See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Sapeet, the Japanese fashion-tech startup spun of from the University of Tokyo, recently announced the launch of an online virtual try-on service for online shoppers called 3D Sapeet EC tool. This service has been introduced on the VAYoreLA basketball clothing e-commerce site.

Unlike typical virtual try-on services superimposing clothes images over wearer images, Sapeet EC tool prepares customer’s 3D avatar modelled after data on their body type and 3D clothes in actual size acquired from CAD data, and displays the try-on image created through physical simulation.

With this method, customers can finely check the clothes’ size, length, or silhouette online – hardly imaginable from image compositions. The service also supports various dressing styles such as tuck-in of shirts, as well as expression of wearing pressures (tightness) which he /she will feel while actually wearing it. In addition, the firm aims to support specific posing / motion or custom-made clothing in the future.

Try-on on cloud

This system was developed by Sapeet CEO Eiji Tsukiyama. He applied his knowledge about hydrodynamics that he learned through studies in the University of Tokyo into fashion. Some readers may have seen the behavior of Tsunami expressed by hydrodynamic images in news programs, for example.

Tsukiyama had been involved in research of clothing simulation, then he hit on the idea of more real online try-on and decided to take on this product. This field is placed in so-called 3DCG tech, led by top players such as Disney, CAD software developer Autodesk, or graphic chip manufacturer Nvidia having the cutting-edge technologies and information.

However, some of readers familiar with internet may not regard it as something new. In Second Life provided by Linden Lab, users were able to create their own online avatars whose outfits can easily be changed. Similar metaverse products had appeared one after another. In addition, MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) games also realized the same concepts with them.

So, what is the potentiality for Sapeet?

Remember that Second Life users had to download the viewer prior to playing. The graphic processing capacity was necessary for local PC capable of detailed 3DCG rendering. In contrast, all services of Sapeet are provided via general web browser and the processing almost completes within cloud.

According to Tsukiyama, this system succeeded in reduction of the processing amount by focusing on the try-on situation, rather than applying 3DCG processing which are used in movies or games directly to cloud.

In short, this try-on service works in multi-device environment including smartphone, unrestricted by the browsing device or environment.

In the future, every kind of social media will certainly evolve into what closely copies information about our daily lives. It can be clearly seen in the trend of recent conferences for developers that Facebook invested 5% of its whole human resources into the AR (Augmented Reality) or VR (Virtual Reality) development and have been gradually realizing metaverses in “really practical” quality as reported in the past article as the movement of web 3.0.

Therefore, Sapeet’s technology may become one of the essential ones needed in the forthcoming online life. Unfortunately, the author is not familiar with this field well and cannot compare it with other services / technologies, but found it being operated easily even in smartphone in demo use.

Tsukiyama told us that the in-between communication environment influences on the operation more significantly rather than the try-on processing, but it appears a very interesting service for me as one of the people who dreamed a virtual life in metaverse.

Co-authored by Takeshi Hirano and Sekiko Suzuki
Translated by Taijiro Takeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy and Masaru Ikeda