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Hybrid Design Processes in Fashion

Documentation Sprint 3

Third sprint contained several parts:

– We have investigated how design process in fashion industry can improve by fabric simulation.

–  Forecasted fashion presentation.

– Interviewed some buyers.

– Made three concepts and collection concept.

– We have experimented Xsens MoCap suit and Oculus Rift

– At the end we made a simple demo of our concept.

By using virtual design, fashion design processes can be shorter. Fashion retailers can produce their products earlier by using fabric simulation and good library of them.

In this sprint the 3D fashion group continued the user story of fabric simulation and experimented with Maya nCloth plug-in were already conducted in the last sprint.

Based on our final concept for presentation and our concern for improving fashion design processes through virtual fashion, this user story has been accomplished by simulating some fabric (lace) samples using the Maya nCloth.

Seven fabrics and laces have been sent by Van De Velde along with mechanicala properties of them to test with, but it is a difficult task to find a way to translate the actual measurements into nCloth plug-in in Maya, whereas the nCloth plug-in focuses more on animation and simulation.  4 items have been tested of all the fabric samples (stretching, dropping, collision, and air dynamics). A video has been made for each item and each sample.

See the video: Fabric Simulation

It’s fascinating how fashion is presented. Since 1885 the catwalk is the platform how we pres- ent fashion collections. A runway with a new collection on moving bodies.  “People in the fashion industry know there is a structure to it. It’s a bit like going to church in the 19th century. You’ve got to be very impassive; you can’t make a bad face if you don’t like something and you’ve got to stay awake and watch it.” [Caroline Evans]

Nowadays the experience economy where we live in influence the presentation forms of fashion. The collection story or philosophy is the most important to visualize, instead of the actual garments. In our documentation yo can find how the fashion presentation can influence by technologies and new possibilities.

See the documentation: Third Sprint Documentation

 

Based on previous researches and tests, three ideas have been made for virtual presentation experience (SECOND SIGHT).

1- Everyone invited

2- Small event

3- A different view

In the first one (Everyone Invited) we use the Oculus Rift/Google Cardboard and Mocap suit/Kinect to show a virtual fashion presentation in real-time.

How is that possible? We’ll tell you.

We send you a box containing the invitation, a VR headset and a secret box. From the moment you installed the VR glasses app on your smart phone or computer, you can check at the live count down how long you have to wait until the day comes of the SECOND SIGHT show. At home, on the street or where ever you are at the moment, take a seat and enjoy the first virtual reality fashion show through your VR headset.

See the presentation: 3D Fashion Group Concept

In order to realize our concept we need to experiment with some technologies like Xsens MoCap suit, Kinect, Oculuc Rift, Google Cardboard, Game engines and Fabric simulation softwares. some of them have been tested in third sprint, others will be tested in further.

Xsens MoCap is a way to digitally record human movements. By its software MVN Studio it is possible to see the real-time movement on screen and save the captured file and import it easily into 3D softwares like Maya and 3D S Max.

See the: MoCap test

 

 

Documentation Sprint 2

It is possible to say the second sprint of our project is divided to three parts, first we tried to answer the briefing questions; how can we use virtual simulation to make fashion design processes more sustainable? and how can virtual simulation help to extend the way of fashion presentation? second we were going to know more about the workflow in fashion industry and our client company and third we  tried to find how to make a more realistic simulation of body shape and movements and fabric physical properties.

sustainable fashion (eco fashion)  is trying to create a system to responsible more environment and it is not only about the materials but production processes and less time and energy usage and better connection between the activities are also important. new media and virtual technology can use in each part to improve them.

Fashion products presentation as well use wide-range of opportunities that offer by virtual possibilities such as internet applications, computer graphics, virtual simulation and etc.

To know how products produced in fashion industry we met José C. Olcina (teacher in Fashion & Management at Amsterdam Fashion Institute) and tried to define the general workflow, when they start collection creating how to present the productions for sell and when they start producing. Also we discussed with our client in Van de Velda to define their workflow.

During this sprint we did a lot of research, comparison analysis and character animation in Maya that is a complicated software so we decided to create a workflow to write done step by step, how to make a simple animation.

See the Sprint 2 Documentation

See the POSTER PROGRAM COMPARISON17,11,14

Documentation Sprint 1

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In our eyes, virtual fashion and its relevant technologies are rising from the traditional fashion industry. We see its potential in both improving the conventional hand-craft working process and exploring new ways of fashion presentation. During the research of first sprint we were exposed to a large range of possible directions of virtual fashion.

