Beginner’s Guide to Creating Realistic Digital Clothing

Beginner’s Guide to Creating Realistic Digital Clothing

CLO empowers 3D designers to craft realistic digital clothing for movies, games, metaverse, and beyond. Discover how CLO has become a gateway to diverse fashion and design opportunities for both veterans and newcomers alike.

Ever wondered how 3D designers create lifelike digital clothing for movies, games, the metaverse, or as a digital twin to a real life garment? They’re using CLO, the leading fashion design software known for realistic fabric simulation. The gowns in Frozen, armor sets in Elden Ring, and collection in the new Lacoste Virtual Store were all created in CLO. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or new designer looking to break into the industry, learning CLO can open up many new worlds of fashion and design.


The best way to get started is with CLO’s new Beginner Learning Program on Udemy, a 5-part online series called Basic Apparel Training. Taught by CLO’s expert designers, this program will teach you everything you need to know to start create stunning virtual garments.

Included is a certificate of completion for each course and access to a special community chat with dedicated designer support. You can find the first course here - use special discount LEARNCLO for 35% off (valid until 8/21)!

What is CLO?

CLO is a powerful fashion design software with a wide array of tools and features that allow you to create stunning, realistic garments. It will allow you to realize your vision and help you through the entire design and production process. One of the standout features of CLO is its fabric simulation technology. This allows you to see exactly how a fabric would drape, how it would react to movement, and how it would look in different lighting.

CLO also supports a wide range of file formats, making it easy to integrate into your existing workflow. You can import and export files in various formats, including DXF, OBJ, STL, and more. With its intuitive interface, learning CLO is a breeze, even for those who are new to digital design.

Once your garment has come to life, CLO has tools to transform your digital model into a real prototype - seam allowance, notches, annotations and even the ability to grade your pattern for other sizes. You can create a mini-marker to calculate fabric consumption and then export that as a PDF to print the patterns from CLO to produce identical physical garments.

What’s included in CLO’s Basic Apparel Training Program?

This innovative program is crafted to empower you with realistic digital garment creation skills, developed by our professional CLO designers over many years. The program consists of 5 separate courses that cover all of the essential tools and concepts for creating garments in CLO.

Each course includes short video lectures, quizzes, and practice exercises with accompanying files. The practical exercises allow you to apply what you've learned, while the quizzes help reinforce your understanding. You will also get access to a special community forum where you can receive dedicated designer support and an official certificate of completion for each course.

A quick breakdown of the 5 courses below:

COURSE 1 - CORE MODULE INTRODUCTION

In this course, you will learn the core techniques required to create garments in CLO. Mastering these techniques will make sure you can understand the next 4 courses in this program as well as any future CLO courses. Although the lessons in this course focus on apparel design, the techniques can be applied to other categories, such as furniture and accessories.

COURSE 2 - FABRICS & MATERIALS

This course will teach you how to use fabrics in your garment designs. You’ll learn how to apply fabrics, make adjustments such as scaling and rotating textures, and enhance the realism of your virtual garments with graphics, topstitching, and puckering.

COURSE 3 - GARMENT MODIFICATION & PATTERN DESIGN

In this course, you will be introduced to a variety of tools that will enable you to modify an existing garment and design new pattern pieces from scratch.

COURSE 4 - CONSTRUCTION & DETAILS

Throughout this course, you will learn a range of techniques to enhance the construction and finishing of your garments. You will also learn how to incorporate details and layer multiple garments to create a complete look.

COURSE 5 - RENDERING & PRESENTATION

The final course of this program will teach you how to render and present your garments to produce a realistic-looking digital garment.

How Do I Sign Up?

Signing up is easy; all you need is a Udemy account, and you can find all of the courses here (use special discount LEARNCLO for 35% off - valid until 8/21). Once you've enrolled, you can start learning immediately. The course is self-paced, so you can learn at your own speed and on your own schedule.

Student Projects Using CLO

Here are a few incredible Rookie Awards 2023 entries that were created with CLO:

AVO

Created by: Simone James

School Name: Manchester Metropolitan University
Member Level: rookie
Description: AVO juxtaposes digital design with tactile human engineered ecosystems integrated into casual athleisure garments, reconnecting its virtual and IRL consumers with the outdoors.

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Humanesque

Created by: Nathan Batra

School Name: Savannah College of Art and Design
Member Level: contender
Description: Humanesque is about my past life studying medicine with my current life studying fashion design. I used CLO3D as a pattern making tool to make my first mockups and then my final garments.

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Undeniable

Created by: Michael Shin

School Name: Queensland University of Technology
Member Level: debut
Description: Hello, my name is Michael Shin, and I have recently ventured into the realm of 3D fashion. I would like to present my project, titled "Undeniable," which tells a tale about a mythical creature.

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WRAPPED/NFT fashion design

Created by: Rakee Chen

School Name: Savannah College of Art and Design
Member Level: contender
Description: I drew inspiration from landscape architects Christo and Jeanne-Claude, as well as the film Dune, to create a unique artistic vision that blends contemporary and medieval elements. Utilizing 3D software, I produced NFT artwork that embodies the concept of medieval futurism.

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Are you ready to elevate your design skills and step into the future of fashion? Enroll in CLO’s Udemy courses and start your journey towards becoming a digital design expert today.