My mother was a "grader" and her workflow was actually very similar to software engineering. A designer would give her sketches of a garment. She would figure out how to build it - break it down to individual pieces of cloth and construction steps that then get fanned out to cutters and seamstresses to build.
When I got into software I found the parallels fascinating.
When qualifying a new semiconductor process, it is common to do "schmoo" testing, that is to intentionally drive the process steps away from nominal temperature, vapor pressure, doping levels, process times, etc, etc, in order to characterize the expected yield with variations from nominal conditions.
When my wife was in General Mills' Betty Crocker division, it was common to characterize the behavior of a new cake mix formulation under varying conditions to account for inaccurate measurement of added liquids, variation in the size of eggs added by consumers, variation in home oven temperatures, variation in cook time, consumers adding milk instead of water, etc.
From a background in graphics, it's a neat way to have edges grab and join. Maybe 3D modeling already uses this stuff somewhere in high end? Haven't seen much of just putting two 2D shapes near each other, and then making a 3D inflated design with edge grabs. Seems like it would be nice for hobby games / apps, where you could draw a character front/back, and then inflate to ~3D shape. Might exist, and be my lack of awareness of the community.
The big players in this field are actually Optitex and Gerber AccuMark. Lookup any pattern making job from the likes of adidas, Patagonia or Arc’teryx and they require knowledge in one of those two.
The reason why CLO is becoming so popular in recent years is because they’ve been really smart about striking partnerships with fashion schools and offering their software at steep student discounts. I once tried to get a price quote from a regional Optitex rep and they just shrugged me off because they only deal with BIG companies.
If there ever was an industry ripe for disruption it would be fashion. The incumbents have been resting on their laurels for decades so it’s nice to see upstarts like CLO trying to apply the Final Cut Pro formula to dethrone them.
This is probably a dumb question, but am I correct in assuming that Gerber Scientific (which I think is responsible for AccuMark), Gerber knives, and Gerber baby products are all from completely unrelated companies? Or is there some long-ago connection between them?
> it’s nice to see upstarts like CLO trying to apply the Final Cut Pro formula to dethrone them.
Except Final Cut Pro died because they rested on their laurels and got their lunch eaten when Apple finally licensed ProRes. So it's not really as good of a comparison as one might think
I taught myself CLO 3D basics in about a week and then used it to design tango pants for myself, from an Oxford bags pattern from the 40's that I found online. I think this was around 2012 or so.
You can adjust the mannequin to your measurements and even load mocap data (which was very cumbersome at the time though) to see how the piece may behave when worn.
I had the pattern cut out from paper on a large format cutter plotter. Then I went to a tailor and told them: make it so -- all the details are up to you but stick to the pattern. Of course the pattern was missing stuff like belt pocket, coin pocket, lining etc.
They were a tad bewildered but the pants fit perfectly and I've been re-using this pattern now for over a decade.
For me it was an amazing experience and I'm still marveling (pun intended) at the fact that a zero-tailoring-knowledge layperson like I could do something like this with such software.
Epic Games also announced integrated of Unreal Engine with Marvelous Designer for UEFN and other games built in UE, this may likely drive more usage as well:
Much smaller scale but don't forget about https://freesewing.dev/ , written in javascript. Instead of designing from scratch, they have parametric models where you give your measurements and get a pdf output. Really nice community too
Not that many models but you can also design your own with more experience
If I had a 3D model of my body and measurements, I could send that to a designer for custom tailored clothing, which could then be cut and stitched by a 3rd party. Does a service like this already exist? Maybe an IPad is sufficient precision for the 3D model.
Its how the french navy (used/experimented with) to do uniforms.
You'd stand in a room, they'd scan you using structured light (I think, this was ~2000) then they'd extract the key measurements. However, instead of just in time tailoring, they had a bunch of trousers/shirts/tops/jackets in common sizes based on the population, rather than pattern type.
This allowed quick mix and match without manual measuring. It also allowed sub sizes to be used
They had these out in shopping centres in Australia, but they didn't last very long. It's a hard sell, I think you needed to get down to underwear in the thing?
Dug out an article, didn't read, but the picture is the device I recall.
Glad I wasn't making that up Hah! I think the main mistake they made was throwing these in the middle of shopping centres (similar placement to vending machines). If they had managed to get them integrated into a store, and made users feel safe, it might have been more successful.
At least for part of your question; I recently ordered a suit from a danish"tailor (who gets their suits sewn in Portugal). The measurement process consisted of doing a 3D body scan, with minor manual measurements (such as deciding fit). You can then use your existing scan, to order new garments. But preferably, I would still like to consult the tailor in store, since there's more to fit than getting the size and length right.
