We’ve become so accustomed to seeing believable 3D assets – whether they’re being viewed in real-time, or as static renders in virtual product photography – that it’s easy to overlook the work, the expertise, the technology ecosystem, and the hard-won skills that go into creating believable-looking digital products and outfits – like the ones that illustrate the front cover and some of the internal pages of our DPC Report 2023.
The Interline commissioned designer Harry Tribe, who recently graduated from the fashion programme at Teesside University in the UK, and who now runs a digital fashion service called Tribe Vision, to create these outfits to demonstrate the fidelity it’s possible to achieve with accessible tools and pipelines. But we also wanted Harry’s designs to showcase the tension between the demand for digital assets of this level of quality, and the complexity involved in actually creating them – great results in DPC might come easier than before, but they still don’t come easy.
So join us as we pull back the curtain on the 3D design process, look at what went into creating these outfits – from education to equipment, and ask what the future looks like for young designers, seasoned creatives, and the brands that need them.
For this interview, we talk to Harry himself at length, as well as bringing in perspectives from Jaden Oh, Founder of CLO Virtual Fashion, and Gerd Willschutz, CEO of DMIx, since those two solutions made up most of Harry’s software pipeline for this work. It’s important to remember, though, that a wide spectrum of alternatives and different solutions exist across the DPC technology ecosystem, so we encourage every designer and every brand to find the workflow and the pipeline that fits them.
To read other opinion pieces, exclusive editorials, and detailed profiles and interviews with key vendors, download the full DPC Report 2023 completely free of charge and ungated.
The Interline: Tell us a bit about your history as a designer. What got you interested in fashion in the first place, and what are some of your driving design principles?
Harry Tribe: Art was a huge part of my childhood, and where I think the majority of my creative passions stem from now as an adult. I’ve always been into fashion – maybe without even knowing it at some points. As a child I used to pick my own outfits from as young as I can remember. And although my interest in it changed over the years, when I was 21 years old and not liking the direction my career was headed in at all, I brainstormed some dream careers and made a shortlist of some of my biggest passions. Fashion was at the top of that list, and at that point I decided to quit my job and go back to University to study how to make clothes.
Since then I’ve evolved tremendously, and looking back at my old designs or ideas it feels like they were designed by a different person than the one creating what I do now. But that being said, I only have 2 design principles I’m working with at the moment. I want to create clothes that get people thinking ‘Wow, I can’t believe he made that’ or ‘WTF, why would you make that?’Both of those reactions give me an equal dopamine high, and seeing the confusion on some people’s faces makes all the hard work totally worth it. I think fashion is at its most powerful when it’s being provocative and challenging.
The Interline: What was the catalyst that got you interested in working in 3D? Did you see someone else’s renders? Did you get exposed to the tools through your education? Or did you pick up the 3D modelling bug from another hobby?
Harry Tribe: Where I studied, at Teesside University, in the UK, as part of the post COVID curriculum students are introduced to CLO3D and digital fashion in their second year of the Fashion course. Straight away I was very invested in this software and I could tell it was going to become a huge interest of mine. During my teenage years I was pretty big into gaming, and my favourite games were always the ones where you could customise your character and change what they were wearing. Using 3D design and simulation software immediately reminded me of that interest I had.
I also learned a lot about the construction of garments by learning CLO, as it uses a realistic approach to creating 3D garments. I learned so much about pattern making and sewing through 3D tools that was directly applicable to making physical clothes, so I continued to use them and learn more about some of the power user features to become a better designer and maker – not just a better 3D artist.
The Interline: How much of your current 3D skillset was picked up during your university studies, versus how much was either self-taught or acquired through other tutorials and grassroots channels?
Harry Tribe: I’d say at least 80% of my current skillset is self taught. At university – at least where I studied – you’re only really taught the basic fundamentals and how to navigate the software, and you’re expected to learn the rest in your own spare time if you develop the passion for it. After that module was over, I began to recreate some of my favourite collections from some of my favourite fashion designers to get some more practice in, and I enjoyed it so much that it became a real hobby of mine. Then gradually over the course of a couple of years I became really good at working in 3D, which was extremely rewarding, but it definitely required me to commit a lot of time and effort outside of university.
The Interline: When you talk to fellow young designers, what’s the prevailing sentiment around 3D? Do you find people are fully on board with the idea, sceptical of it, or even completely unaware of it?
