Sporty Innovation - Giulia Filipputti x Marcelo Burlon

Hi everybody! For the category "Digital Fashion" of this edition of The Rookies Awards, I'd like to present you a personal project I made during my CG Master semester at Skyup Academy.
Here I tried to reproduce one of the amazing pieces by Marcelo Burlon, belonging to the 2019 Spring-Summer collection.

1. Main reference

The following picture was the main reference for my work. Among many other outfits, I chose this one as it has a great cyber-/techweary vibes to it, while still being wearable on a daily basis. Moreover, I think the t-shirt, shirt and gloves layering adds a really great touch to it all.

2. Collecting my thoughts (and references!)

My creative process begins always the same way, regardless of the subject: a good PureRef with any reference I could need at any step of the development. Here I divided the images I gathered into three main groups: outfits from the same runaway, to grasp the mood of the whole collection and to see which fabrics, colours and shapes were used the most; the sewing patterns that helped me crafting the outfit I chose; last but not least, I collected some fabric references for the advanced stage of texturing.

3. Let's hop on Marvelous Designer

The first step on Marvelous Designer was to define the three main garments my outfit was made of. In this stage I purposefully left the small details (eg. buttons, zips, patches) behind to concentrate on the main shapes better. 

I tried to keep my patterns simple and clean, until I got the model right.

As I was satisfied with the plain garments, I started to add some detailing, such as the major green patches on the trousers, and buttons and the white label on the shirt.

To finalize the modeling stage, I took care of the last bits and bobs: I assigned the corresponding layer to every piece of fabric allowing every garment to sits nicely while avoiding conflict with the overlying and underlying parts. After that, I made the collar rigid and added the final touches to the pants, i.e. the black pockets, laces and the front zipper.

And here it is the final pattern:

4. Next stop: Maya!

Before having fun with texturing, I hopped on to Maya mainly to pose the avatar, retopologize my outfit and to lay my UVs out. I decided to go for a faster posing process by using Mixamo rigs and pre-made poses, and I went for a dynamic dance-y one as this outfit looked like straight out of the film "Step Up" to me. I prepared a transition from A-Pose to the chosen pose, as this was necessary to create the alembic cache to simulate the garments back in Maya.

Once I was done with the simulation and I was satisfied with how the outfit looked in the final pose, I started retopologizing. I decided to retopologize the posed model because I wanted to avoid using the "Wrap" function in Maya, which was unnecessary as I just wanted to do some static renders.

5. Texturing in Substance Painter

Thanks to the fabric references I gathered at the beginning, I went into the texturing phase being already sure of the feel I wanted to give to my outfit. This sporty look required some technical fabric, which I mainly distributed on the trousers and long-sleeved t-shirt, while the overlayed shirt is made of cotton. The gloves are composed of two parts: on the back of the and around the wrist we find a more rigid and lucid part, kind of plasticky; the main part is made of a warmer and thicker fabric. 

A bit more attention was given to the white labels, which required a bit more research. I wasn't able to find a clear picture of them, but with a high-resolution version of my main reference I tried to reconstruct the pattern and I reproduced it on Photoshop, making a custom texture that I then applied on Substance Painter. Same goes for the "Confidencial" detail on the pants.

In the following turntable you can see the beauty render and how I worked every map:

6. Finally rendering! Lighting and setting the scene

Although this is just the last part of this project, setting the scene and lighting correctly helps bringing the outfit to life. I lighted the scene from different angles to create some interesting contrasts, and completed the look with a rim light, which highlighted the clothes and gave more depth to the whole scene. You can see how the different lights contributed to the final result down here:

SPECIAL- Some more renders!

To end this entry, I want to leave you with some cool sliders. I did a couple of renders from different angles, and I thought it could be interesting to see them compared to their clay versions. Enjoy!