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Epic Games Unreal Engine is one of the most popular software frameworks in the gaming industry, the development tool of choice for over 7.5 million licensed developers. And after seeing the expanded usage for making movie sets and car design, Unreal Engine has taken on another life in 2021: as a tool for fashion designers to build and showcase their work, both inside and outside the game world.
In addition to popular titles like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and Valorant, Unreal Engine is the software behind Fortnite, Epic’s wildly popular battle royale title. Since its release in 2017, Fortnite has evolved from a video game into a full-fledged metaverse platform and in keeping with this change, the non-gaming brand is enthusiastically partnering with Epic Games to reach a younger consumer. Many of these partnerships involve translating the brand’s physical product into the world of Fortnite, and thus the Unreal Engine.
Last month, luxury fashion brand Balenciaga partnered with Epic to remake some of its designs as Fortnite skins (and released a line of Fortnite-branded outfits in the physical world). Everything is built with the Unreal Engine with extremely high fidelity, says Epic Games head of brand solutions and advertiser Raffaella Camera. Even the model itself we made in part with MetaHuman Tools, and we actually started by scanning the original model that Balenciaga was using.
As consumers become more and more used to this type of virtual activation, Epic Games is far from the only endemic company to venture into the world of virtual fashion.
In August, esports organization Team Liquid dressed digital models in Unreal Engine outfits to launch LQD, the team’s limited edition clothing line. How can we inject storytelling into everything we do, and what are the latest and greatest ways to do that? said Team Liquid’s creative director of apparel and commerce, Frank van Rooijen. In this case, we wanted to create this post-apocalyptic world, and we wanted to maintain a subtle link to the game, but without having to build the whole game. So that’s how the Unreal Engine came about.
To ensure that his first steps into Unreal Engine mode went smoothly, Team Liquid hired freelance environmental artist Emiel Sleegers. The rest is all done in-house we have a fantastic in-house 3D animation team, said van Rooijen, adding that the company plans to hire more designers to bring the entire internal process to Unreal Engine projects in the future.
Sleegers, who previously worked for Ubisoft and owns game asset design training company FastTrack Tutorials, emphasizes the use of the Unreal Engine to modulate shooting and video elements that would be difficult to adjust after production. It was like, Oh, we want to change the lighting. Instantly, the lighting was complete,” Sleegers said. “While if you’re going to do it in real life it won’t work that way, you have to have a director on set.”
Environmental artists also point out the benefits of using the Unreal Engine for this kind of non-gaming project, compared to other popular game engines like Unity. In general, Unity is even more game-focused, meaning that, in terms of quality, you can sometimes struggle to really achieve that hyper-realistic quality, Sleegers said. And of course, if you want, you can get full movie quality, in which case you’ll use a program like Maya, or 3ds Max or Blender.
Indeed, while Unreal Engine forms the cornerstone of virtual environments such as Team Liquid’s post-apocalyptic LQD room, the organization’s animators also use programs like Blender, ZBrush and Substance Painter to texture and place final details on clothing, according to van Rooijen.
The use of the Unreal Engine to design and model clothes started in the game world, but has since escaped its limitations. In April 2021, fashion designer Gary James McQueen used game development software to compose runway show featuring virtual clothes sold exclusively on digital fashion platforms DressX.
While McQueens’ virtual outfits are not recreated in the physical world, his Unreal Engine fashion show hints at the potential use of software to design real clothes, just as BMW uses them to car design. After all, fashion companies have adopted virtual model to expedite the production process. It was certain to do so, said van Rooijen. It may be combined with other software, such as CLO 3D, software specifically designed for fashion and apparel designers.
And whether van Rooijen and his contemporaries actually use the Unreal Engine to design clothes for physical use, the creative director is confident that Team Liquid will soon be selling the first digital outfits that look like McQueens.
“Actually there are certain collaborations that are also being done at the moment, which I can’t talk about unfortunately, where we are doing that,” said van Rooijen. We will make our clothes wearable in games that are 100% on the map.
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