We’re saying goodbye to winter and springing into fashion and warmer weather with brand new 3D clothing design tools and features for brands. We heard our customers and gathered feedback and input to create advanced features which make it easier for you to design your own clothes virtually.

Some of the new features include:

• Brand New Colorways Workspace provides the first and only advanced, comprehensive solution for professional apparel designers. The new workspace enables full control over all the different colors, fabrics and graphics as well as the ability to apply changes across all, some or one colorway. What used to take hours, now takes minutes with the new highly intuitive colorways workspace that  provides everything for quick decision making and includes advanced tools to make broad changes in a click of a button.
• Native Physical-Based Rendering (PBR) material system integration for state-of-the-art material renderings. PBR makes material renders more robust, enabling a realistic look of materials in real-time 3D including metallics, velvet, glitter and many more. PBR materials were originally developed by Disney and are used in professional pipelines for films and animation. We are proud to be the first apparel-focused software integrate this advanced and robust material system.
• New 3D Styling Properties including retouch, flatten and erase make it easier to make adjustments and communicate issues to pattern makers by showing them exactly where to make pattern modifications while keeping the integrity of the pattern pieces.
• Group/Lock/Hide enable designers to quickly group multiple elements and move them around together (e.g. a graphic and lines or trims), lock a specific element so it doesn’t move when others move, or hide a specific element’s type (e.g. all the measurement lines from the pattern maker) enabling a multidisciplinary team to work on a single garment together.
• U3M File Format Support enables brands to add a local/custom library and directly manage the brand materials. Now all the material information – from high end visual information to the physics properties of the fabric – is packaged in one single file, making it easier to share. In addition to the standard Browzwear library, everyone at the organization can access the local library as well.
• Other improvements including reduce points, auto-save and 3D measurements.

Want to hear more? Check out our on-demand webinars for an in-depth look at VStitcher and Lotta – April 2019 editions, or visit our online Help Center.

Let us know what you think…

Browzwear was proud to sponsor the 2018 AATCC Concept 2 Consumer® Student Design Competition. More than 100 students from 23 colleges and universities submitted 93 entries to the competition with the theme: All Day Adventures in Activewear. The challenge was for students to design a line for a specific outdoor or indoor athletic activity (cycling, running, group fitness, hiking, etc.) that could then transition to everyday wear.

We awarded the first place winner a Macbook Pro with a one year VStitcher software license and a paid internship from Browzwear and the second place winner, a one year VStitcher software license and a paid internship from Browzwear. Two honorable mentions received a VStitcher license as well.

So let’s meet the winners of the competition who came to learn from and work at Browzwear as interns…

Cecily Ripley: 1st Place Winner, University of Wisconsin – Stout

Cecily is an Apparel Design and Development student at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, minoring in (and with a passion for) Sustainable Design. She spent 10 weeks interning with us at the Browzwear office in Corvallis. Cecily is in her third and final year in the Apparel program and is expected to graduate in May 2019. One of Cecliy’s career goals is to change the way consumers think of sustainable design and how industry approaches it. She is excited to see how 3D design can potentially be used to reduce waste in the fashion industry. Some of her other passions and hobbies include music, art, and being outdoors. She is a dog person and goat owner. Cecily enjoys all things food and is obsessed with travel. She recently saw the ocean for the first time EVER and she says her life is forever changed. To see Cecily’s personal portfolio, click here.

Sarah West: 2nd Place Winner, University of Arkansas

Sarah West is pursuing a Master’s degree in Apparel Merchandising and Product Development at the University of Arkansas. Her research includes 3D body scanning, 3D printing and 3D apparel design, and her thesis involves form-fitting hard plate body armor for female police officers. Sarah likes to design costumes and spend time with her 2-year-old son, Roland Aurelius. She really enjoys 3D modeling and designing and took it upon herself to also learn traditional 3D softwares like Rhino and Blender. Sarah is most excited to work with 3D assets in Browzwear and to use the software for some 3D apparel design and modeling for her thesis. During her 10-week Fall semester internship, Sarah worked closely with our team to expand our existing libraries, and to build 3D assets for the Browzwear community to use. 

Feature

• Smart shoes

Benefits

• Complete a total look
• Fits multiple Avatars
• Move and bend with foot and legs

You’ve dabbled with Smart Trims and you’ve enjoyed the ease of an integrated Ray Trace engine… Let us introduce you to our new Smart Shoes.

Adding Shoes is Easier Than Ever

Complete the 3D look and the user experience, Browzwear has introduced adjustable smart shoes that work with multiple avatars, and can be animated or used in various poses. The shoes actually move and bend with the foot and legs of the avatar for true-to-life designs. Users can pull shoes straight from VStitcher and Lotta and enjoy full control over both the shoes and avatar feet, so you can make adjustments as needed.

Pre-Loaded Styles or Add Your Own

Browzwear now comes pre-loaded with 5 types of shoes and you can easily import additional shoes of any type including sport shoes, high heels, sandals and more. You’ll be guided through adjusting the foot to fit the shoe in different positions so the interaction becomes fluid and natural. Once its imported, the system remembers that shoe and how it interacted with the foot…for next time.

These shoes were made for walking… Have you experimented with them yet? Let us know what you think.

Feature

• Smart Zipper & Buttons

Benefits

• Easy to assign
• Fun to design
• Quick to share

The release of VStitcher 8.0 and Lotta 4.0 has introduced many exciting new features. We wanted to take a closer look at some of them in a series of blog posts over the next few weeks. The first features we’ll highlight are the Smart Zipper and Smart Buttons which enable you to easily assign, design and share a complete zipper or buttons.

