Vans Waffle Sole

I have begun to think about how I am going to manipulate light within my store to evoke Ihi and Wehi (emotional and psychological behaviour) within my customers. Being a casual shoe store, I wanted to link in the form of a shoe within my store in someway. Therefore I thought about what would be the most recognisable branded shoe people would know when they only see the sole of the shoe without actual brand logos or anything on them. I have come up with the idea of using the waffle sole on the trademark Vans shoes as a wall feature or even ceiling feature within my store. At this stage I am still deciding whether it will be a form of displaying shoes, or rather simply be there for aesthetic and to manipulate the light to help evoke emotions within my customers.

The following are a couple of renders using Indigo Renderer after I made the Vans waffle sole in sketch up:

The following images are screenshots of the design process in creating the above renders:

I have sourced this image of a trademark Vans shoe. The waffle sole is instantly recognisable by anyone in my demographic.

It is a bit hard to see, but this is a screen shot as I draw over the image of the Vans waffle sole. This is to help gain a better understanding of how the pattern is fits together and the shapes that I will need to make in order to replicate this sole.

The above screenshot with the image of the shoe removed. For my model of the waffle sole, I will be making the interior of the diamond shapes 60 x 30mm in diameter with a 3.5mm border. It will all be symmetrical as this is a major aspect to the effectiveness of the Vans waffle sole and thus the recognition from customers. 

This is a close up of the arrangement of the diamond shape that the Vans sole is based off of. As you can see it is symmetrical and they run to the edge of the sole. When I have finished placing my diamond shape throughout the outline of the shoe, the borders of each diamond will be protruded upwards to create that recessed look. This will allow for storage, displays or even simply just by combining lighting, for atmosphere and aesthetics.

This screen shot it is clearer to see the outline of the shoe and how my pattern fits within. Something that I have just realised is that since each of this diamonds are individual components, the way that I have laid these out, I will need to use the push/pull tool on every single diamond in order to protrude them outwards. Therefore I will need to delete all of these and restart by protruding one first, and then copying it to create my pattern.

This screenshot is just showing the solution to the above annotation.  

Close up of the diamond pattern. They have been protruded 15mm in this model, however it can be easily scaled later on down the line if I would prefer to protrude the recesses further.

I have now protruded the the border for the outline of the shoe. As you can see, I will need to erase the overhang of each of my diamonds so that they follow the form of the sole of the shoe. For this I will need to explode each of my components in order to erase each section individually..

Following on from the above annotation, this is going to take forever.. By removing the excess overhang of each of the diamonds, I brake the geometry that is the diamond. Therefore once I have erased the lines, I have to go back to the diamond and fill in each 'broken' part in order to make the geometry's new shape whole again.

It took a few hours, but I finally created the shape and all of the geometry is unbroken. I have turned shadows on in order to create that sense of depth within the recesses.