Two weeks ago, we welcomed Utrecht-based fashion collective Studio PMS in our studio. Puck, Merle and Suzanne (PMS) are continuously looking for innovative and sustainable ways to communicate fashion. With their special and colorful clothing collections, they want to create a fashion industry that is less hierarchical, conservative and passive to its audience. We both wanted to see how volumetric video handles different materials, colors and movements of these special outfits and can contribute to their mission.
THE POWERFUL MESSAGE OF STUDIO PMS
The story behind Studio PMS is just as powerful. PMS is also known as the pre-menstrual syndrome, which is in line with their design philosophy and concepts. According to STUDIO PMS the pre-menstrual syndrome is quite unpredictable, which gives them freedom to use every medium they think is suitable for their work. And of course, it slightly adds a humoristic twist in this technical world which is mainly dominated by men.
Because of their special design philosophy, innovative collaborations were created to their concept in which 3D modelling, virtual reality, animations and augmented reality can play a big part of their clothing collections. Therefore, freedom and interdisciplinarity are central values to these fashion creators. Now, volumetric video capturing is added to their list!
A VOLUMETRIC TESTSHOOT
In the visuals below you can clearly see what type of materials were filmed. A semi transparant lace, knitted fabric, leather, and more.
The semi transparant lace is a fabric that can be difficult to capture because it’s delicate and semitransparent, it got captured way better than we expected.
The blue knitted pants were designed by the fashion collection: ODE AAN OMA (a tribute to all grandmothers). Nowadays there is a fashion gap between the younger and older generation. Craftsmanship, knowledge and stories from the older generation are a great source of inspiration which ODE AAN OMA appreciates and want to show in their costumes.
In this shot we used a veil, moving it away from the face to reveal the person behind it. It’s has been captured without issues and gives a great effect of the person's face lightly showing through from behind it.
The amount of detail we can capture can be seen in this African dress in honour of International Women's Day. All the drawings and text messages are displayed in great detail. The movement of the dress is even better because you can really see how the fabric moves, how thick it is, and by turning around the graphic on the fabric is displayed even better.
The output of these outfits was great and because of that we made our own ‘metallic’ version of the African dress which was approved by Studio PMS for us to share.
We used the standard shader in Unity and changed the metallic and smoothness values. By adding a black background, low ambient lightning and some additional point lights, we achieved the shiny and metallic effect on the African dress.
And thanks to the recent 3.5 update of the Holosys system, we used some dramatic lighting in these captures. The postfilter has been improved which makes the mesh a lot calmer. When adding a spotlight on the dress you can showcase the graphics on it, and give the whole setting a more dramatic feel.
Credits photogrammetry:
3D-model was used from Azad Balabanian by Sketchfab