Working at the VR Fashion Gallery gave me a growing experience, an opportunity to stretch my VR knowledge and experiment with techniques that could add to the fashion industry. The challenge of creating an immersive VR fashion gallery that would seamlessly transport users into a virtual world where the user could engage with a curated collection of virtual clothing, sculptures, and paintings without ever leaving the physical world. The proposed application is mainly designed for fashion houses and influential people in fashion, aiming to show them how VR could offer value to the industry.
What worked excellently?
As the VR clothing gallery was the main focus of the project, special attention was paid to ensuring it was easy to navigate and felt similar to real-life fashion spaces. To do this in the most effective way possible, I wanted to show realistic clothing that moved with cloth physics. I tried to use the stock clothing in Unreal, as well as some 3D models that I found online. However, I found that these items just flatly stayed attached to the model, so this led me to use Marvelous Designer, which offered realistic and amazing clothes. There were also features inside of Unreal that allowed me to integrate these assets and edit how much they moved.
As a VR experience, it was important for me to create something interactive and meaningful. These interactions should promote exploration of the environment, and be extremely intuitive for the user to pick up. This also involved high-level features, such as Metahuman, motion capture, and 3D scanning, which furthered the level of realism. To increase presence, I looked at the features of the metahumans, allowing users to change their face and height to better reflect them as a person.
Overcoming Challenges and Finding Solutions:
The significant challenge was to bring realism from the physics of the garments, which I overcame through the persistent use of tools such as Marvelous Designer, I watched several tutorials before I finally learned to use the software. This was something completely new for me, and I had to learn how to navigate and use the software.
I also faced a large amount of difficulty in the interactions, getting them to move smoothly, teleport a certain distance, and implementing some custom controls caused me several errors. Initially, I started from using the keyboard, navigating the scene with the arrow keys as a placeholder. When I began testing in VR, I noticed that the controls didn’t work, I previously thought VR would automatically be implemented since I developed using the VR kit. With this not in place, I looked at tutorials to implement controls and finally got smooth locomotion working.
As a VR user, I found the movement fairly comfortable. However, when testing with others I found they easily got motion sickness from the smooth mode, so I decided to implement teleport. I had a hard time getting the user to move around the environment efficiently as the cursor did not more than a few steps from the user’s body. Natalia helped me implement the navmesh bound which allowed the user to freely move around the environment.
Lighting became a large issue when I began testing in VR as well. There was a huge amount of unbuilt and unnecessary lighting which added a lot to the size of the game. I knew I needed to take a large portion of the lighting out, but I had a difficult time figuring out what to eliminate. I went through the environment and saw that many of the lights were redundant. I decided to raise the intensity of the lights that I kept. This helped keep the light count low, while also maintaining a well-lit and aesthetically pleasing environment. Starting out, I had over 2000 lights and by the end, I had just a little over 200. this increased my frame rate from 40 to 60.
I iterated several times, deciding to alter the plan and simplify certain aspects of the project. YouTube helped me understand a lot of the interactions I wanted to implement, I got to a functional point with tutorials, but ultimately the experience wasn’t perfect. To perfect this, I spent a weekend combing through the project to identify any errors or possible deficiencies. I found multiple minor issues and solved them via YouTube tutorials and the general knowledge I’ve acquired of Unreal.
Addressing Industry Concerns and Crafting Solutions:
During the creation of the project, I kept in mind some of the major issues discussed in the industry concerning the accessibility and applicability of VR technology, specifically in fashion.
With skepticism of VR in the fashion industry, I have tried to prove how relevant and full of potential VR is in the fashion landscape. With this concern in mind, I knew I had to create something which was extremely straight forward and easy to understand for the industry. The VR Fashion Gallery was very straightforward in terms of functionality and the task of educating the user. Its aim is to dispel the myth that VR is not capable of reshaping the way products are presented and sold in the fashion industry.
Conclusion: A Vision Realized and Future Prospects:
An interactive VR Fashion Gallery can be transformational within the fashion industry. The project expands on just the virtual experience and proposes real material solutions for industry challenges, by drawing on cutting-edge tools and design innovation. It explores how VR could be integrated into the industry with attention to detail and the specific needs of brands. I built this in a way where it could be used as an actual product offering to fashion houses that will want to tap into the immersive power of VR.
Not only focusing on interaction and beauty but also prioritizing ease of use for people who were not used to VR. As a fashion enthusiast, I’ve always kept in mind that this project is something I would like to commercialize. I feel it would add a lot to the shopping experience for me, as well as many others who are into the buying the latest collections from designer brands. I’ve tested this with friends as well as my Dad and his shareholders who encouraged me to continue working on this, as they feel it has commercial potential.
As I continue to polish this experience, I will begin to look for funding. I did a large amount of market research in China, where I found that while VR is a well-funded and growing industry, it has not yet permeated fashion in a way that allows consumers to comfortably shop. In addition to this, I found that the return rates for online shopping in China are extremely high, I feel that VR can reduce business expenses for fashion brands and increase customer satisfaction with items ordered.
In general, this project was extremely enlightening as I started with an idea and worked on it to fruition. I would love to thank my friends and tutors for helping me through this project. I was very nervous as I was using Unity for my entire school career, I was fairly nervous about using Unreal Engine and having to create an entire project around it. But this project gave me a huge amount of confidence in my ability to create something from scratch using new technology. I’ve even used a 3d scanner to create a realistic scan of my face in metahuman, as well as a 3d scan of a room which helped me organize assets inside of the Unreal scene. I feel an extreme of gratitude for myself and everyone who helped see this project through to the end, I’m excited to continue building upon this in the future.