Harry Tribe: More often than not everyone has heard of it, but most are yet to give it a go – either at all, or beyond the initial introduction they get through their education. I think because it’s such a steep learning curve, people are very intimidated by it and are sticking to their guns with what they already know. But a lot of them fail to realise that just by putting in an hour a day or a few hours a week, it all adds up and becomes less and less scary (and frustrating) to use. I’m very passionate about getting people on board with digital tools, even if you don’t want to go the same route as me and dedicate most of your fashion journey to it, the benefits that using 3D has on your ability to create clothing in real life is more than enough to start using it.
The Interline: What hardware and operating system setup do you use? Are you working on PC or Mac, and what CPU, GPU, and input devices make up your workspace?
Harry Tribe: I’ve actually just upgraded my full setup. In July I got accepted on a business course through Teesside University, where you get the opportunity to pitch to an investor for funding at the end of the course. I was successful in my business pitch and managed to secure some funding, which I used to fully kit out my setup. I upgraded to the MSI Stealth 16 Laptop, specifically the version which they collaborated with Mercedes-Benz. It’s a beautiful laptop and really packs a punch. It has the Intel i9 13900H and the RTX 4070 graphics card by NVIDIA.
When choosing a laptop (or building a desktop) for CLO it’s really important that you pick one with an NVIDIA RTX card as the software relies on the RTX capabilities for simulation, so providing it with that graphics card makes a hell of a difference. My current machine also has 32GB of RAM for making those files with a bunch of garments combined into a single outfit run more smoothly as ever. I’ve paired that up with a 32 inch Samsung ultrawide monitor, as I really think that more screen space equals more productivity – especially with CLO where you need both your 2D and 3D window open most of the time.
One piece of kit that I’ve recently picked up which I’m really excited about is the Logitech MX Master 3S mouse. I never expected to be this excited over a mouse but it’s honestly great. It’s super economic and has a bunch of extra buttons and even an extra scroll wheel which just improves workflow and productivity a lot.
I used to be a Mac user, and it was very difficult to switch over to Windows when I did a year or so back, but if you’re wanting to take 3D seriously you have to be on Windows. macOS just isn’t optimised for 3D fashion work right now, and you realise it’s night and day when you make the switch.
The Interline: What did your workflow and tool pipeline look like for making the outfits you created for this report? Walk us through the end-to-end process from the initial moodboard to these final pixels.
Harry Tribe: In general, the typical way of creating garments and a collection would be to get inspiration and research from somewhere, then turn that into a moodboard to start the flow of designing. That’s the way you’re taught in fashion school anyway. For me it’s always been a bit different. I have a really strong imagination and most of the time, I can see the final product in my head before I even start with the initial ideas. I work backwards in a way. I see the final product, and then research topics around the vision that will assist the development and make it even better. The only time I ever start with inspiration is if it’s sprung upon me without going out of my way to find it.
Once the initial concept is in the works and the research is coming along nicely, I tend to head straight into CLO3D to get some design ideas brought to life. Since becoming so confident in the software, it’s very rare that I start collections with sketches, simply due to how quickly I can get a super realistic, proportionate garment on a body to see immediately how it’ll look IRL. There’s a much shorter distance between my ideas and a visualisation of the garment when I work directly in 3D.
This sometimes has its downsides though, as I’ll often give up on ideas half way through as they dont look how I imagined, rather than trusting the process to the end. Now that I think about it, I’ve probably lost so many great ideas that way. So the freedom to experiment digitally can backfire if you’re not committing to seeing an idea all the way through.
Once everything is finalised with the garments, it’s then time for me to research how the outfit will be displayed in the final render. I usually go for a studio photography style as I think that’s how I can get my garments looking the best, but obviously there’s a lot of flexibility in how you stage your digital garments that you don’t get if you’re working with physical ones.
With the addition of 3D Render by DMIx, which I used to create the final renders for The Interline, it’s actually surprisingly easy to export and import the work between the two programmes. With a freshly imported GLB file from CLO, all that’s left to do is choose which HQ avatar you want to use with your garments, set a camera up and you’re good to go.
The Interline: To create the renders that have defined the visual identity for this year’s DPC Report, the final stage of Harry’s workflow was swapping out the default avatars for virtual models from the library that DMIx and its partner, Verce, offer, and then using the DMIx virtual studio and cloud render pipeline to generate the realistic-looking end result. Gerd Willschutz, CEO of DMIx, why do you believe that giving designers like Harry easy access to ways to improve the way their designs are presented is so important?
Gerd Willschutz: At DMIx, we’re committed to empowering designers with scalable tools that not only enhance their design presentation but also ensure top quality. By utilising the spectrum of Physically Based Rendering (PBR) workflow out of the DMIx library, we go beyond the limitations of real-time applications. This approach allows designers, from independent creators to large-scale brands, to achieve exceptionally high-quality, photorealistic renders. Our focus on scalability with our virtual studio and cloud render pipeline is integral to this. It democratises the design process, fostering creativity and innovation across all levels. It also aligns with the industry’s shift towards sustainability, reducing physical prototyping needs and promoting an eco-friendly approach. In essence, DMIx’s solutions are about elevating design presentation to its highest quality for anyone and everyone, while shaping a more dynamic, efficient, and sustainable future for fashion.