We made a documentation for what we had researched in this sprint to keep track of our ideas and concepts, as well as some valuable findings.

see the Documentation Sprint 1

Our assigners are Van de Velde and Studio Jacob Kok. The former is a Luxurious Lingerie producer and seller who focuses a lot on providing the perfect fit bra and a good customer experience. They hope with 3D technology they are able to use the realistic simulation of the human body and fabrics to improve their current working process. In contrast, the latter is exploring more in the virtual world and paying much attention to one’s virtual identity. Jacob Kok, an independent designer who already got tired of the “traditional seduction”, is putting more efforts in dealing with the virtual elements and giving out new forms of presentations.

After several meetings with them we made visual maps for the general fashion producing process, and looked into every link in the process to see the possibilities of applying virtual fashion in the future. For the user research we had an interview with some fashion design students from AMFI and Rietveld Academie, from whom we  got some very interesting insight for our project.

While keep getting input from our clients to know more about their current working process and future aims, we also started researching on new media and new technologies to see what is possible. One important user story in this sprint is to research some popular fashion design softwares and make a comparison analysis of them. Thanks to Amber’s efforts we finally made a poster listing the values of different parameters of 4 3D design softwares: Lectra, Marvelous Designers 4, DC Suite 5 and Optitex. This comparison is a very valueble output of this sprint.

see the Comparison Analysis Form

As an import research of our project, we looked into different techniques of 3D modelling and animation. We experienced the 3D scanner in AMFI and studied some articles about breast movements. After interviewing Freark, who is a computer animation specialist, we realised that Maya is very powerful software in 3d modelling and animation, and it is necessary for us to master some skills in 3d modelling and animating characters.  So we start to have maya lessons (given by Michael) within the group to get more familiar with it. We also looked into some plug-ins for maya which can be used to simulate clothes.

Next sprint we are going to explore more into our concepts and potential technologies such as cloth simulation and motion capture. We are happy about the research we did in the first sprint, which laid a very good foundation for the next sprints.

Interview Fashion Students

One of our important research questions is: How can virtual fashion help to improve design process by skipping some design process? For our project, this is an interesting topic to research . Compared to traditional design process which contains a lot of handcraft, virtual fashion deals with more digital elements. It is rather newly-born and waiting to be embraced by the new-generation designers. But what are the opinions of young designers? Are they willing to use this new approach in their design process? Are they excited or even scared about it? …

We are eagerly to talk with some young designers or fashion design students to get to know what their expectations are. That’s also one of our user stories.

On Wednesday evening, we had an nice discussion with Marianna Ladreyt, Therése Palmhager, and Denise van Gent in the medialab.Marianna and Therese are second-year students from Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, where they are studying fashion design. Denise used to study fashion design in AMFI. She graduated form there 3 months ago and now she is looking for a job.

We discussed about virtual fashion in following interesting aspects:

OPINIONS ON DESIGN PROCESS:

Both of Marianna and Therese are used to working in a traditional way. Usually they start with feeling the materials by hand, then  make make samples and test them on the model. They agree that the traditional hand craft working is not the perfect way, but they already formed a workflow of it. For them it it a bit difficult to change.

But the use of software is not something they will definitely reject. Fashion design software is convenient and easy to use in a way. They can help designer develop a better time management by shortening the time cost in making samples and testing, also allowing designers to be more creative in their design process. Unlimited materials, models and methods are provided in those softwares. There’s a lot of freedom and space to experiment.

However, to those who are already used to the old way  it’s hard to get started in the beginning.  What’s more, to Marianna who thinks she is not so ”technical”, getting those softwares working could be a big challenge. “I know a bit how to use them, but it’s really hard for me to learn. Why putting so much time?” said Marianna.

 

 

VIRTUAL FASHION AND ITS TECHNOLOGIES

Therese sees something positive in a combination of tradition and new technology from a sustainable perspective. Virtual fashion helps to reduce sample cost in design process, as well as extend the way of product presentation. This is especially beneficial for some small brands and young designers.

Still, she thinks that virtual fashion “will not be the start point or the end point in the design process”, since in any case fashion design will start with real materials, and end in real products.

“Virtual fashion may result in the losing the soul of garment.” said she.

She had a good reason for saying that. After all, the main point of virtual fashion is not about producing something real(although it could be a result out of it). In design process it is very necessary for a designer to meet real customers, and communicate with them. That’s also the difference lying between real shops and on-line business. With the development of so much on-line shops, some fashion shops are inevitably disappearing. What are increasing are various types of fashion events. But real shops and traditional techniques are not going to disappear, since there will always be people who make real clothes.

 

 

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF CURRENT SITUATION OF FASHION INDUSTRY?

“what is amazing about fashion is that you can dress up yourself into different characters.” said Therese. This is also a very important reason of her stepping into the fashion world.

However,what in the current fashion world now are ”too many fashion weeks, too many collections, too fast seasons and too identical copies.”

“This is not what a real designer wants.” Said Marianna.

Denise also said that she got tired of seeing so much collection in which she could not see any point.”There should be less of them, but more special.”

Marianna said she felt”scary” about some collections she saw in the Paris fashion week. She doesn’t want to participate it.

