Working with the large names in gaming is always a terrific experience. But often overlooked by players, there’s an equal experience to be found collaborating with non-gaming companies. Even outside of additional art and VFX services, delivering our talents to assist in almost any industry is a supremely rewarding and challenging experience.
This isn’t the first time we’ve dabbled with fashion and clothing. But this is the first time we got to work alongside the stellar Tommy Hilfiger brand.
Art Work for Tommy Hilfiger
We were contracted to deliver ten outfits for the Ready Player Me platform. These outfits were designed for a metaverse integration, allowing players and users to take their real-world fashion into the digital space.
Technically, we worked with high poly models which needed to be adjusted and optimised for the platform. Our focus was on ensuring these models were as optimised as possible with no artefacts or issues. This was to guarantee the best possible texture baking which would come later.
From start to finish, we fixed and optimised the high poly models, conducted UV mapping, and baked the client’s textures onto the now-optimised models. The main challenge in this process was ensuring the colours would be perfect. The lighting on the platform was quite unique and often made the finished models’ colours look different. This was a process of back and forth with the client, tweaking and adjusting, until we were both satisfied. There was little to do at this stage aside from gauging the colour by eye and using trial and error. Some tasks just require that manual and almost analogue input!
With that done, the models were finished and matched the original references we were given. We’re delighted to say they looked exactly as the client wanted.
For this process, we used ZBrush for any modeling issues. Blender for any retopology and UVs, textures were baked in Marmoset, and finally we adjusted colours directly within the texture maps.
Working With Non-Gaming Brands
We’ve worked with clients before who might not have had a lot of 3D experience. We are specialists in the field of 3D art and animation, so it isn’t unusual for a client to depend on our expertise.
While not unfamiliar with the process, they were a little unsure of the transition from model to final 3D render. This offered its own unique challenges, one which the Tommy Hilfiger team handled quite well as we moved through the project. Our team did their best to offer advice for the models’ posing and stances. For those unfamiliar with 3D applications, some poses don’t often translate well into 3D. But the communication between our teams helped to solve that issue and we adjusted as the project went. As always, communication is one of the absolute key elements of good collaboration. And that clear communication can help any of our potential clients in preparing for art outsourcing services.
Delivering 3D Work to Tommy Hilfiger
Ultimately, the client was happy to let our team move forward with the process. They were happy to just look at the final results we delivered. And, in the end, there were only two or three outfits that needed tweaking in the delivery stages.
They were very pleased with our quick turnarounds and the final cut we provided. It was at this stage that we had a lot more discussion and back-and-forth with the client about the outfits, their colouring, and final execution.
Overall, it was a fantastic project to be included in. Working with a brand like Tommy Hilfiger is such a huge opportunity and we were delighted to collaborate with their team. And we’re delighted to say that, as of our last checking, that the outfits we created were sold out on the app’s marketplace. Our team is happy to call that a successful delivery!
If you’d like some industry-leading 3D art and assets delivered into your project, we’d love to hear from you. To see more of our work, you can visit our website. There, you can see some of our past clients and previous projects. Ringtail Studios is part of the Magic Media group, where we have the combined bandwidth to tackle any project, at any size, in house. Instead of using multiple studios, you can come to your one stop shop, and we can offer a range of services to ensure your project is a success.
