“Designtex had been searching for visualization solutions and lucky for us, colormass reached out at just the right time. Providing a holistic approach that seemed almost too good to be true, the team proved themselves to be the right partner – providing excellent technical capabilities in material capture, 3D rendering and visualization. Not only did their skillset and output exceed expectations but working with colormass has been a pleasure - the team is engaged, collaborative and patient, always willing to translate highly technical aspects of the process, brainstorm future possibilities and suggest solutions.”
Kendall Todd
Senior Manager, Product Launch
Designtex is the leading company in the design and manufacturing of applied materials for the built environment. A recognized innovator, they are known for their rigorous and dedicated approach to research and development of textiles and wallcoverings with reduced environmental impact.
When we first got in contact, Designtex was in the middle of planning their (3D) digital strategy for the years to come. Just as careful they are with researching and developing their textiles the same care and precision was applied when looking for a new partner for their digital needs.
It was clear from the beginning that Designtex was quite experienced with 3D companies and technologies. Prior to our conversations, Designtex explored competing scanning services (e.g. XRite, Vizoo) but was searching for a solution that overcame issues they faced with other technologies, primarily with large scale patterns and capturing sophisticated fabric characteristics. After the first conversation we agreed to proceed with a test project which included 12 fabrics and approximately 50 images.
Designtex quickly realized that the scanning quality plays a very important role in the success of the digitization projects. A good visualization requires multiple layers of data that create the physical properties of the material which cannot be achieved with a regular scanner that produces a simple image of the fabric. Since capturing these properties is quite a complex task, the scanning services/technologies come in all shapes and sizes – from scanning services that take a simple photograph of the fabric and then apply some basic algorithms to mimic physical properties to our hardware, that occupies a complete 40 square meter room and takes approximately 1000 measurements of each fabric to generate the correct final results.
During the test project, Designtex compared multiple services by capturing the same materials to produce the same images with different scanning technologies. In the end, colormass’s technology outperformed capturing of physical properties and we feel honored that we were selected as CGI partner.
Since our first test project, Designtex has become one of our most innovative clients, leading the way for adopting the newest services colormass launches. During the first phase of our cooperation colormass supported Designtex with imagery for their new product launch campaigns: https://www.designtexdrop.com/ and then our cooperation grew out to support Designtex with an even more ambitious goal: digitizing a huge backlog of fabrics (4.000+). As a part of this ongoing project we supply both images in an environment and flat images of the fabrics.
Additionally, a radically new way of displaying products is in the works already: an interactive 3D viewer (configurator) where Designtex customers will be able to select and customize materials on various furniture and export the rendering asset in its preferred format. Once launched, Designtex will be one of the first companies in the textile industry to offer its clients a convenient way to view, explore and export materials in real-time. We are extremely lucky to be able to accompany Designtex on this journey, as we think it's where the future of the textile industry is when it comes to digital technologies. Be on the lookout for the new developments here: designtex.com