What they all observe in the fashion world is that everything is moving too fast now.  Compared with the “slow fashion” which is normally viewed as hand craft-dominant and environment-friendly, new forms of fashion technology keeps giving birth to new stuff. ”I see it as a danger.” said Therese.

 

 

FASHION DESIGN EDUCATION

In some fashion schools, the competition is rather fierce among students. However, Marianna and Therese think they have a very different environment in their school. They work in a small group, namely, 10 students. They have nothing to do with each other. There’s no competition, no copying, everyone works as individuals, which is a good way to keep their personalities.  She is “very pround and happy about that”. Sometimes they need to work together, and it’s a nice way to get interesting ideas from people with different background. “Codesign helps you to develop your own styles and ideas”, said Therese.

In their school, they learn how to be a real designer. They both agreed that a good reason is an very important factor in fashion design.

”As long as you know why, and you have a strong view, fashion can be anything there.”

 

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

When being asked “do you have a clear view for near future?”, Marianna didn’t answer directly. Instead, she replied “I don’t want be a part of this fashion world. “

She told us she really wanted to do fashion, but not in this way. She got tired of seeing so many fashion shows, one show a year is already a lot to her. “You have to belong to this world to earn your success, but that’ s not something I am interested in.”

Meanwhile, Therese saw more possibilities by noticing that many young designers create their own brand without having so many fashion shows a year. In her opinion, getting successful is not only about design, how you connect to people and brand yourself is very important as well. One interesting phenomenon is that many customers seem to favour designs of a not so famous designer. Chances are that hey are trying to find a way out of this already too commercial world. And to a young designer, new presentation ways such as virtual fashion could be a very good approach to gain their fame.

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work of Marianna

 

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work of Therése

 

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Work of Denise van Gent

 

 

 

 

 

Blog post about rigging and combining a mesh(skin) to a rig.

 

In this blog I will explain my findings of my research in which I tried to animate a model using rigging, FK and IK handles. I also tried the different bind options to combine the skin to the rig or skeleton of the body. The model I used is an exported model from Lectra and is made out of triangular faces.

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If you compare my model to the one on the right, the right one is ideally to rigging because it is easy to make the rig and when you combine the rig to the skin with the smooth bind option, almost every time you move a certain part of the rig, like the right upper arm, the parts of the skin that are meant to represent the upper arm, will move with it. With the pose my model has this is not the case, it also brings a bit of the torso with it because if is close to the upper arm. See picture below:

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To solve this problem I tried to select the arms of my model, with the use of face selection and then rotating the arm to a ‘T’ position, illustrated on the right picture. It was a lot of work to select only the arm and therefore it took a lot of time. When rotating and positioning the arm a few faces rotated into the body and stretched out. The model wasn looking as nice and smooth as it was, so this method didn’t solve the problem.  See the method described below with the use of pictures and all steps.

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Selecting all triangular faces that make out the arm.

 

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Default position. As you can see the skin is very smooth and realistic to a real body shape.

 

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Rotating and positioning the arm until I reach the Ideal t- position to animate more easily.

 

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The result is terrible as you can see.

Another method I tried to solve the problem is the use of painting weights, so you can tell Maya which parts of the skin to move when moving a centain join, like the arm that I just showed, with the use of paint. See picture below to illustrate:

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When painting the weight until only the part I want to move is white and I make sure that the rest is black, I get a warning that some verticies have locked values, so I can’t manipulate them. I checked if this was so, but couldn’t find it, all the lockes shown in de painting weights tool settings were unlocked, so I could’s see where the problem lies. See the picture below what happened when I painted the wright region for the upper arm, lower arm and hand and then rotating is:

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After Doing this several times I finally managed to get it working the right way. But then the other arm didn’t so I don’t like this method and searched for something else. I tried to set the range of influence smaller so it would not take a part of the torso with is, but then the range was to small to move the thicker hips and the upper leg as a whole. After painting a part I locked the influence and doing so I managed to get every part moving the wright way.

 

After the smooth skin bind, I tried the interactive skin bind, in which you work with range that you can choose for each part of the rig. The problem occurred this time that even though the part I wanted to move from the skin did move, not all the faces of that part moved as quick as the others, so you get a stretch effect. See illustration below:

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As you can see her left arm became stretched and thinner. Sometimes it is good to have some stretching in the body but not like this. After this I tried to adjust the amount of movement you get throughout the range of each part of the rig, so that the stretching doesn’t happen any more. This worked, but it is to hard to choose exactly what part you want to move, in which the weight paint skin tool is very good in.

 

 

 

Blood, sweat and tears, learning Maya

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Meet Jacob Kok

This Thursday we visited Studio Jacob Kok. Jacob is a Dutch fashion designer who is famous for using virtual presentation for his designs. Also Jacob has a very big interest in visualizing one’s virtual identity. To explain this, he used a delicate metaphor:

“It’s like perfume. Basically what they are selling is air, but people are so into it and take it as a symbol of their personalities.”

