Overview
This project was developed for RYOT, Verizon Media’s Emmy Award®-winning immersive storytelling production house, and the Fashion Innovation Agency (FIA) at London College of Fashion, UAL.
Using Epic Games' Unreal Engine, we aimed at demonstrating the potential of real-time digital fashion, showcasing garments created by London College of Fashion graduate, Ashwini Deshpande. Aspects including the digital garments, lighting, camera angle, and the motion of the avatar, can be controlled in real-time by the press of a button offering a high level of flexibility and dynamism to the experience.
Traditionally used in the development of game titles where interactivity is key, game engines extend beyond the gaming realm, to engineering, healthcare, and film for example, where movie directors can make instant changes without affecting production timelines.
FIA project page and video: link to page
Scope of Work and Skills
I collaborated in the ideation and production of this project with the intention to explore and inform about the benefits of real-time rendering for fashion. On the production side, I supported with the optimisation and import of the 3D garments into Unreal Engine, the integration of cloth simulation, the building of the playable character system consisting of a selection of nine motion capture animations from Mixamo, the binding of game controller actions, and the creation of the necessary blueprints to allow the 'player' to control the avatar, camera angles, switch between garments, and direction of the sun. Also worked closely with the video team to have multiple edits produced of different length with and without subtitles.
Collaborators
Fashion Innovation Agency - London College of Fashion (UAL), RYOT - Verizon Media (previous employer)
Prior Work and Testing
Previous work was conducted in advance in order to test the cloth simulation within the game engine as well as streaming to an Oculus Quest using NVIDIA CloudXR.