| Year | 2022 |
| Credits | Thomas RicciardielloData Arena Visualisation DeveloperUnreal Engine Project Design & Development Chris HancockData Arena Software DeveloperUnreal Engine Geometry & Material Processing Pete SmitFounder & CEO Style AtlasTech Partner (Visualisation Direction) Ponz Studio3D ArtistModel Geometry & Texture Design Couture CadPatternmaking and GradingGarment Patterns Bandicoot ImagingFabric DigitisationSample Imaging |
| Links | |
| 3D Stereo | Yes |
| Tags | AFC CLO digital fashion fashion ponz unreal engine |
The Australian Fashion Council’s first FashTech Lab ran in 2022. It invited a collaboration of fashion brands and technology partners to begin exploring how a digital sampling process could transform the early stages of garment, reducing the significant environmental and financial costs of physical sampling.
Working with the expertise of these tech partners (see credits), seven labels explored digital re-creations of existing collection items, designed in CLO. This required an extreme level of fidelity to most accurately represent design and detail with high-resolution geometry and image textures (8K).
The movement into digital fashion necessitates an appropriate and tailored presentation environment that could be used for future brand meetings and reviews. The Data Arena’s immersive display system and high-performance rendering cluster creates an ideal space to explore high fidelity geometry in real-time.
The Data Arena team were approached by, and worked closely with Ponz Studio and Style Atlas to develop a “showcase” environment in Unreal Engine to display all seven items in full detail, with navigation interactivity. We developed a CLO export → Unreal Engine import workflow which was largely straightforward, but required particular attention to material properties such as the roughness of leather and light reflection of velvet.
The end project presents all models in an arc on the DA’s display. Visitors can use a 3Dconnexion Space Mouse to select a garment to focus on, zoom into extreme detail and orbit around the model to explore its design and material qualities. A 3-point lighting set up in Unreal Engine accurately visualises details such as the reflection of a zipper, course and smooth textures and the distinctive personalities of cotton vs silk.
Going forward, we’re excited to explore animation to visualise the weight and flow of different fabrics, and to leverage the performance and lighting improvements in Unreal Engine 5 behind its Nanite and Lumen systems. Work on this is underway as we’re continuing our involvement with the partners behind the 2023 AFC FashTech Lab 2 program.