Illustrator: Shoe Rendering

UPDATE: A newer version of this tutorial is now available in video form here. I hope you find it helpful!

Lets explore some advance AI techniques to make rendering products super simple. Shoes are really easy to render in Illustrator, and I’ve had a special request to show some shoe design techniques, so check out the final image and lets get crackin’.

I’m going to approach this really slowly at first to demonstrate techniques, and then send you off on your own to figure out the rest. I’m supplying the final illustrator file for your reference, and as always, don’t hesitate to ask if you’ve got questions!

Final Image (.png)
Final AI file (.zip)

Here’s my “buck”, just a basic shoe shape I’ll start with.

I highly recommend working with at least a few layers so you can turn them on and off as needed.

I use the brush tool inside AI to sketch in some basic ideas and figure out a plan.

Afterwards I can lock the sketch layer, dim it, and create real lines. At this point the lines are all just open paths.

I highly recommend making all logos and other repetitive elements out of “symbols”. Symbols will a) decrease filesize, and b) allow you to change the logo later as needed. In this case it’s no big deal, but it’s a good habit. Plus you can keep all of your logos in a symbol library for easy access in all of your projects.

At this point we’ve drawn all of our basic lines on their own layer, but they’re open curves: aka not easy to fill.

I like to work fast and sloppy so that I can make adjustments as I go. That said, what we’re going to do here is create a “clipping mask” to put everything in, so that we can go outside our shoe boundaries real-messy-like and everything will stay ‘clipped’ within it. So draw another outline, this time right around the perimeter of the shoe.

Once you’ve drawn your outline, make sure it’s on TOP of all the other open paths, then hit Ctrl+7 (Object>Clipping Mask>Make).

Now that everything’s clipped, you can select the clipping path itself and give it a fill (just to make it easy to see).

As with any group, double-clicking outlines the object in gray lines, signifying that you are working “locally” to the current group. This means you can use the regular-old closed-arrow tool to drag around elements, and you can also draw new ones as needed. This is VERY VERY handy. We’re going to spend most of the remainder of this tutorial double-clicked inside this clipping group.

Go through and close each of your paths, creating points as needed outside the clipping path. Notice that the shapes are automatically clipped! Try your Ctrl+[ and Ctrl+] keys… still work, but within the group! Pretty fancy, huh? Make sure you completely CLOSE all paths, because some of our tricks down the line won’t work if you don’t.

So now that we’ve closed up all of our shapes, lets get to work on some shading!

To make a shape “pop”, I use “inner glow” and “drop shadow” a lot, depending on the situation. Play around with them.

Okay, get ready for this: we can add multiple strokes to a single path, and offset them from each other. You got it: if we do it this way, making changes to the original line will change all of its offsets!! This is a HUGE creativity/productivity boost.

Note the appearance palette. The “offset path” effect can be dragged around to affect different fills and strokes. Option-drag it to duplicate it. Any effect you apply will show up in the appearance palette, and can be applied to any given stroke or fill, or the whole object. Order matters too, as you’ll quickly discover!

So if we were lazy bums, we could just make our stitches this way. We’d do an offset path, and apply a dash to it. But that’s for lazy people :)

What we’ll do is define a quick brush with a more complex stitch look. Make sure to use a global color swatch to color the thread. That will make it MUCH easier to adjust the color later.

When you make a pattern brush, the objects should be horizontal.

Voila! Now you know how to make a stitch.

Drag it to the little “new” icon at the bottom of the appearance palette to duplicate it, and double the offset value.

…And magically we have two strokes!

Make another brush like this.

Starting to come to life, eh? Now we get into some complex light and shadow.

This is a sweet trick. To make complex shadows on an object, I just make multiple gradients via the appearance palette, and make them either multiply (for shadows) or screen (for highlights).

The 3D Extrude & Bevel tool is a great idea, but in my experience it almost never works the way you want it to. It’s actually pretty crappy. But for a simple shape like th is, it works pretty well. The settings are too complex to go over here. Just play with it.

Not bad, eh?

When you start getting all the right highlights and shadows in there, things start to really pop.

That’s all, folks! Tune in next week!
Final Image (.png)
Final AI file (.zip)

about adam: Adam O'Hern is an industrial design consultant specializing in visual brand languages, and has designed products ranging from laptops to power tools, classroom toys to bathroom fixtures, and robots to lint rollers. He has published with 3DWorld Magazine, CGTuts+, and Luxology, and works with Josh Mings of SolidSmack.com on EngineerVsDesigner.com.