I've been toying with this for 20 years and we've come a long way.
In the beginning it was all hand modeling. It helped a bit that I did finite element analysis professionally at that time which involved a lot of 3D modeling as well.
About 15 years ago there was a small hype where photographers offered the service of 3D printing small figurines of you and your loved ones. I found one that gave me the 3D data. It was just a point cloud and hard to process back then.
Around the same time I had to get an MRI and talked the technician to give the data. Again it was hard to work with back then, but I learned a lot about DICOM.
More recently I asked my dentist for the 3D scan data they are doing there and he was happy to give it to me. It's just my mouth and teeth, but it's excellent data that worked straight in Blender.
I also experimented with the LIDAR of my iPhone a lot. I use Polycam for that, but mostly for spaces and objects. About four years ago a colleague who makes masks for his LARPing asked me to help him with that, but the resolution is too low for a head and face. Depending on your aspirations it could be good enough for full body scans. Especially since Polycam can do photogrammetry now besides the LIDAR scans, but I have not used that enough to form an opinion yet.
Speaking of apps, there is also Face Cap which can export the data from iPhones front facing facial recognition hardware, including facial expression animations in 3D. This is the data that Memoji use in the background.
By far the biggest progress we had is in software in my opinion. Blender is fantastic for working with models of all sorts, including human body models. There are many free base models you could fit for your needs (the ones Blender Studio offers are excellent and free), and there is MPFB2 if you want a generator. Apart from Blender there is still MakeHuman which progressed a lot in the last decade.
When it comes to services there are a ton that offer photogrammetry, 3D scanning and motion capture.
We live in exciting times and it was never that easy to create a model of your body.
EDIT: Regarding existing services, this was also a hype about 15 years ago along with the figurine services. I believe in Munich, where I live a company that offered it was called xsuits, or similar. When I search for this I find a lot of dead services and companies. Seems to have been just a fad, which is sad, because I think it is a really good idea.
While searching I found youlittle.com which offers 3D full body scans and sell you the processed data and edited models in various forms. Maybe something like that is the easiest and most convenient route.
> Especially since Polycam can do photogrammetry now besides the LIDAR scans
It's pretty good if you can get a decent coverage of photos. I did a scan the other day of a microphone holder and, apart from some thin gaps I couldn't get a good angle on, it came out well enough to see what was going on (it was warped).
Are you thinking of dresses specifically? If not, there's a lot of places where you can submit measurements you do yourself with a tape. It works pretty well for shirts/trousers/suits. I've used http://tailorstore.com/ but there's a few others. I feel like an app for scanning would be more tricky / unnecessarily complicated.
With the rise in scraping, impersonation, identity falsification? Not even slightly interested in full body scan tech.
Driver's License? The crooks will probably have a much easier time than me going to the DMV.
Put you somewhere you weren't with video generators? Hey, they've got a hi-res, full-body naked file of you for reference on video addition and substitution.
Why does the IRS' think this account's more me than me? Much better at video substituting your fake face for ID.me than the nonsense of you trying to use the ID.me cell phone app.
Print your face out as a mask Mission Impossible style and use your identity during robberies. The list goes on and on.
And these people never seem to delete anything properly, no matter how much you check. Ex: See food kiosks that photograph every customer, for some reason, with no deletion. (was in a college or factory somewhere earlier)
Apparently the conversion process from scan -> measurements -> _cool_ business suits is non-trivial, a Japanese apparel EC once tried(~2018) and ended up with suit textured human meat wraps. I don't know if the issue was purely technical or were there any internal/external conflict that exacerbated the problem, though.
Does Amazon still do this? Many of the links from that Tech Crunch article lead to 404s for me. Googling "Amazon Made for You" gives me product listings on Amazon for skin care and shaving products.
I've only tried Valentina/Seamly2D but yes, most of these programs let you export your design as a pattern that can be constructed, typically as a PDF.
Once you have a PDF, you can:
1 - print it in poster format across many pages of paper
2 - use a projector aimed down onto your cutting surface and then cut the pieces out
or 3 - a few people are fortunate enough to use laser cutters to cut out their fabric.
https://www.lectra.com/en/products/gerber-accumark-accunest-...
My mother was a "grader" and her workflow was actually very similar to software engineering. A designer would give her sketches of a garment. She would figure out how to build it - break it down to individual pieces of cloth and construction steps that then get fanned out to cutters and seamstresses to build.
When I got into software I found the parallels fascinating.