Ice Dancer

Final Touches

I set up my scene so that I could have five separate pieces total to texture: the wood wall, the snow, the body of the skate, the blade of the skate, and the laces. I went with a more well-loved, vintage look to the scene. I added some dirt, rust, and wear to the shoes so that it would fit better with the rustic wall, and give it the proper story and character that I was going for. 

Going off of my original mood boards, I tried to keep with the themes of cool lighting and warm lighting for my renderings. I added some grain, focus, and vignette to the renders to convey a more worn feeling to the scene. Overall, I am pretty happy with how they turned out!

Sunset Rendering

Sunrise Rendering

Bright blue hues, directed from the left side, indicating the first hours of cool light before daytime. 

Materials sourced from Substance Community Assets:  Planks | Wood Grain | Snow

All other materials were layered by me in Substance Painter. 

Modeling done in Autodesk Maya
Texturing done in Substance 3D Painter
Rendering done in Marmoset Toolbag 4

Texture maps example | wood wall background

Setting Up the Scene

After I had my ice skate modeled, it was time to assemble the scene. I added two new planes: a flat one for the barn wall, and a lightly sculpted plane for the snow. I duplicated and reflected my ice skate to correctly represent the other foot, and positioned them to look like they were leaning against one another. I then tweaked the laces on each skate so that they were draping into the snow correctly, and so that they wouldn't be an identical mirror of one another. 

Modeling the Skate

Though we're several hours in, the process has been simple: start with the sole of the shoe, then the main form, then the tongue, the eyelets, the blade, and of course, the shoelaces. The trickiest part for me was definitely the shoelaces. I chose to use a curve method–making the shoe and tongue together a live surface for the curve to follow–and extruded a rectangle along the curve to get the flat lace shape I was looking for. Even with that quick trick, there was lots of hand pushing and pulling to get the laces to sit just right in the eyelets, as well as with each other when they overlap across the shoe. 

Overall, I am really happy with how this is turning out! I've created UV maps for the whole model at this point. Next is to assemble the whole scene, and texture. Then we'll be ready for glamour shots.  

I was so glad to have found such perfect reference images for this model! These really helped me define the shape to make it look like a real shoe. 

Composition Sketches

Playing around with composition ideas to determine all that I need to model. I know I want to model some skates, and some form of barn wall. These help with understanding what elements are going to be in the final shot, and what I need to include from the very beginning. 

Originally I liked the idea of them hanging on the wall, but all of these options seem out of place. The one that feels most natural to me, and has the best positioning, is #3 with them sitting on the snow. I think that is what I'll plan on doing, and we'll go from there. 

Mood Boards

After much debating, I decided to go with a pair of ice skates hanging on the side of an old barn. Growing up in Utah, winter easily took up half of the year, and there was much more to winter than Christmas for us. If we wanted to enjoy the cold, we had to find ways to work with it rather than against it. One of my favorite winter activities as a child was going ice skating at our local skating rink used for the 2002 winter Olympics. I wanted to take that winter memory and add a bit of idyllic flavor to it by painting a picture of the countryside where someone might skate in their own "backyard".  

Moodboard #1: cool colored soft lighting, blues and purples with a hint of yellow and white lighting to compliment.

Moodboard #2: warm sunset lighting creating harder shadows with soft hues of indigo to compliment.