Monthly Archives: August 2009

Fashion Research Institute Provides New Default Avatars to ScienceSim

Posted on August 29, 2009 by | Comments Off

jane-scisim

As part of Fashion Research Institute’s collaboration with Intel, we are providing our default avatars John and Jane to ScienceSim for the use of ScienceSim visitors.  New users who log-in to ScienceSim within ten days of making an account will automatically receive two folders, each containing one of these avatars.  The avatar folders will be given to them within 30 seconds of landing in Newton, the central landing point in ScienceSim.  A full corporate avatar look is provided in these folders, including hair, skin, shape, clothing, and even shoes.

Visitors can simply ‘drag and drop’ the avatar folder of their choice onto their default Ruthed representation.  This will allow our visitors to almost immediately change their look into either John or Jane.  The shape may be modified further, and additional avatar customization content is available in Newton.

‘Joahn’ and ‘Jane’ are provided to ScienceSim as part of the Fashion Research Institute’s collaboration with Intel Labs, and help extend Intel’s ScienceSim collaboration collaboration with Supercomputing ’09 for immersive scientific collaboration.

JOHN-scisim

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Posted in Avatar, avatar apparel, Content, design, fashion, Fashion Research Institute, Intel, OpenSim, science, ScienceSim, secondlife, Shengri La, Shenlei, Virtual World

Fashion Research Institute Joins IBM’s v-Business Consortium

Posted on August 28, 2009 by | 1 Comment

Fashion Research Institute is pleased to join IBM’s v-Business Consortium.

The Fashion Research Institute is at the fore-front of developing innovative design & merchandising solutions for the apparel industry.  We research and develop products and systems for the fashion industry that sweepingly address wasteful business and production practices.

FRI has developed a patent-pending design methodology and new technology infrastructure using virtual worlds as the user interface.  This infrastructure reduces related fashion industry production landfill wastes and by-products to up to 60% over traditional fashion production methods and cut time-to-market for products by as much as six weeks. This infrastructure is delivered both as an SaaS solution for small apparel design houses and as an enterprise installation for large design companies.

Our product design and development software provide innovative virtual merchandising solutions for apparel, which is the display for a related product, avatar customization content or “virtua“.  In addition to these offerings, we also provide related avatar customization content (virtua) and orientation solutions for new users. We use a proven design framework to develop avatar customization content, which can be delivered via fully-loaded OpenSim regions to OpenSim grids or through the Fashionable Grid™ federated asset server .  We have a well-defined licensing process with which all of our content creators must comply to ensure their content is original work.  This protects organizations licensing content through FRI against concerns about laundered content and copyright infringement.

We train designers to use this framework in our educational offerings provided on our OpenSim regions behind our firewall, using our textbook, Designing Dreams: The Art & Business of Avatar Apparel Design & Development, written especially for our courses.

Since 2008, we have provided more than 60,000 new users with orientation services in our entry portal in Second Life. We offer a fully developed orientation region which may be easily licensed and loaded into any OpenSim-based grid.  In addition to enabling new users to learn to use these immersive spaces, we also include avatar customization content including the default FRI avatars John and Jane.

FRI’s vision is to develop bio-renewable, sustainable, multi-channel production pipelines for the fashion industry, which will change the way the industry handles raw materials, processed materials, product design methodology, and product tracking technology.  FRI is an IBM business partner and research collaborator with Intel Labs.

FRI maintains a substantial virtual world presence, including twenty regions in the ScienceSim grid dedicated to education; a private development grid behind the FRI firewall dedicated to product design and development; an initial presence in IBM’s v-Business grid; and five islands in Second Life® dedicated to ongoing research in immersion and orientation of new users.  We have been a critical part of the OpenSimulator development pathway, both through providing performance testing and feedback and through our core developers on the OpenSim project.  And we even wrote the book: Shengri La Spirit: A Designer’s Perspective of the Making of OpenSim is now available on Amazon.com.

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Posted in apparel industry, Avatar, avatar apparel, Black Dress Technology, Blogroll, Community Gateway, Content, design, fashion, Fashion Research Institute, IBM, Intel, OpenSim, secondlife, Shengri La, Shenlei, Virtual World

Fashion Research Institute Announces Autumn 2009 Student Internships

Posted on August 26, 2009 by | Comments Off

interns

Virtual apparel is a burgeoning market.  In 2008, more than $2.6 billion dollars of virtual goods were sold in virtual worlds, games, and immersive spaces.  This figure is expected to double in 2009. Avatar apparel – clothing, accessories, and footwear worn by avatars – is a huge part of these sales.  Until now, there have been no programs specifically intended to help new designers become established in this area.

After more than 3 years of development, the Fashion Research Institute is pleased to announce 5 avatar apparel design internships to be conducted wholly in the immersive workspaces it maintains in OpenSim and Second Life.

The focus of the internship is to develop specific skills for virtual goods development, specifically apparel with a lesser focus on accessories and footwear.  The intent of the internship is to assist interns to develop private design practices where they can create and sell their virtual goods. Interns are provided with classroom space and creation space in FRI’s OpenSim regions, and store front space on the heavily trafficked Shengri La regions in Second Life.

These internships will begin October 5 and run until December 14.  Interns are expected to commit a minimum of 6-8 hours a week to the internship, with formal training sessions provided on Monday evenings from 6-9 pm ET.  Interns must commit to being present at these training sessions.  Instruction is provided only in English.

Requirements:

Interns must provide their own Internet access and computer hardware and software sufficient to allow them access to the Institute’s classroom and facilities in the immersive OpenSim and Second Life regions of Shengri La.  Interns must have experience with and access to Photoshop (not provided). Interns must have a Second Life avatar account (available free), and are solely responsible for any fees related to their Second Life account.   Interns must also have a Skype account (free) with access to it during training periods.

Interns who successfully complete the 12 week long program will receive a certificate of completion and may be eligible for admission into the Fashion Research Institute incubation program.

Applicants need not be currently enrolled in design school, but design experience and background is helpful.

To apply, send your resume with 1-2 fashion images you have sketched or illustrated along with contact information to admin @ fashionresearchinstitute.com.

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Posted in apparel industry, Avatar, avatar apparel, Blogroll, Content, design, fashion, Fashion Research Institute, jewelry, OpenSim, secondlife, Shengri La, Shenlei, Virtual World