Digital Fashion with Unreal Engine 5 - Fashion Show Concept

So, here we are. After a meeting with a clothing brand back in January asking me to create a few pieces of digital clothing, I started playing with the idea of Digital Fashion inside of Unreal Engine. As both a way to prove that I could do the job to clients, as well as a personal test to see how realistic I could get, I started to imagine a Digital Fashion Show.

The first part about any digital fashion show, I thought, is the clothing. I scoured the internet for inspiration and ended up creating 13 garments of clothing within Marvelous Designer, some more inspired by things I saw on the internet, and some more improvised. But the pieces of clothing would of course have to move to be able to sell themselves within a 3D environment. So I designed a little pipeline for myself that allowed me to use mixamo animations and generate geometry caches for animations both meant for a mannequin basemesh and retargeted to metahumans. I do not reccommend a process that requires so many naming conventions, folders and files, but we got there.

Then of course, comes the catwalk design. Of course, with my digital fashion show, I wanted to touch on a few different styles as this was meant to convince people of the idea, and not just tailored to one brand. I played with realistic environments and fully abstract environments, combining stage design and 3D design and using dynamic DMX controlled lighting to give some parts of the show a bit more 'panache'. I ended up creating 10 catwalks as seen in the final show.

Then came the creation of the show itself, a process that I really underestimated. I found it really hard to write a script for a fashion show. It's hard to find a narrative when connecting so many different styles, and I ended up just winging it. And that's the beauty of using Unreal Engine to me. You can just wing it. I started out with my ideas catwalk by catwalk, step by step, often connecting them through 3D LED walls and grouping the catwalks by design.

The end result is something I'm really happy with and proud of, even though I still see a lot of things that could be improved. But after 3 months of work after my freelance working hours, I decided it was finally time to finish this up, and make place for new creative endeavours.

I hope you like this concept as much as I do. Feel free to share feedback, share the video in general, and if you're connected to a clothing brand: hit me up.

Best,
Sam x