Hey all,
We've just had a week of snow in the UK and felt it was fitting to model a sled based off Kent Trammell's livestream. I also took time to watch some restoration videos as I've never owned one to get real life references. Hope I did it some justice. Will more than likely push the model further by adding a rope and texturing it after watching the livestreams to finish this project! 
dostovel Thanks, I find there is invaluable information in the previous livestreams that have been posted, looking forward to diving in and learning from them.
This is fantastic Sanimation3D! I love the model AND the throwback to this oldie. How did you find it??
PS: I also watch restoration videos regularly ha
@theluthier Thanks I enjoyed it! The modelling is great and how you overcome certain challenges in realtime, helps me to see what's possible and makes me think how i can approach projects.
Sanimation3D are you planning to add materials and light this for presentation? I'd be very interested in seeing that 👀
Hey all here is an update render of the sled @theluthier
spikeyxxx thanks for the feedback! Procedurally i found it difficult to make the wood texture. Perhaps i could dial down a few aspects of the texture to make it look more convincing.
"Procedurally i found it difficult to make the wood texture"
Yes, making convincing wood procedurally is really hard! (Just ask Sascha 
SFE-Viz )
But don't worry about it; the sled looks great.
Thanks appreciate it, SFE-Viz is this true? how have you found doing wood textures?
Yup, that is true. Welcome to my hell. 😁
Generally speaking it depends on what you're doing. I guess for stylized stuff a procedural wood is okay.
For realistic work I haven't found one yet where I couldn't tell that it's a procedural one. I also need to be able to show specific species for what I do, which is even harder with procedural materials.
So I rely on PBR materials with photo scanned image textures. It's as good as you can get, but not perfect either. Especially when it comes to the transition to end grains, which usually gets ignored in textures.
The magic is all in a proper UV unwrap, keeping in mind how a tree grows and how you'd work the wood in real life to get the piece you want to create in CG. In case of your sled there's good potential to make it look a lot better with the same texture, if the UV unwrap is better.
I have a full lesson about only this topic in Craftsman: Texturing with wood
SFE-Viz You do raise some good points, in all honesty I hadn't got around to doing the UV's properly yet, which would be my next step. I've used the PBR workflow for other projects previously in Maya, Substance Painter, Marmoset, Unreal, but not so much in Blender, which I need to get used to. I will surely check out the lesson from the link, thanks.
Always Learning.
Hey all, just an update on the texture, after watching some aspects of the Craftsman Course which I will want to finish by SFE-Viz. My mind is blown and learned something very valuable regarding grain directions. I also UV Unwrapped the wood to get the shaders to act accordingly.
let me know what you think?
Another valuable tip I learned was to ensure that the number displayed in your shader next to the shield had been clicked (see below picture) so the textures are not being shared, this helped to ensure each piece can be rotated in the right direction.
Splendid. That does look so much better. Glad you found the lesson helpful.