Christine Marzano met Alexander Shatalov while working together at another avatar animation company Christine had previously co-founded. Alex was the head Unreal Engine developer and technical artist, and Christine had an extensive background in fashion, working for the likes of Dior, YSL, and Gucci, and as a fit model for Victoria Beckham and others. “In 2017, I was the first person with fashion model experience to create my own photorealistic avatar,” Christine says. “I started animating it with Unreal Engine, via mocap suits and different methods of facial capture, and I knew it was absolutely the future.”
The two saw an opportunity to bring the world of fit-tech—the science of fitting clothes—to virtual marketplaces. While some fashion and apparel companies had tried to solve the art of fitting clothes for e-commerce, these approaches always seemed to fall short. “We believed it was because they were all coming at the problem from one side—fashion or tech, but never both,” Christine says.
Combining Christine’s in-depth knowledge of the fashion industry and their combined knowledge of computer graphics to bridge the two worlds, the pair started BODS, with Christine as CEO and Alex as CTO.
“The more we discussed it, the more confident we became that together we could build something differentiated and transformative—something that would blow the fashion industry’s mind,” says Christine.
BODS developed a unique garment-fitting technology that realistically simulates the fit of garments on an avatar that matches the buyer’s body. The user uploads a few body profile photos or enters body measurements, and using AI, the BODS system creates an avatar that represents the buyer’s body.
Source: Unreal Engine Blog