LAS VEGAS, January 25, 2018 – EFI Optitex, the world’s leading provider of integrated 2D & 3D CAD/CAM apparel platform technology, has launched the Optitex 3D Design Illustrator, a plug-in tool allowing designers the freedom to validate and customize 3D garments in Adobe® Illustrator®. The new 3D Design Illustrator was announced this week at 19^th annual EFI Connect users’ conference in Las Vegas.

Through working in the native design environment on a PC or a Mac, designers can visualize 3D garments, with accurate proportion and scaling, and customize the garment’s fabric, texture, print patterns and graphic placement without waiting for a printed sample.

The plug-in works by importing 2D and 3D pattern files or building block libraries into Adobe Illustrator and activating a window with a 3D representation of the pattern side-by-side. Users can export the final file as a picture or 3D file, validate designs among teams, and send directly for digital or sublimation printing.

“3D adoption is already a necessity for nearly every successful fashion company, and in that space, it is important to onboard all teams from design to production,” said Guy Alroy, head of Textile product management, EFI Productivity Software. “Now, entire teams can enable 3D capabilities to streamline the whole design to print workflows, letting them focus on creativity, reduce physical prototypes, and get to market faster than before.”

A video of the new plug-in software is available here.

EFI fuels success
EFI develops breakthrough technologies connecting the online world to the physical one, providing the industry’s largest portfolios for the textiles, signage, packaging, ceramic tiles, personalised documents and corrugated segments. EFI Optitex software is the world’s leading provider of an integrated 2D/3D platform that enables users to quickly create true-to-life 3D digital garments, empowering apparel and soft goods companies to revolutionise the way they develop, produce, and market their products. Visit www.efi.com/optitex for more information.

MILAN, October 2, 2017 – EFI™ Optitex, a world-leading provider of an integrated 2D & 3D CAD/CAM software platform for the apparel and textile industries, is pleased to announce a new strategic partnership with Tessilform, the Tuscany-based company owner of the famous brand, Patrizia Pepe.

The partnership includes the acquisition of a large configuration of 2D and 3D EFI Optitex licenses by Patrizia Pepe, which will initially drive the digital transformation of its apparel department before extending the solutions to its bags department.

As 3D is seen as a key success factor to face the new challenges of the fashion market, Patrizia Pepe chose EFI Optitex after a thorough evaluation of what the market had to offer. “EFI Optitex is a trusted partner and the well-established leader offering a cutting-edge technology and the greatest knowledge regarding best practices for adopting 2D and 3D integrated solutions,” said Sebastiano Lombardo, Patrizia Pepe’s general manager.

“By incorporating EFI Optitex digital solutions into the company design and production workflows, we expect to decrease our time to market by 30%, while better streamlining our internal processes and significantly reducing our costs,” added Lombardo. “Moreover, we expect to launch high-quality offerings more frequently in order to meet our clients’ needs.”

Asaf Landau, EFI Optitex’s vice president and general manager, stated that the partnership with Tessilform is “very meaningful as Patrizia Pepe is another leading brand leveraging 3D to gain competitive advantage via digital transformation. We see the wave of 3D adoption accelerating with leaders which are leading the industry evolution.”

EFI Optitex’s portfolio includes 8,000 apparel and fashion companies, including famous brands in Italy and the world.

EFI fuels success

EFI develops breakthrough technologies connecting the online world to the physical one, providing one of the industry’s largest portfolios for the textiles, signage, packaging, ceramic tiles, personalized documents and corrugated segments. EFI Optitex software is one of the world’s leading providers of integrated 2D/3D platforms that enable users to quickly create true-to-life 3D digital garments, empowering apparel and soft goods companies to revolutionize the way they develop, produce, and market their products. Visit www.efi.com/optitex for more information.

In the few years since Target has started using 3-D virtual prototyping provider Optitex, product development has sped up by about two weeks and sampling has been reduced by roughly 65 percent.

With stats like that, it’s hard to believe that Alexis Kantor, director of apparel and accessories product development, and Sandra Gagnon, senior group manager of NIT and 3-D virtual product development, ever struggled to sway the squad behind America’s second-largest retailer to move to the virtual platform.

The biggest hurdle, not surprisingly, was the design team.

“We had expectations that design was going to be our most innovative partner. They were going to jump in and we were going to all live in this happy 3-D virtual technology land—that land did not come about so quickly,” Kantor laughed, describing Target’s not-so-easy transition to 3-D development to attendees at the Product Innovation

Apparel conference in New York on Tuesday. “What were they worried about? Very quickly we understood that our teams thought that we were going to change the way they had to think and create, but really we just asked them to use a different medium.”

Plus, as Gagnon pointed out, it’s hard to convince skeptics when the virtual images you’re presenting to them are not yet up to scratch.

Kantor agreed: “We needed to build credibility and trust very quickly. Fashion is emotional: you want to touch, you want to feel, it’s tactile. It was hard to convince people you could make really good decisions from seeing a virtual sample so we had to instill trust in them.”

“But as the technology has improved—and as we have improved—the images have just gotten better and better,” Gagnon said, adding, “We’ve really relied on a whole suite of software to do this and it’s really allowed us to create mannequins where designers can look at the garment and feel comfortable.”

The real game changer was adding fabric-drape testers and better textures to the mix, as well as buttons and trims, which built up the believability for design teams. “The more you can add in texture and lighting really goes a long way,” she continued, noting, “If teams know that their fabrics are going through the physical testing, they’re being checked for stretch and bend and friction, and all these physical properties are being fed into the software that will give us conscience that when we see it on that avatar it’s going to look the way the real garment would look.”

Kantor added, “We really could win over trust by giving people more photo-realistic rendering.”

