ArtBeat Virtual Reality

I'm hereby sharing the final episode of the 'Virtual Fashion' series - in which I gave insights in how a dressed 3D avatar for Augmented- and Virtual Reality is made.

Once all virtual clothing is connected to the avatar, it's ported to Unreal Engine. This is where everything comes together; lighting, composition, mocap animations and camera movements are set up. For this demo I used Unreal's internal Clothing Tool for cloth physics. This avoids the need to bake physics upfront and boosts performance and flexibility. The tool isn't perfect yet, but I'm confident Epic Games will improve this in new updates.

Next to physics, the movie below shows the integration of Unreal's skin shaders and use cases that I foresee for Realtime Avatars; actors in movie/advertising clips, Virtual Fashion mannequins, (dance) performers on live television shows, speakers at Virtual Events and more .... in short, they're not just '3D characters' but fully clothed and functional 'action figures' for Live integration - made by one guy on one laptop ;)

Let me know what you think!

(note: the Virtual Set used in the last scene is based on a design by NEP The Netherlands)

This week it's time to dress up a game character with the digital outfit I created in previous parts - end goal is to get the character set up for realtime integration with .

There's 4 main textures which are exported and used; Base_Color, Metallic, Roughness and Normal. Combined and overlayed these maps give the clothing its material appearance.

Next up is connecting the garments to an actual character - I'm using the Rico Verhoeven sculpt I made a while ago. To prevent mismatches between character and garment a fixed pose is used throughout the process. After importing the garment meshes, the texture maps are added for material detail - check the impact of a carefully set up Normal map; it transforms flat surfaces into detailed cloths.

Next time I will prepare the character for animation and physics; checking if the garment is connected properly to the character's bones, testing it in different poses and doing first physics testing in UnrealEngine. In the meantime check my ArtStation https://www.artstation.com/ArtBeat or follow me on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/aronversteeg/ for more updates.

Stay tuned for more!