Digital Knit Single Jersey Tweed, Connect Store 2023
My growing digital knit library, Connect Store 2023
Digital textiles can be obtained from various sources. The first, most convenient instance is the 3D garment software’s native textile library. Depending on the software further immediate destinations are Connect (by CLO3D) and Substance by Adobe (integrated in CLO3D). Many other sources from various stakeholders are being added continuously as the demand continues to rise. Examples of stakeholders are 3D garment software companies, fabric manufacturers and virtual fashion houses.
A 3D textile asset ambassador is SwatchOn, a wholesale fabric sourcing platform providing a digital twin of the fabrics they offer. Following their lead, an increasing number of fabric sellers are offering digital textile twins, for example sustainable, UK-based Offset Warehouse. Sharewear-embracing companies offer free fabric or garment assets, for example Atacac or digital-only fashion house The Fabricant.
Despite the wide range of digital textiles available in general, examining the availability of digital knits showed a lack of basic knit stitch patterns, such as purl knit, 3x3 rib, 2x1 rib and none had textures on the backside. Warp knitted textiles were not labelled correctly and neither were jacquards, pointelles and arran designs. On Substance, for instance, a single jersey was named wool in the asset description, interchanging construction with composition. Overall on Substance, a methodical classification system is missing. This suggests that many fabrics were created by people without textile knowledge such as game and metaworld designers who need the materials for virtual representation purposes only. CLO Connect on the other hand, has a hierarchy tree connected to each fabric asset, but the program is not intended to be used by knitwear designers and therefore does not offer adequate parameters to accommodate knitted textiles.
Nevertheless, I have created a digital knit library on CLO connect that I intend to extend as I go, designing knitwear in Stoll’s CreateDesign software.
