James Cameron’s movie Avatar brought New Yorker Sebastian Marino to New Zealand two years ago but now his focus has turned to his own invention. Having worked in the digital effects business for film and television in the United States for 12 years, he moved to New Zealand to be a computer graphics supervisor at Weta Digital, creating digital water effects for Avatar.
Sebastian has since left Weta Digital to concentrate fulltime on his own project, a software tool he’s invented for the fashion industry that can be applied to pattern making and design.
It’s a comprehensive design and engineering tool that poses as an artist’s sketchbook. Put simply, it can take a 2D pattern and create a physics-based virtual 3D prototype, and render it photo-realistically.
Users can immediately see their clothing designs draped on a mannequin in 3D, and then use that information to refine the pattern in 2D. “If the fabric looks saggy, you can see that and adjust it. It allows you to work in 2D and 3D simultaneously,” says Sebastian.
To get the project off the ground he has established Wellington-based company 77 Pieces with Joseph Teran, a world-leading maths professor from the University of California in Los Angeles.
And 77 Pieces has been quickly gathering momentum. Though the technology is still in its infancy – a prototype is due to be released later this year – 77 Pieces now has five staff, offices in Wellington and Auckland and investors on board.
And fashion designers the world over have already got wind of Sebastian’s invention, one that will revolutionise the way fashion is designed and produced.
“We’ve already met with some well-known designers on various occasions. It’s a very exciting project and we can’t wait to release the technology,” says Sebastian. “Currently, pattern-making systems are pretty old tech. What we are trying to do is apply a bunch of contemporary technologies to the tool to make it an arts and design tool with a fun interface.”
“We simply want to help fashion designers do amazing work, faster. Our ideology is to be the magician’s assistant, and our goal is to make a revolutionary tool for designers that’s simple and easy to use.”
While the fashion industry is the initial target, the software has innumerable applications across other industries as well, including aerospace, energy, film production, medicine and architecture.
“There’s really nothing like it, there’s no CAD tools, no design tools for flexible materials, whether you’re a fashion designer or an aerospace engineer, you can’t buy anything off the shelf.”
Creating computer-generated cloth for Jedi cloaks sparked Sebastian’s invention - before moving to Wellington Sebastian worked for Industrial Light and Magic, the digital arm of Lucas Film in Los Angeles.
There he won an Academy Science and Technology Award in 2002, in recognition of his contribution to the development of Industrial Light and Magic’s Dynamics System - a ground-breaking tool for creating computer-generated cloth, skin, hair and musculo-skeletal structures. The Dynamics System was used for Jedi robes for Stars Wars Episode II, quidditch clothing for Harry Potter and clothing for “the gaggle of pirates” in Pirates of the Caribbean.
Now concentrating on his latest project in Wellington, Sebastian says it really doesn’t matter physically where 77 Pieces is located because everything is virtual.
“Thanks to technology, we’re very open to working with anyone anywhere. We’ve got a guy based in Melbourne, Joseph is in LA so we’re on Skype constantly, we have a satellite office in Auckland and we’re using collaboration tools like BaseCamp to keep everything Cloud-based."
“It’s all very enabling, it means we can execute from anywhere, but in saying that we are dedicated to 77 Pieces being a New Zealand technology company and we’ll work hard to develop the R&D organisation needed to sustain 77 Pieces here.”
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