Style3D had the amazing opportunity to have an interview with #The Manchester Metropolitan University, where we discussed everything about different solutions for the fashion industry and how software and hardware can be powerful tools to achieve amazing goals inside the industry.
It was amazing to hear that #The Manchester Metropolitan University has been teaching 3d fashion design for more than 20 years, one of our main objectives at the moment is to get people around the world to have the opportunity of seeing and understanding how to use fashion software’s to be able to do much strategic work.
The interview was mainly focused on how Style 3d has been planning to expand its market to Europe and North America and how the software is different from the competition.
@Anita, head of the section for fashion in the Manchester Metropolitan University, prepared a list of questions regarding our operations and solutions. We also discussed the potential future technology development that will be needed to improve the industry in general.
In the meeting, Style3D COO (Alfie Chen) and CSO (Dr. Wang) were invited to the interview and discussed the 3d clothing development from sales and technical perspectives.
Question: 3d prototyping software was developed over 20 years; why do you do that? As most companies start there already.
Alfie Chen: We launch the product at the right time and place, even most competitors over many years. Only style3d only fully with material. Most markets were facing limitations, but for style3D you could be more free design.
Question: Do you believe that still has the space for the 3d company in the world?
Dr. Wang: From a technology perspective, the development of technology is not linear. Especially for the past five years, we have seen a bumping development of computer animation, and computer graphics technology. Also, similarly, we have had hardware advancement over the past five years. Media graphic is really powerful now, so even though those companies who are style3d competitors start earlier than us, we still have the advantage as we can borrow and adapt very realism technic to the software, and this will be very useful for the efficient, and precise prototyping, because the efficiency and presence are really important to the prototyping. This is why style3d starts here.
Question: What drives the 3d software to China?
Alife Chen: Most of the manufacturers in China have changed their production model. From OEM transferred to ODM, 3d software is the key point to enhance the design capability to develop.
Question: Have you been design things more complicated?
Dr. Wang: We release a new version every two months; we want to do this not as the reason we need to fix the bug. The main reason is we want to adopt very precis techniques, and our customers are able to play with the tools and get a better experience. From the software perspective, it’s not only developed and done, but it is also actually having a life cycle and we have to keep pushing the strength of prototyping. And there are two very important figures we need, one is realism, we want to make it precise and accurate, and this is very important as if the prototyping is not realistic, then it’s not precise and won’t use. If we are able to make it real so that we can help the designers patternmakers benefit from using the software.
To purchase an expensive computer to design and create 3d prototyping is one of the limitations of exiting the software. All the computations should be local, one thing we’re going to explore next year, is how can we do that computation online based on cloud clouds computing. You don’t have to purchase a very expensive computer and you can transfer the competition to the cloud.
Question: What the development we need that can make the 3d technology really great?
Dr. Wang: We need to make simulation prototyping real and accurate; realism and precision depend on manufacturers. For example, you have made the computation model is accurate; you have to make the development algorithm solve the problem very well. Secondly, you have to make sure that we can model the physical world correctly; the physical world means fabric. What we are developing now is trying to use AI and much learning to find a way to automatically learn those fabric properties by simple images, so now our simulation is much more precise and did great results. The third perspective for realism is the human body because when we talk about feeling and prototyping and pattern making, it’s the place of the human body, right? But the human body is soft, deformable, so we’re trying to explore how to model the human body, the human avatar, more realistically; we have to consider the soft body. So, we can make the fitting even more accurate. Yet still, we are focusing on developing the efficiency, efficiency algorithm involved in cloud computing and some parallel algorithm that we’re exploring.
Question: Can we discuss the treatment you offer to new clients and buy software?
Alfie Chen: Training is the key implement that when we do the post-presentation. We are facing a lot of new adopters, and for those clients, the trainers whether enough should be the key pain point. Second, style3d needs to set up an SOP to ensure the training quality is ok for the feel. For example, in case you want to collaborate with Zara, Shein or other fast fashion brands, the needs will be different. And also, they have different applications, it might be a trend book, it might be design purpose, or maybe in some scenario is e-commerce like how to post pictures to your online shop, website, Instagram, or any other social media, so that means the quality of efficiency will be leading the training for the training result will be different. And for style3d SOP needs to be adjusted for a lot of users and different applications.
Question: What the key barriers of fashion business of the adopt for 3d prototyping software?
Dr. Wang: One thing is the product itself, you should output the realistic pictures enough, as well as you need more user friendly, also to enhance the design, also the development efficiency. The second one is for the industry itself, as the fashion industry some key fundamentals were changed, which means the style needs to change more frequently. steed for a lot of users, as well as for different applications.
Question: The needs of the 3d fashion is small, do you think the situation are same in China?
Alfie Chen: The situation is quite similar with US and EU; however, we should enhance our collaboration together with universities both in China market or outside China. Second, need to set up an eco-system community for all users to interact with each other.
Question: What drive 3d prototyping in the fashion industry?
Alfie Chen: More frequent needs on design and development, the short-term lead time for R&D, as well as the fast production, and this is the key element to drive the 3d to be the mast for the fashion industry.
Question: What you think the future challenge for the 3d prototyping and short term and long term?
Dr. Wang: From the technical perspective, one challenge we should address is can we actually scan the fabric so that you really look realistic as real fabrics, and it’s part of the management, but we’re measuring from the optical perspective, and we don’t have the challenge, as in the future if you are able to help the fabric industry, to deliver their product in digitally, then we have to do this scene and we have to duplicate their appearance virtually, so that will save a lot of communication cost, but right now it’s still a challenge, the communication random model is limited and the ability to represent those models, computed those models are limited, and we are trying to dress this problem.
We really appreciate the opportunity; we firmly believe that education is one of the main factors to have success in the industry and we are happy to help different educational institutions understand the importance of technology usage in the Fashion Industry.
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