LogInKeiyu Sakurai shared a breakdown of the process.
Substance 3D Painter is good not only for texturing but also for realizing your shoe ideas. Footwear designer Keiyu Sakurai has demonstrated how the software can be used to make sneaker patterns and adjust different details.
Image: Keiyu Sakurai
"This process allows designers to ideate as flexibly as early sketch phases, while offering the photorealistic output of a marketing render," he said in his breakdown. "The procedural nature allows designers to make major changes and multiple iterations, while getting a high fidelity visual feedback non-destructively."
Image: Keiyu Sakurai
Sakurai suggests starting with traditional 2D visualization, then moving to any 3D software, creating a mesh, and then UV unwrapping. After, you should sketch on the mesh in Substance 3D Painter and mask out each area with the Path tool.
"The masks made in the previous step can be blended, altered, and put through procedural generators to create unique materials."
You can find the whole process with examples here.
The advantage of this method is that you can make adjustments in real time easily, without ruining the whole model. Following these steps, you will get a unique shoe design and might even be able to extrapolate the workflow to other areas.
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