The Interline: Harry, the renders you’ve created for this report – with the support from the solutions we just spoke about – are obviously believable-looking . How important do you think the pursuit of fidelity and photorealism is in 3D fashion design in general?
Harry Tribe: Personally I think it’s very important, but it really depends on your end goal. If you use 3D as only an aid to help with your physical fashion development, it’s not really important. However, if you use digital fashion to its full potential, I think the pursuit of photorealism is very important.
Digital fashion is still currently a grey area and a lot of people still don’t understand the need or want for it. But I think if you have a motive to try and blur the line between digital and physical fashion, It makes it more appealing to the average consumer, especially with visuals like the ones I created for this report. One of the biggest resources I offer to clients through my digital design practice is the ability to create extremely realistic looking renders of their garments for a fraction of what it would cost for a traditional photoshoot.And without the pursuit of photorealism, I don’t think established brands would see the value in the same way, or be able to put the same level of trust in digital assets.
The Interline: Obviously you look inside fashion and towards other industries for design inspiration, but do you look at other industries – perhaps VFX or videogames – for technical best practices and modelling / texturing / rendering advice?
Harry Tribe: Absolutely! The crossover between digital fashion and the videogame industry is massive. Every video game character needs clothing, and in most of those character design workflows a sister software of CLO3D known as Marvelous Designer is used. But it’s not easy for game developers to use these softwares to their full potential because they require fashion design knowledge, which is where partnerships are born.
Then, of course, the favours are returned: I’ve worked with game designers to learn the basics of other 3D programmes such as Blender, as well as learning how to create my own textures using Adobe Sampler. These are tools that are increasingly making their way into fashion, but they were born and stress-tested in other industries.
As unique a discipline as 3D fashion design is, I’d encourage anyone who works in it to talk to people who use 3D tools in other sectors, because they really know what they’re doing. Whenever I need any advice on hardware, or even best practices to apply to my work, I always chat to my friends in the game design industry.
The Interline: Do you believe that hybrid talent like yours – bundling fashion design and 3D design together – is something that other designers and design teams should be trying to build, or do you think specialisation is the key? In the long run, do you expect that you’ll continue to put equal weight on both physical fashion design and 3D design, or are those pathways going to eventually diverge and you’ll need to pick just one to develop further?
Harry Tribe: I think it’s fairly difficult to put an even 50/50 on physical and digital. It is for me anyway. I always tend to fluctuate between the two, and I see them as complementing each other in a major way. When I was first introduced to 3D software, I put my all into learning it which meant I neglected making any physical garments for a while, and during that time I did debate going digital only. But the more I progressed with my degree and the more I progressed within the industry, I fell back in love with the art of sewing and making clothes again. And currently I’m enjoying being at a sewing machine more than I am at my computer… but if you ask me again in 3 months time I’ll probably tell you the complete opposite!
I do believe it’s important to be able to do both when you work solo like me, just to give yourself the best shot at everything you attempt, and to offer as services. For big brands, though, I can understand why there’s a need to have separate tracks and separate, specialist teams of fashion designers and 3D artists, because there it’s all about optimising the route to market.
The Interline: How far do you think about producibility – making 3D garments that can then be physically made – when you’re working in 3D? Are you focusing on digital tools as a way to bring ideas to life that you then recreate and iterate on physically as a separate workflow, or are you prioritising pattern accuracy and material accuracy so that your 3D assets are the direct driver for making a physical garment?
Harry Tribe: It really depends on the purpose of the 3D garment. A portion of my income as a business is selling 3D assets online where other 3D users can purchase them and use them for their own needs – whether it be for a video game character to wear, or to help with their own 3D fashion journey. In this instance, super accurate patterns and material accuracy are not the main priority, as the user can alter them anyway – and they’re always listed as ‘not for real production’ just so the buyer knows I haven’t put extra steps in to make sure the pattern is extra perfect (however when you’re a perfectionist like me they’re usually pretty close anyway).
On the other hand, if I’m extracting the patterns from CLO3D to use with my own brand creations, or digitally sampling garments for other brands, pattern accuracy and material accuracy are extremely important. The slightest change to a pattern can make or break it, so it needs to be perfect (or very near to) for the client right out of the software. That’s the only way to actually limit the number of physical samples that get created pre production. Also, having the right digital fabric that properly represents all the characteristics of the real material, is very important, as fabric selection is so broad, and they all behave differently from each other. It wouldn’t be very efficient for the client if I digitally sampled a garment in a cotton twill when they wanted it in a nylon shell, as both behave and drape very differently, which can change the look, the fit, and the performance massively.
