The 7-Day Photorealistic Jacket
How Render Ready assets allowed a single artist to create a Fully Optimized Hero Garment in Just One Week, Drastically Reducing Production Time and Costs.
The world of digital design, especially in video games and animation, is constantly striving for increased realism. However, creating believable and dynamic clothing remains a significant challenge. Existing 3D asset libraries often neglect garments, focusing instead on objects, bodies, and environments. Render Ready bridges this gap by creating the first-ever digital library dedicated to high-quality, searchable, and well-documented clothing data.
Our platform provides immediate access to this critical resource, enabling businesses to accelerate their time-to-market and reduce operational costs. Our data is sourced directly from real-world garments, ensuring accuracy and realism. This allows studios to focus on core gameplay and character design instead of spending excessive resources on garment research and creation.
Client ask
The project called for a uniquely textured, denim jacket-type garment. The jacket was to look slightly too big on a female character, as she is wearing the oversized jacket of her larger male partner. The sleeves were to be rolled up haphazardly as the sleeves would be too long for her. The jacket should be open so that the outfit below can be seen. The budget is small, and they do not have time for clothing simulation.
Is there a way to get to a completed garment asset done in a week?
Render Ready solution
We acquired a slightly oversized corduroy jacket in a masculine fit and style. Posed on our custom mannequins, made to the sizes of Unreal Engine 5’s Manny and Quinn, we styled the garment in a way that would look casually asymmetrical while taking special care to accurately preserve the appealing wrinkles.
Scanning occurred under balanced lighting resulting in true color-calibrated diffuse texture at 8k resolution. We were able to process and provide the data quickly as our process collects data within 0.1mm accuracy at up to two million data-points per second.
Working from this real-world garment scan, at this level of accuracy, the artist was able to completely skip the arduous task of creating a garment using cloth simulation software. With a high-detail scan on hand at the start of the process, the artist was able to jump directly into retopology on a decimated version of data guaranteed to be accurate to a real garment.
Final time to take scan data to fully optimized asset:
By reducing the time spent on technical challenges and interpreting analog references, the artist was able to focus their energy on refining the garment's unique features. This allowed for a greater focus on artistic details, resulting in a higher quality final product.
This approach allowed for enhancements in:
Rolled-up Sleeves
Referencing Render Ready assets, the artist was able to place refined button models in the exact positions and angles from the scan without having to worry if they were incorrectly oriented.
The buttons themselves were modeled to match the dimensions of the physical garment’s buttons down to 0.001mm accuracy.
As an added touch, each button was customized to sport the Render Ready logo in high resolution.
With multiple white balanced photos, as well as 8K diffuse textures captured directly through the 3D scan process, the artist was able to reference real-world RGB values that can translate directly to textures in Substance Painter.
Rather than guessing or eyeballing color selection, the artist was able to simply use an eyedropper tool in their texturing program to obtain an exact value.
28 hours
A major component of this process is the focus on capturing detail that’s difficult or impossible with the current process of clothing production in games. The sleeve of this garment is a perfect example of this. The asymmetrical and heavily twisted sleeve style on display would present even a seasoned artist with a huge challenge were they to use simulation software such as Blender, Marvelous Designer, or Houdini.
With Render Ready assets the artist was able to simply reference the real garment and customize it to their needs.
Buttons
Substance Painter Texture
With the time gained by starting with high quality data, the artist was able to devote extra time in the schedule to further detail the optimized model with specialized shaders and textures under consultation with the Render Ready team.
Corduroy
With Render Ready’s assets and specialized garment knowledge, the artist was provided the tools needed to create a suite of high resolution fiber assets that were used to bake corduroy and stitch textures. These high res textures enable self-shadowing and perspective deformation of individual threads, allowing for detailed closeups from just a few millimeters away.
Stitch Detail
Even though the artist began their workflow with a high resolution 3D scan rather than a simulation, the artist was still able to refer to the Render Ready technical package for information on the exact type and placement of stitches, giving a touch of realism that many artists don’t have time to add.
With the array of time savings granted by the high quality reference data provided by Render Ready, the artist was freed from a number of technical constraints across the board, allowing them to devote more energy to optimization and in-engine artistic polish.
The Result
Even though the artist began their workflow with a high resolution 3D scan rather than a simulation, the artist was still able to refer to the Render Ready technical package for information on the exact type and placement of stitches, giving a touch of realism that many artists don’t have time to add.