During the Fall of 2021, Dr. Burton hired Colleen Gostomski, a sophomore DET student, to research how to make 3D clothing. If you didn’t know, this field of 3D modeling is currently on the rise, with digital outfits selling for as much or more than the real thing. Dr. Burton saw an opportunity for students to start small businesses in clothing modeling to help support them up to and after graduation.
Their first test was a plugin for Blender (a popular open-source modeling program) called Cloth Weaver. Cloth Weaver had its benefits, like its familiar layout and hotkeys (assuming the user was already familiar with Blender). However, since it was a plugin, Cloth Weaver had to use Blender’s physics engine do to all it’s calculations. This caused the reputably stable platform to crash frequently. This led to such monstrosities as these:
After a month of struggling with Cloth Weaver, Dr. Burton and Colleen decided to try something else. This was when Dr. Burton suggested Marvelous Designer, which wasn’t a plugin for anything, but an entirely new software. With an engine designed specifically to handle cloth physics, the process of modeling clothes became straightforward. Within a few weeks of use, Colleen had managed to make these:
Which, as you can see, are much better than what she made with Cloth Weaver. She plans to publish what she makes to the Unreal and Unity asset stores. This is an important part of her research: Dr. Burton doesn’t just want to be able to teach students how to make clothes, but also how to profit off of them. Being self-sufficient is an important creed of the DET department.
Colleen will continue to improve her skills with Marvelous Designer and similar programs, and then pass her knowledge on to other students. With any luck, DET students will soon be able to create asset packs for use in projects throughout the department, so keep your eye on the asset stores! You could find some of their work.