Like everything with 3D, the intended final use case really determines how you approach things.
The Interline: When we talk about the future of digital product creation, this is a key point. Jaden Oh, Founder of CLO Virtual Fashion, what’s your perspective on how 3D tools like CLO can serve and help to unlock all the different use cases for digital assets? Is there a common foundation that lies underneath the wide possibility space for DPC?
Jaden Oh: In a way, Harry is showing us what is possible; with the right tools and services, he can create designs and assets using software like CLO or Marvelous Designer, and market and sell those assets to users that may utilise them for a wide range of applications, including physical garments and virtual ones. For us at CLO, our goal is to build the tools and services to empower creators like Harry, as well as everyone else in the DPC pipeline. Because garment simulation technology has evolved so much in recent years, we’re already at a point where brands and suppliers are making key production decisions using tools like ours. And we’re continuing to build out an ecosystem of services with the likes of CLO-SET (a communication & collaboration platform) and CONNECT (a digital fashion marketplace) – so now a design created in CLO can go a lot further, and there are more ways for it to be useful. Ultimately, we envision a future where every physical garment is connected to a virtual outfit and vice versa.
The Interline: Harry, what are your feelings on digital-only fashion and digital endpoints like. videogame cosmetics and other real-time use cases? Do you believe there’s a viable market for people wanting to wear digital-only clothing as themselves or as their player characters? And if so, is a digital-only designer a separate discipline from someone who designs in 3D for an eventual physical output?
Harry Tribe: This is still quite a tricky one for me. I think the consumer side of digital fashion is still too underdeveloped for it to be truly appealing to the average consumer. I think for someone to purchase digital fashion as a consumer, whether they’re doing it for sustainability reasons, or to have more options for what to wear in their instagram posts, or even to “wear” in one of the platforms that hold themselves out as being “the metaverse” , I think they have to be really into fashion and really into quirky tech. And even then I still see it as a bit of a fad, and something they wouldn’t repeatedly return to,and I think The Interline’s breakdown of the second Metaverse Fashion Week earlier this year did a decent job of explaining the reasons for that.
Right now, I just can’t see the average social media user or the typical fashion buyer even debating buying any form of digital fashion for their own personal use. I do think, though, that once digital fashion becomes a lot more accessible (which is something some big brands are working hard on) and easier to use then it might be a different story, but for now I don’t see it as something everyone will be jumping on.
And in terms of digital-only designers, there’s a lot of creativity in that space, but I think it’s definitely a different discipline. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of knowledge is linked between digital and physical fashion; like I said earlier I learned a lot about creating physical fashion through spending so much time on digital. And although it takes years and years to master digital fashion as the software is so incredibly complicated and in-depth, sewing is even harder.
For example, when creating digital fashion, you use the sewing tool to sew two seams together and as long as your measurements are okay, there isn’t really any way it can look bad. However, with physical fashion and sewing, it takes a lot of skill to be able to sew in a straight line nice and neat and to make it presentable enough to be sold. And a lot of things in digital fashion are very easy to apply once you know how, such as adding zips and buttons etc – but it’s just not that simple on a sewing machine.
The Interline: If you could talk to a roomful of designers – whether they’re new graduates or established designers who’ve so far stuck to 2D workflows – who haven’t experimented with 3D, what advice would you give them?
Harry Tribe: The future is here. You can be a part of it or you can be left behind. Technology is not here to replace you unless you refuse to engage with it – it’s here to assist you. Nothing can ever replace the true craftsmanship of a designer and maker, but neglecting opportunities that will make your life so much easier, make your brand more sustainable and save you money in the long run is silly.
Pretty much every single job in the fashion design industry now requires you to know about and interact with either the tools or the output of core digital product creation software like CLO3D, Browzwear, Style3D, Optitex etc., or extended DPC-ecosystem tools that cover material digitisation, avatars, cloud rendering and so on. It might seem extremely daunting at first, but practice makes perfect as always, and even spending a few hours a week will eventually add up to you being better-equipped to work in an industry where 3D and DPC tools are driving a lot of the innovation.
To see more from Harry and his Tribe Vision service company, visit his Instagram page, his CLO-SET portfolio, and his website. He can also be reached on LinkedIn.
For more on CLO, DMIx, and the wider ecosystem of DPC solutions, visit the technology listings section of our DPC Report 2023 Report.