How it Works

Forget everything you knew about the tedious process of measuring edges and making straight lines to line up buttons with their holes or placing a zipper just so. With Browzwear, you simply place the zipper onto a desired location. That’s right…two clicks and your zipper will be automatically applied to the garment, fully functional and inclusive of its main components such as the slider, puller, pull cord, teeth and tape.

It’s so Easy to Add Buttons

Two clicks and to apply both the buttons and the corresponding button holes. Both sides will be incorporated, perfectly aligned for proper buttoning and unbuttoning.

In addition, each smart zipper and button can be customized in many ways and shared and distributed as a complete asset package. Want a different thread color on those buttons? No problem. Looking for pre-loaded zipper? We’ve got five of them…and 11 different buttons, too – each one offering a base with infinite iterations by modifying elements like colors, tape width, textures, and more. Or, of course, you can import your own.

Style the Look

You can button or unbutton that shirt, and zip or unzip those sleeves, with one click. Want to zip it halfway? No problem. With Browzwear, you can see how the fabric, cut and seams move with the closures. In addition to configurable location, you can also configure thread color and other features which can then be cloned or duplicated with a few clicks of the mouse.

So go ahead, try it out and let us know what you think.

We’re excited to introduce two of our interns from Oregon State University. They are based in our Corvallis, OR office and work directly with Browzwear teams to learn 3D Apparel Design  with Browzwear’s VStitcher, Lotta, Stylezone, tech pack, fabric testing, material creation and digitization – necessary tools for a digital end-to-end product creation workflow. In addition, the interns learn to build digital assets, help with fabric testing and assist on client projects. At the end of their internship, they will have their own 3D portfolio project built with VStitcher and Lotta.

Lauren Johnson
Oregon State University, Apparel Design

Browzwear intern Lauren Johnson was born and raised in Albany, Oregon, which is just “down the street” from Corvallis. She attends Oregon State University as a full-time student double majoring in Merchandising management and Apparel Design, and is now entering her senior year. Lauren likes to draw, listen to music, and hang out with her roommate’s cat. When she decides to do something a little more exciting, it’s usually spending time with roommates, friends or her family. Lauren enjoys hiking, playing soccer, thrift shopping (for clothing and home decor), and taking trips to “ma-and-pa” restaurants around Oregon. After her internship ends, she is planning to take a trip to Virginia to see her boyfriend of 5 years. He joined the Navy last year and is now stationed in Little Creek, VA, but is able to visit home every 6 months for about 2 weeks at a time… she can’t wait to see him!

Lauren hopes to gain skills from this internship that enrich her capabilities in the apparel industry. Fit has been one of the more challenging subjects for her in school, so she is excited to use an interactive visual tool to help her understand the mechanics of a garment and also create her “Vision to Reality” project this summer. Lauren first majored in apparel because she likes clothing, but couldn’t necessarily find exactly what she wanted in the stores, so she thought it would be better if she could alter or make make her own clothing. With everything she has learned and hopes to learn in the future, Lauren wants to own her own line of eco-friendly clothing with a sustainable business/production model.

Braden Yokota
Oregon State University, Apparel Design 
Braden Yokota is originally from Portland, Oregon and joined Browzwear part-time in March, 2018.. In the Fall, he will be a Senior studying Apparel Design with a minor in business.

When Braden first started university, he planned on becoming a Mechanical Engineer because he enjoyed playing with any new technology and unique software that he could find. He most enjoyed the process of understanding how machines and technology worked. After one term, he was not enjoying the classes as much as he thought he should, so he searched for a different major that would better fit his interests…and he found Apparel Design. Braden’s interest in Apparel came from the latter half of his middle school years when he lived in Germany, a few steps from a large H&M shop. Braden really enjoys the Apparel Design program and has not regretted the switch, but he does still miss tinkering with technology, and he sees Browzwear as a bridge between his two main interests.

Braden loves working with all of the new technology that he is exposed to through Browzwear. Learning the ins and outs of the software, and tinkering with the Fabric Analyzer and Vizoo imaging box have been a lot of fun for him.

On the evening of May 30, more than 300 guests attended our “Inspiring the Digital Revolution” event at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC. The hall was filled with amazing energy and ideas as attendees had the opportunity to mingle. We were pleased to welcome some of our ecosystem partners who were able to share their products and tools with everyone in attendance. These partners include Vizoo, Fit3D, Metail, Jeanologia, swatchbook, BeProduct and Kalypso.

Throughout the event, attendees also had the opportunity to hear from our special guest speakers. First, we heard from Shaul Cohen, Executive Vice President at Jordache, who shared that 3D is the future of apparel industry and tips for successful 3D integration. Lotta Jurica, Design Director at Adidas, took the stage and brought physical samples of garments she designed in 3D. We were grateful that she showed her design process from sketching and concepting to viewing the garments in 3D. Ada Suneson, VP of Technical Services at PVH, discussed how they are using the software to place graphics, change colorways, and apply patterns. She went on to explain that the 3D garments they create are then used tin virtual showcasing rooms for retail purposes. We also heard from Margarita Pasakarnis, 3D Manager at VF Jeanswear, who showed how she is using 3D to evaluate fit and make design changes. She spoke specifically about using Lotta to design lines on the back pockets of jeans.

After the presentations, attendees enjoyed the Q&A portion of the event where they were able to have personal conversations with the speakers.

Thank you to everyone who came. We enjoyed hosting you and look forward to seeing you again soon. Check out more of our pictures from the event here. And if you have a moment, we would appreciate your feedback on your experience. We’ve created a short survey to help us make improvements for future events. Please click here to respond.

To be added to our mailing list to receive notifications about upcoming events, please send an email to Hannah at hannah@browzwear-global.com