That included using virtual in-store mannequins which, as Gagnon explained, also offered Target’s merchants a perspective on what the product would look like months ahead of when they would see a physical sample.

As Kantor put it, “I think what’s cool about that is the win for the other parts of the company. Before they had to wait for our information coming out of our big meetings and now we can do things in real time right there and pass along the information. Initially when we thought speed we were thinking speed in product development but we’re seeing speed across the enterprise.”

Gagnon echoed this sentiment. “Teams have had to reset their cultural mind to it but they’re really starting to see how it can come together now. Once you have those 3-D garments created, virtually putting them into the floor plan, recoloring them, seeing how they look in your lighting, it really helps to make a decision,” she said.

As much as it’s improved the process, Kantor doesn’t think it will ever fully replace physical samples. “Although I wish it would, but we can iterate and do so many things upfront before we actually have to see that physical sample,” she said, adding, “We develop a lot of product at a potentially 3-1 ratio—sometimes higher, sometimes lower—and 3-D gives us an opportunity to really hone in on what is that real style that we want, how do we ask for the right stuff, not just continue to sample but iterate so much faster and get to that perfect sample quicker.”

“In women’s ready-to-wear it’s all about speed,” Gagnor agreed. “With this technology, we can take a blazer and mock up 20 pieces of art in five minutes if we need to.”

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IEEE, the world’s largest professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for humanity, announced the launch of a new IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA) Industry Connections (IC) program aimed at bringing together diverse stakeholders from across technology, retail, research and standards development to build thought leadership around 3D body processing technology standards. Initial participants include Body Labs; Browzwear; Fishman & Tobin (a division of Global Brands Group); Gerber Technology; Intel; Intervisual; Optitex; Size Stream; USC Center for Body Computing; USC Institute for Creative Technologies; Volumental; and Zappos.

“We are specifically integrating complex systems thinking and cutting edge research and innovation into this effort in order to help reduce technology and market silos, as well as to accelerate the creation of shared value in an open and collaborative environment,” said Luciano C. Oviedo, chair, IEEE-SA IC 3D Body Processing Activity; and strategy & product development, Intel.

“Intel is excited to work with the industry to support open standards development that will help make realistic body model visualization a norm for shopping. Enabling consumers to have a realistic visualization of clothing on themselves before making a purchase solves real pain points for people and helps retailers save costs over time. Platforms that deliver a high quality immersive shopping experience represents a major opportunity for the ecosystem at large,” said Sanjay Vora, vice president, client computing group, Intel.

“Today there is no uniform standard for shoe sizing that is actually being used by footwear companies around the world. As 3D scanning and measurements are becoming an integral tool for buying custom footwear and offering fitting recommendations, we look forward to playing a role in creating a new standard for the industry,” said Josef Grahn, vice president, technology, Volumental.

“Since we’ve lived through the challenges of building support for multiple OS’s and opening up our platform, we’re excited about the potential value that comes from standards that will help ensure interoperability and interconnectivity across the ecosystem,” added Avihay Feld, COO, Browzwear.

With continued advances being realized across the body processing pipeline such as from 3D scanning, modeling and visualization, it is becoming easier to construct detailed, highly accurate models of inanimate “On-the-Body” objects like clothing, as well as animate “Of-the-Body” objects, such as the human form. Used in concert, these technologies promise to elevate the virtual and in-store retail shopping experience to a new level of immersion by giving consumers a deeper sense for how garments will fit their individual body and personal sense of style through realistic and interactive visual representations. As such, standardization efforts around format types and classifications; quality specifications and metrics; test methods; communication, sharing and security protocols; and privacy guides are under consideration.

“The online shopping experience can be hindered by ordering the wrong size. We feel that immersive technologies, like what companies in this initiative are creating, can help to lessen that. Since we’re constantly evaluating different ways to improve our customer’s experience, immersive technologies that work well together will allow us to do this in new and exciting ways,” said Galen Hardy, senior director, clothing, Zappos.

Karsten H. Newbury, vice president and general manager, software, Gerber Technology, added, “In our experience with fashion design, we have seen the benefits of bringing players together from across the ecosystem to share perspective, learn from each other and collaborate to create shared value. An IEEE standards initiative around 3D body processing has the potential to achieve this and more across the immersive shopping value chain.”

Core members are in planning mode for a spectrum of research and innovation as well as standards scoping activities over 2016 in both virtual and face-to-face formats. A dedicated online forum for group discussion, networking, and documentation of work products will complement meetings.

“As a software provider in 3D virtual clothing, we are interested in pursuing standards in body processing technology to enable consistency and ensure quality during virtual clothing try-on sessions. Working with IEEE will promote interoperability of virtual clothing and virtual bodies from different sources, and allow Optitex, as well as the other stakeholders, to focus on innovation in their respective areas of expertise,” added Dr. Rony Goldenthal, CTO, Optitex.

Through IC activities, IEEE-SA facilitates like-minded organizations and individuals coming together quickly, effectively and economically to build consensus at strategic points in a technology’s lifecycle. IC activities have the unique opportunity to leverage IEEE resources in a customized format to produce a variety of shared results.

“The potential value for standards to address challenges such as quality metrics and protocols around human shape, pose and motion are very high. These standards could reduce fragmentation by enabling independent parties to consistently process sensor data, extract measurements or body geometry from the same relative locations, and easily integrate into broader platforms,” said Bill O’Farrell, co-founder and CEO, Body Labs.

“If we do the right standards in the right way, then it’s a win-win: consumers win with improved buying and wearing experiences and the ecosystem wins with improved supply chain efficiencies and product capabilities,” concluded George Borshukov, founder and CEO, Intervisual.

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