The diversity of person’s identity interests him also. One’s identity can be different things at the same time. It doesn’t have to be a real body, but it has some links to a body.

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Both Jacob and we notice the big contrast between him and our other client: Van de Velde. While Van de Velde is paying more attention to the real marketing product, Jacob wants something more than realistic, something more sexy, fancy, even weird. To Jacob, a virtual platform has more potential. People are free to have their own virtual identity there.

Jacob also talked about several technologies & media which really interest him. For example, motion capture. Motion data is collected from motion capture device then can be applied to different models. An interesting idea is to make the presentation live using motion capture. Motion-track wearables (such as those of Xsens) are also based on motion tracking.

Another one is emotive headset, which can detect brain activities so that help people manipulate objects with only “thinking” This can also be useful for navigation experience in virtual world.

This is a very inspiring meeting. We were shocked, attracted and excited by Jacob’s ideas as well as his difference with Van de Velde. We need to find a way to meet both of our clients’ requirements without compromise.

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Tinkering & Prototyping Workshop

On Wednesday morning we had this workshop which was about Tinkering & Prototype, given by Loes and Tamara. We were introduced to the definitions of tinkering and prototyping, as well as how they play a vital role in design. They can be very helpful in exploring, understanding, and testing your project in a design process. Also we had a discussion about  the relationship between tinkering and prototype and each group came up with an very interesting idea about it.

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We had a lot of fun building a paper prototype for an idea of our project. This involved a bra with liquid bags for pressure detection, a 3d scanning machine, a model displaying system which could give user an accurate measurements and also analysis of bra pressure on the body. An online shopping system was the HMD( everything was made of paper except the bra).

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During tinkering, we encountered a fun and easy-to-use tool —little bits. It is a group of  electronic components which can only be correctly connected  due to the magnetic sides. It’s both playful and educational.We tinkered with it and managed to make a simple circuit using power, wires, a pressure sensor, a bending sensor and some indicators.  The thing we tried to build is a detector which can detect the pressure that a bra caused on the skin, and the bending extent of a supporting wire inside the bra. It’s an interesting and inspiring experiment which shed much light on our project.

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Through other groups’ reports we were also introduced to many other matertials/tools like littlebits. We were excited that there are so many possibilities and approaches for us to explore our capabilities and generate more interesting ideas for our project.

 

 

Meet Hein Daanen

On Tuesday we met Hein Daanen. Hein prepared a short presentation for us to”prevent some possible questions”, which, in contrary, triggered some more interesting ones.

Hein’s presentation was about sizing and fit of bras. One of some interesting questions raised there is this one: “How can we cover the user population with the least number of sizes?”

This is quite an exciting topic.  Although there has already been different sizing systems and corresponding ways of bust measurements, 4 out of 5 women have trouble finding an appropriate bra. Fitting problems have been a very serious problem among those with a bra. A very important issue in bra design is the accurate measurement.When thinking about addressing this problem with 3D modeling, we thought of using 3D Scanning technique. There are already different types of 3d scanning technologies and products, and some can produce very high resolution 3D models. For building an accurate model and analyzing it 3D Scanning can be a very nice solution.

In the coming period we will do some research on female bust modeling and bust movement, maybe also skin pressure detection. They are all very intriguing topic to us and we hope to gain some inspiration during researching. Hein also sent us a lot of research articles on bra fit, which can be very helpful to our study.

We are looking forward to more interesting findings.

 HeinDaanen2

Hein Daanen

Professor in Fashion Research and Technology, AMFI – Amsterdam Fashion Institute, CREATE-IT Applied Research, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences

Professor in Thermal Physiology, MOVE Research Institute, Faculty of Human Movement Sciences, VU University Amsterdam

Scientist at TNO

Director at Sizing Science

 

 

An Interview with Freark Broersma

“As a team we would like to talk to people with technical background so that we get more information about potential technologies.”

So last Thursday we had an intriguing interview with Freark Broersma, who has a mixed background in computer animation, game design, motion & face tracking and dynamic simulation. With him answering some questions we had, we were excited about the fact that there are some possible ways to realize realistic modeling and simulation. This is to say; we may not only be able to create an avatar with more natural movements, but also the simulation of some fabrics. Together we discussed several 3D clothing software and very powerful tools for 3D modeling and animation, such as Maya. We are also going to explore the possibilities to make something out of their combination.

However, as the discussion went on some problems were revealed as well. We realized that there are a lot of things that we need to test and experiment with. But thanks to Freark we already have some directions to go to. This Thursday we will have another meeting with him, by then we would have some findings and outcomes of our research. We are looking forward to hearing his opinions on our findings and of course we will keep you posted.

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