GRAND RAPIDS, MI — At ideation 2017 in Los Angeles, X-Rite Incorporated and its subsidiary Pantone, announced that Gerber Technology’s YuniquePLM and AccuMark will natively support the Appearance Exchange Format in 2018.

Developed by X-Rite, AxF is a vendor-neutral format that enables the communication of all aspects of a physical material’s appearance—color, texture, gloss, refraction, transparency, special effects (sparkles) and reflection properties—in a single, editable file to improve design virtualization. Using AxF, fashion, apparel, and retail companies will be able to incorporate physically correct, virtual materials in YuniquePLM and AccuMark to create photorealistic 3D images of garment samples in order to accelerate the design, creation and merchandising process.

AxF is the foundational component of the X-Rite Total Appearance Capture ecosystem, a solution that brings a new level of accuracy and efficiency to the capture, communication and presentation of physical materials in the virtual world. Traditionally, the capture and rendering of complex materials such as meshes and synthetic fabrics have been a time-consuming and manual process. TAC addresses this challenge with a new level of precision and quality in material scanning coupled with an ability to share the resulting data, via AxF, across an expanding set of virtual design and product lifecycle management (PLM) tools like YuniquePLM.

“Today YuniquePLM already supports Pantone libraries and we are excited to extend that relationship to our award-winning TAC ecosystem and AxF format,” said Dr. Francis Lamy, executive vice president and chief technology officer, X-Rite and Pantone. “AxF will allow Gerber Technology customers to create physically accurate digital material libraries for a collection and virtually see a material’s texture, gloss or sheen in a 3D model to understand how a material drapes and looks under various lighting conditions. This superior virtual experience will help reduce the need for physical samples, streamline design approval cycles, and allow apparel companies to respond quickly to changing consumer trends.”

“We are excited to have this integration with X-Rite as it furthers our mission to help our customers decrease time to market by understanding textile properties prior to creating physical samples,” said Karsten Newbury, senior vice president and general manager, Software Solutions Group.

YuniquePLM is a product lifecycle management tool specially developed for the apparel and retail industries. It enables businesses to connect their creative teams with their supply chain, and get the right products to the market on time and at the right cost. AccuMark pattern design software allows apparel brands to design, develop and market their products as quickly and efficiently as possible. Together these systems help accelerate time to market, reduce lead time and improve margins by managing the details of line plans, tech packs and samples, and simplifying communication and collaboration with global partners.

TAC Captures Physical Material Appearance The TAC ecosystem is comprised of the TAC7 scanner, Pantora Material Hub desktop application, and Virtual Light Booth (VLB). Physical material samples are scanned using the TAC7 scanner, which captures appearance properties digitally to create AxF files that store appearance data. The files are stored, managed, viewed and edited in the Pantora desktop application. The AxF files can be shared with Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Computer-Aided Design (CAD), and state-of-the art rendering applications including Allegorithmic Substance Designer; AMD Radeon ProRender; Autodesk VRED Professional 2017; Gerber Technology YuniquePLM and AccuMark; Lumiscaphe Patchwork 3D; Luxion KeyShot® Next Limit Maxwell; and NVIDIA Iray.

The Virtual Light Booth is the industry’s first immersive 3D visualization environment for evaluating material appearance. It allows users to accurately and efficiently visualize and compare 3D digital material renderings side-by-side with physical samples. The VLB combines X-Rite’s SpectraLight QC professional light booth technology with a high-brightness, color-calibrated, LCD display; color management technology; and motion tracking sensors. This allows the VLB viewing environment to control parameters that influence the perception of appearance from illumination to contextual to observational factors. With the VLB, design teams can easily verify these conditions to see changes in material performance. This helps ensure consistency between digital prototypes and final physical products and empowers designers to make more informed material selection decisions reducing approval cycles and accelerating time to market.

X-Rite is demonstrating the TAC ecosystem this week at ideation. Attendees will see how AxF files can be used within the YuniquePLM and AccuMark software and applied to rendering and 3D design.

For more information, visit www.xrite.com/categories/Appearance/total-appearance-capture-ecosystem.