panel. Again, I select this path, and make a new layer to paint a solid fill color into.

I repeat for other parts on the upper and outsole, filling in solid areas in new layers for each part.

To start to add depth and form to the parts (this technique is used for all parts), I make a new layer with a certain area selected (by the path, selection method), and make one layer for highlights, painting white on top,)...

.. and one layer for shade or shadow, airbrushing black and setting the layer to Multiply.

Extra detail (recessed lines, etc.) can be made by cutting and pasting line art as pixels from the illustrator drawing back into PS, then using the airbrush eraser to feather out the lines to make a dynamic shadow. I also use the Gaussian Blue tool to slightly blur the line art I bring from illustrator to make the shadow lines less harsh.

Here you can start to see some of the form taking shape in the heel, outsole and EVA midsole areas.

Continued-

footwear Photoshop rendering tutorial > part 3

Rendering tutorial continued.

Click the Read More link below for more of the tutorial.

To add texture to areas like mesh and PU, I use a method that combines illustrator and PS.

For this quarter mesh section, for example, what is to be a heavy weave nylon mesh with 3M reflective threads, I make a swatch in illustrator first that approximates the weave. This swatch is then used to make a large rectangular shape with the pattern.

This shape filled by swatch can then be modified to have a more 3D look in a few simple steps. First, expand the filled rectangle you've made, (under Object > Expand). Then, use the Envelope Distort (Object > Envelope Distort > Mesh) to allow you to warp the pattern into a 3D like mesh texture.

This texture can then be copied and pasted back into PS as pixels, blurred and then cropped to your selection (select the path that contains the area, then inverse select it, and delete the parts that fall outside the shape), for a good approximation of mesh. I set the layer with the texture to Multiply and you can further adjust by layer opacity.

This same technique was used on a different illustrator swatch of small white squares, then warped and brought into PS to create the highlight thread reflections. Once the swatch is brought into PS I also use the airbrush eraser to take out bits to leave the highlight only in spots that would be caught by the light.

Continued-

footwear Photoshop rendering tutorial > part 4

Rendering tutorial continued.

Click the Read More link below for more of the tutorial.

To create the toecap texture, I use an easier method. First I make a layer and shade with the airbrush in the area (again, by selecting the path for the part) and set the layer to mutiply. Then I use the Filter > Texturized > Sandstone to make the roughed texture PU look.

To start to add texture to the PU upper I do the same as the mesh texture technique, making a swatch and warping it

with Envelope Distort in Illustrator.

This swatch has both black and white lines in the texture.

The artwork is copied into PS as the mesh texture was, and then duplicated onto two layers. One is set to multiuply for the dark edges. The other layer is set to lighten for the highlight edges. Both layers can also be adjusted in opacity and erased by airbrush eraser to add 3D effect and control the highlight and shadow of the texture.

Continued-

Footwear Photoshop rendering tutorial > part 5

Rendering tutorial continued.

Click the Read More link below for more of the tutorial.

Now it starts to get into the details and adding addition 3D highlight and shadow cues.

To bring out the edge of each upper part and make the rendering look less flat, I copy and paste lineart from the Illustrator artwork into the PS document on a new file. First, I bring in a black outline for each part approx. 2 pixels wide

line thickness and add some blur. You can then go at it with the airbrush eraser tool as mentioned earlier to reduce the visibility in highlight areas.

On top of this, I then copy and paste a white outline of equal thickness from Illustrator on top of the black line, with no blur for and edge highlight. Again, use the eraser to take out the impact of the line in key points.

Other details, such as eyelet punched holes can be made using the paths in PS, filled with a solid color (ie. black) and using the layer effects to add emboss and highlight to simulate a quickie 3D look.

Another important detail that contributes to the realistic look of the rendering is stitching.

A stitching effect is quickly made by creating the stitching first in Illustrator (offset path, dashed line), then copying and pasting the stitches into PS. First I bring in a black row of stitches, and add some blur, setting the layer to Multiply and tweaking the opacity.

You can then bring in the same row of stitches in white, slightly offset, adjust the opacity and use the airbrush eraser on either layer to bring out a more dark or light effect depending on the area and curve of the panel.

Continued-

footwear Photoshop rendering tutorial > part 6

Rendering tutorial continued.

Click the Read More linke below for more of the tutorial.

In general, most of the rendering techniques are pretty much a "do and repeat" process of each different part of form, highlight and shadow.

Once you start to develop your skills it gets pretty easy and just requires some patience and time. Nearing the end of the rendering, you can add additional effect by erasing parts of your body shadow in highlight areas, adding white airbrush ontop set to Lighten for more highlight, and add small pinprick highlight dots (I remember them being called "birdshit" in traditional marker rendering classes when exectuted with guache or white-out) for more pop.

In the end, the final look and effect is up to you. Some tend to go with a more over the top style including lens flares and overlayed sketchy lines, but I generally prefer to keep things as real as possible. Small details I like include reflections of a ring flash in the shiny plastic heel counter made from Illustrator artwork, and used also on the body of the shoe in different scales and opacities.

For my final rendering, I did the same again for the medial side, and then combined two TIFFS of the renderings together with a background of black to white gradient and low opacity sketch for the final view.

Thats all! In total, this rendering of lateral and medial side took me about 12 hours and I ended up with 2x40 Mb PSD files. As a matter of course, I dont normally do renderings like this for work in the process of design and development as it is so time consuming, but sometimes a good visualization can help indeed help present a concept that is hard to understand through sketches. Still, I'll take a pen and paper any day.