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Purpose/Impact
Recognizing the growing importance of 3D fashion design, forward-looking executives from Cotton Incorporated approached DTech to reimagine fashion exhibitions. By leveraging 3D technologies from industry leaders such as Cinema 4D, Browzwear, and CLO3D—which all have applications in design, marketing and retail—they aimed to inspire designers and communicate key values of cotton fabric to a wide audience, while building new relationships among brands, retailers, and designers. After careful review of available options, the team settled on a computer-generated imagery (CGI)/Video Effects (VFX) production workflow built using Cinema 4D. These tools create visual experiences that have a strong emotional impact on the viewer and can be delivered using both conventional and evolving media platforms.
Outcomes/Accomplishments
Tasked with creating a virtual display of dynamic fabrics, the team developed designs using digital fabric swatches provided by Cotton Incorporated. They began by dressing pre-produced avatar animations in student designs using CLO3D software, then exported them into curated scenes created in Cinema 4D, and generated animation sequence development and test renderings. Cinema 4D’s Team Render functionality allowed them to use DTech’s high-performance machines as a local render farm, combining 3D virtual prototypes and established, high-end media production workflows to produce three virtual fashion exhibition videos featuring specialty fabric from Cotton Incorporated. Finally, the team used Adobe Premiere Pro to assemble and edit the exported animation sequences. The scenes were combined with stock video clips, musical underscore, and sound effects to elevate the viewer’s experience. Titles and graphic design assets were developed in Adobe AfterEffects and inserted into final sequences.
Using their varied experience in fashion, design, advertising and presentation, the multidisciplinary team delivered an advanced virtual display and laid the groundwork for future projects.
STATUS UPDATE
Although used in many ways at FIT, 3D design is still fairly new in many markets, and its applications are widening with projects like this one. As the industry expands its use of digital fashion exhibition formats to present seasonal collections and more, other areas of production expertise will be incorporated into the workflow, allowing for future virtual iterations.
With this project concluded, Cotton Incorporated and FIT are bringing 3D design to a much wider audience, creating an imaginative world where fabric and fashion design is readily available to faculty and students for experimentation and play.
