The new-age product development process in the ever-evolving fashion industry constitutes elements such as conceptualising, designing and developing a garment by creating virtual avatars, as per fit models, for quick and easy approvals…The use of digital technology has furthered the acceleration of 3D rendering concept of to-be-worn garments and, not just this, it has opened the door for metaverse – a virtual-reality space in which consumers can interact with a digital environment generated by computer and technology as well as with other users. The fashion brands and retailers are today eyeing aggressively at these concepts (3D rendering and metaverse) and are either opening stores or launching collection in virtual world using 3D technology. Many technology providers emerged victorious in the ongoing restructuring period of the fashion industry and one of these companies is Hong Kong-based TG3D Studio. Team Apparel Resources (AR) recently had a conversation with Rick Yu, CMO and Co-Founder, TG3D Studio where he touched upon various aspects of digitisation that the industry is witnessing.
AR: In a very short period of time, TG3D Studio has made strong footprints in the global fashion tech industry…Please share your inception story and the aim with which you have stepped in to cater to the ever-evolving fashion sector.
Rick: We had known our investor long before the founding of TG3D Studio. He had extensive industrial experiences from the textile and garment manufacturing industry and we had many conversations in the past exploring why the clothing industry, unlike other industries such as automotive and graphics design, isn’t able to utilise software like Photoshop, to design and visualise its work before materialising it into a physical presence. Then we actually dived into analysing the industry and its workflow and surprisingly discovered that the clothing industry had long been operating with heavy reliance on the physicals. In order for it to adopt the digital workflow, it means all the important elements in the clothing industries – the customers’ bodies, materials, clothing themselves need to be first be digitalised. We saw this as an opportunity as there isn’t one company that provides end-to-end digitalisation solutions for all the elements. Thus, we founded TG3D Studio in 2015 with the goal to help the clothing industry go digital (3D).
AR: What changes has the fashion industry witnessed in last couple of years in terms of adoption of 3D – both at brands/retailer’s side and manufacturing side?
Rick: The use of 3D technologies was mostly by brands and their suppliers to facilitate communication and co-creation and the primary focus was on the fitting validation. However, the awareness and adoption of 3D technology dramatically accelerated as a result of COVID-19 and lockdown. Many businesses were looking into ways to keep the operations going. However, the intended use was somewhat shifted to getting visualisations of the merchandise so they can begin the pre-sale activities without having to always wait for the physical samples to be made to do so. Also, they were looking to utilise these 3D assets in virtual showrooms to circumvent the inabilities of their clients to travel to physical showrooms
AR: Metaverse is the name that’s on everybody’s mind today…What does it take for the fashion sector to make a smooth transition to metaverse?
Rick: Well, first of all, you need to equip yourself to create digitally and especially in 3D and most important of all, think outside the box of supply chain, logistics and sourcing because all of that don’t exist in the Metaverse. Brands have a whole new opportunity to redefine their brands positioning and try new things that would generally seem too risky to try in the physical world. I see a lot of opportunities for fashion brands or even independent designers because supposedly, we each will have our own digital doubles that live in the Metaverse and it goes without saying that personalisation and ability to express ourselves through the way we dress will be also be crucial in that world.
AR: TG3D Studio offers a variety of 3D technologies for – body scanning, fabric scanning, virtual sampling software, and even fashion retail’s digital experience. Can you please elaborate how are you addressing one of the biggest fashion issues – wastage – with these offerings?
Rick: Our vision is to help the fashion industry reverse from the existing produce-first and see-how-much-we-can-push-through model to a totally on-demand model where nothing is produced if nobody wants it. Although some of our clients are exploring into this such as H&M 3D Body Scan Jeans, many traditional custom-clothing providers have hopped onto the 3D bandwagon, and start-ups are launching offering custom clothes. However, we don’t see the mass-market, ready-to-wear sector shift that easily.
Most of the retailers had been busy migrating their sales from offline to online in the past 2 years. The returns have become a big issue and there are many reasons for returns but the main causes are consumers’ inabilities to make informed decisions as to what sizes to choose and their expectation alignments. Not every consumer knows their body measurements and even if they do, it’s hard to find yourself landing in the same size when trying to map yourself to a size chart. Moreover, customers often expect the clothing will look like that piece on the model on the product page but that often isn’t the case.
Our Mobile Body Scan, Size Recommendation and Virtual Try-On (VTO) solutions can address all these questions. After a body scan, the customers will be recommended the sizes that only fit their body. Through VTO, they can preview themselves in the selected colorway and size just the same way they shop in a store and only take those confirmed pieces through check-out process. We believe in helping the consumers find the outfits they will truly want to prolong for a lifetime and avoid unnecessary purchase of those that will be thrown away easily.
AR: Sensor accuracy is the most important phenomenon in 3D body scanners…What are the challenges you face in keeping sensors’ accuracy high all the time?
Rick: The accuracy does not depend on the size of the human body but heavily depends on calibration of the sensors. We have developed state-of-the-art calibration technology that will make best use of the sensors with automatic correction to ensure the data acquired from the body surface is as clean as possible.
We get accuracy through giving clear and visual instructions to the users. We also have a fool-proof mechanism with computer vision that ensures customers will be in the right posture before they can trigger the scan.
AR: In fabric scanning technology of TG3D Studio, are there any chances of colour or texture difference in the scanned swatches? How does your technology take care of key fabric properties?
Rick: Colour is always a big challenge for any kind of scanning devices, not solely due to different optics sensors but also because the fabrics appear differently under different lightings as well as the screen’s colour performance varies where the scans are viewed on.
We have tuned our software to perform as good as they can be colour-wise on the iPhone X and SE (2020 model) devices. Also, we have included some colour adjustment tools on our software so the users will be able to make adjustments if need be. If the customers feel more satisfied with their existing photo or document scanner, the AI Texture feature from the Nuno3D Services (the fabric scanning software) allows them to import those images from 3rd party hardware as well.
As our fabric scanner works as the appearance scanner, it only captures the colour, textures (weaves), the sheen and translucency. Fabrics properties is another important project we are working on.
AR: With technology comes limitations…Do you find any limitations in 3D design systems when they are used for products like bra, swimwear or any activewear garments where creating exact mimic or when measurement is quite difficult?
Rick: That’s a very good question. Yes, most 3D systems available for fashion include our very own, treat the avatar like a hard-shell mannequin, so the garment adapts to the avatar. However, for bra, swimwear, yoga pants, the body and garment adapt to each other. In order for this to work, the avatar must come with soft tissues and the simulation of the dressing will need to take the soft tissues into consideration which will dramatically increase the computation challenges as well as define and sample the density and physical properties on those soft tissues from various parts of the human body.
AR: What are the markets that TG3D Studio is targeting right now? India and Bangladesh are putting a lot of focus on supply chain digitisation within their garment and textile value chain of late. How do you see these two countries for your business proposition?
Rick: We are very active globally. Thanks to the various video conferencing tools, we are able to conduct business with customers in every continent. Both India and Bangladesh play significant roles in the garment/textile supply chain, getting onboard with digitalisation early means you won’t need to be reactive against the increasing demands for digitalisation from brands. Also, you can provide values by playing an advisory role to those brands that are still figuring out their digitalisation strategies.
AR: Going forward, what are your plans in 2022 – in terms of technology R&D, expansion, collaboration, etc.?
Rick: We are going to continue to iterate and bring new features to our existing products and actively seek pilot candidates for our holy grail – VTO. Also, we are working on some plans for the metaverse internally and we look forward to have something to show around that this year. So it’s going to be a very busy year already.