Baking AO in digital fashion models

Digital fashion software such as Marvelous Designer or CLO3D is the best tool for creating hyper-realistic 3D clothing. However, adding Ambient Occlusion to these models can be a complex task. The DGG team has found a solution to add AO to these models, a standard for real-time models nowadays.

During our last Model of the Month, we carried out a standard workflow for this type of post: we prepared the model for optimization. In this case, we wanted our final model to have Ambient Occlusion, so we baked this texture into the base model. And that’s where the challenge started.

The Ambient Occlusion map contains black and white information and helps to create the illusion of shadows in 3D models. Models with Ambient Occlusion have more depth and more realism. This map is a standard for real-time 3D.

However, when baking AO on this CLO3D model, large black spots appeared all over the suit. The cause was that this type of 3D model often includes two overlapping topology layers that simulate two layers of fabric. During the animation, these two layers overlap. This is not noticeable in the original model, but the Ambient Occlusion of the inner layer of the model is completely black, which is annoying visually.

The only solution we found to this problem was to create a new single-layer topology. But how could we do this automatically? Well, this is where we came up with the idea of using RapidPipeline’s Remeshing functionality. With this method of polygon reduction, instead of decimating the original topology, a new topology is created based on the original silhouette of the model. This way, we got a final topology with a single layer of polygons and thus, no overlapping.

Original	Output

If you want to know more about how we optimized this digital fashion model and reduced its size, take a look at our Model of the Month. There you can also find a 3D View of the final model.