Digital Textile Twin for 3D Fashion
April 24, 2023
I find it fascinating how fashion constantly changes and adapts to new technologies. The latest technique that's currently being used in the industry is 3D technology. Many experts are now trying to determine whether 3D technology will lead to better clothing development processes, waste reduction, and increased profits for the apparel industry.
While 3D technology is still in its early stages of adoption, there's still so much to learn about maximizing these tools. This includes understanding 2D digital patterns, avatars, and digital fabrics. As 3D technology continues to evolve, fashion companies must decide whether and how to incorporate it into their processes to drive progress, efficiency, and profitability.
What is the digital fabric?
The apparel industry is transforming thanks to the game-changing concept of digital product development for clothing. The creation of digital fabric is an integral part of the process.
What is the digital fabric?
It involves creating digital copies of physical textiles for clothing design, product development, and virtual sampling. These digital fabrics are designed to mimic the look and feel of the fabric on a digital model or avatar. Fashion companies find this technology incredibly helpful as it saves them valuable time and resources that would otherwise be spent on fabric planning and ordering.
Three key components are required to create digital fabrics:
Scanned fabric images with textures to imitate visual and tactile fabric characteristics.
Physics for high-quality draping comes from data acquired from physical fabric testing.
Information about the fabric- data referring to the material, such as weight, fiber content, technology description, finish, function, and vendor fabric identification.
Image credit-Cottonworks
1. Scanned Fabric Image
When designing garments using digital fabric, it's crucial to represent the fabric in the digital environment accurately. You can scan a fabric swatch to create a simple digital base form that resembles physical fabric to achieve this.
However, to enhance the realism of the fabric, it's essential to add appropriate maps, including the base/diffuse map, normal map, roughness map, and transparency map. These maps are crucial in achieving high-quality PBR (physically based rendering) images. With this, the fabric will be more precisely represented.
Image credit-Cottonworks
Digital Fabric Scanning Methods
If you want to create seamless images of fabric swatches, a few options are available depending on your needs.
-One option is to use a material scanner via a DSLR camera accompanied by software to refine and handle seamless image tiling for final textile creation.
-Another option is using a flatbed scanner to scan a fabric swatch and further process the image using available digital tools like Adobe Substance or Photoshop.
-Lastly, you can use your smartphone to create an image and refine it with available 3D digital tools to create a digital fabric twin ready to be used in 3D software for digital clothing creation.
These are all great ways to create high-quality digital materials for your 3D digital clothing creation projects.
Image credit-Cottonworks
2. Fabric Physics
Creating accurate digital fabric samples for 3D clothing creation requires remembering a few essential things. Firstly, while digital fabric images can be helpful, they alone cannot provide a precise digital sample that represents a physical sample.
To achieve authenticity, testing each fabric's physical properties is necessary. You can only accurately assess the fabric's movement and drape on the body with correct digital data derived from tested physical fabrics. These physical properties include bend, thickness, stretch, and weight, to name a few.
It's important to understand that there is no standard for digital fabric file extensions suitable for seamless exchanges. Therefore, testing must be done according to the specifications of each 3D software used for clothing creation. Additionally, each 3D software has its proprietary testing kits and methods, so digital fabric files cannot be interchanged among other 3D programs.
Each 3D clothing software has a unique algorithm that uses the physics test data to create a 3D object on your screen. To create a digital twin that accurately represents the physical fabric, this object should look and behave as closely as possible to the authentic fabric.
The accuracy of the fabric drape on the body can influence the garment's appearance, fit, comfort, quality, and manufacturing process. Therefore, testing how the fabric behaves on a body or interacts with other materials is crucial before ordering fabric for bulk production.
With 3D technology, preliminary fittings for styling and draping can be expedited, leading to significant clothing sampling process improvement.
Image credit-Cottonworks
Fabric Data
As the fashion industry continues to embrace the digital age, the amount of information stored within digital fabrics is growing at a rapid pace. This has created a need for fashion companies to effectively manage and store digital assets data.
Fortunately, digital asset management (DAM) platforms offer a valuable solution to this problem. These platforms have become an essential tools for apparel companies looking to adopt and implement 3D digital workflows.
The information included within digital fabrics is critical and includes weight, fiber content, description, finish, technology, and function. With the help of DAM platforms, fashion companies can streamline their workflows and effectively utilize the valuable information stored within their digital fabrics.
Image credit-Cottonworks
How to start using digital fabrics?
If you're interested in exploring the world of 3D digital fabrics, there are a few options to consider.
-One route is to utilize your preferred 3D apparel software, which typically has a wide range of digital materials available, covering major categories like knits, wovens, linings, and meshes.
-Another possibility is to digitize fabrics within your organization, although this requires equipment and training investment.
-Additionally, reaching out to vendors, mills, and factories with a robust digital fabric library can be useful.
-Finally, outsourcing to a fabric digitalization service may be a smart choice if you require more resources or expertise.
Ultimately, the approach you take will depend on your specific needs and resources.
Benefits of using digital textiles
The integration of digital textiles in clothing design is an incredibly beneficial practice. By utilizing digital fabrics, the apparel industry is experiencing a new level of innovation, proving to be both cost-effective and time-saving.
Additionally, digital product development empowers designers to make informed decisions and improve the design process when creating new styles for production. This innovative approach ultimately benefits both the environment and the fashion industry as a whole.
If you're interested in learning more about 3D digital product development and implementation, we invite you to visit our website and explore the potential of 3D technology implementation.
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References:
Cottonworks.com
Theinterline.com
Optitex.com
Browzwear.com
