We’ve developed a VNTANA Browzwear Plug-in that makes it easy to export, upload, and optimize 3D assets—automatically preserving key metadata from your designs. This powerful tool streamlines your workflow and ensures consistency across teams.
VStitcher is a leader in 3D fashion design, helping designers model their garments via a wide range of features including photorealistic 3D renders. This focus on quality, however, can lead to large file sizes and long load times. VNTANA’s optimization process can drastically cut down on the file size of VStitcher export without sacrificing the visual quality that VStitcher produces. The VNTANA Plugin for VStitcher is designed to simplify the garment design pipeline for VNTANA Clients by handling the export process from VStitcher and automatically uploading the asset to the VNTANA Platform for optimization.
To view our guide on Browzwear exports and what settings the plugin is using, view the Browzwear Export Directions found here.
Plugin Overview
Downloads
v2.0.7
Using the Plugin
The VNTANA VStitcher Plugin allows you to easily export your garments from VStitcher using our recommended export settings and have them directly uploaded to the VNTANA Platform for optimization. The plugin can be used either on an individual garment as a final step in your design workflow, or on a batch of garments.
Installation
A set of installation instructions are included in the download. Simply unzip the downloaded package and place the folder vntana-bw-exporter and its contents anywhere on your machine. Be aware of permissions issues before choosing a location for the plugin.
Authentication
To make use of the plugin you must first authenticate with the VNTANA Platform using either a valid Authentication Token (see this guide for instructions on generating this) or email and password. Once you’ve logged in once with a valid Authentication Token the plugin will attempt to log you in automatically each time the plugin is launched. There is no option for automatic authentication with an email and password.
Home Page
Upon successful authentication, you will be presented with the home screen, consisting of three areas of importance:
- Menu – located in the upper right hand corner consisting of your logged in email.
- Platform Settings – located on the left side, this section houses your Organization/Workspace selections as well as search filters when viewing the import screen.
- Workflow Options – located in the center of the window, you can select to utilize the Export or Import workflows.
Menu
The Menu serves a couple purposes:
- Shows what account you are signed in under.
- Allows you to logout of the current account.
- Provides a quick link to this resources page.
- Indicates when an update is available via a red notification icon (update is accessed via this page).
Platform Settings
The Platform Settings panel provides selection boxes for the Organization and Workspace you wish to work with on the VNTANA Platform. Selecting these will determine what presets can be used in upload as well as where your uploads will end up during the export workflow, and determines what assets/projects you can access when using the import workflow.
Workflow Options
Export and Optimize
Allows you to select the current garment or a batch of garments to export as a GLB from VStitcher and upload to the VNTANA Platform.
Import Assets
Allows you to search and download your assets stored on the VNTANA Platform. See below for the list of compatible assets.
Export and Upload Workflow
This workflow allows you to export your .bw garments as GLB and automatically uploads to the VNTANA Platform for optimization. The export uses our recommended settings from our Export Guidelines, though we do open up a couple of settings. This workflow does have a handful of expectations to work correctly:
- Only processes .bw files.
- The files must have a valid snapshot saved.
- The avatar will not be able to be exported if it is a licensed avatar (i.e. Alvanon)
Upload Options
The first inputs needed for the process are used to determine what should be processed and how they should be organized on the Platform.
Browzwear File(s)
You can indicate to process the ‘Current Garment Only’, meaning only the .bw file currently loaded in VStitcher will be exported/uploaded.
Not selecting ‘Current Garment Only’ means the plug-in will expect to process a batch of .bw files, which it finds using your input for the Garment Folder path. When processing a ‘Current’ garment, the entered folder path will instead just be used as the destination when exporting the GLB.
VNTANA Platform
This section first allows you to indicate whether to ‘Create Projects’, resulting in all exports (snapshots + colorways) being grouped in a Project on the Platform.
Next you can select to upload the source .bw file, as well as whether it should be uploaded as an attachment on the first colorway or its own Asset on Platform.
Finally, you can indicate whether to update an existing asset instead of create a new one for each export. Note: this can only search for matches based on file name, so if anything changes in the garment name, colorway names, or snapshots it may not find a match and instead create a new asset. When updating the Asset, there is also the Version Save Option which indicates how the update should handle versions. The options are:
- New As Current – this will create a new version and automatically set it to new.
- New for Review – this will create a new version for QA.
- Overwrite – this will simply overwrite whatever version is the ‘current’ version.
Note: With the new version options, whatever version is the ‘current’ version will be used as the baseline when creating the new version, replacing relevant settings and metadata based on what was set in the plug-in.
Export Settings
As mentioned above, the GLB export settings are set based on our recommended settings and largely aren’t customizable. This is largely due to the need to prioritize compatibility with our optimization process. There are a couple of options that are exposed though:
- Include Avatar: Will export the Avatar as part of the GLB. This will not work for licensed avatars such as Alvanon avatars.
- Garment Inside: recommended for semi-transparent garments. These garments should be exported separately from non-semi-transparent garments so this option can be disabled/enabled on as needed.
- Pack UVs: Will pack UVs into a 0-1 space.
- Alpha Mode: Can swap between Opaque, Mask, or Blend.
Finally, you can also indicate which Colorways and Snapshots to export. Note: when processing a batch of garments, these will be hard-set to Current for snapshots and All for colorways, meaning the most recently created snapshot will be used to export all colorways. When processing a garment that is currently open in VStitcher, you will be able to customize which colorways and garments to export, including multiple snapshots in one process.
Optimization Settings
This page will determine the output of the VNTANA Optimization process. There are three key points here:
- Viewer Preset: This will apply a viewer preset to the optimized assets to ensure your viewer settings are automatically set without needing to manually change them after using the plug-in.
- Optimization Preset: Select from Organization or Workspace level presets to determine your optimization settings without having to manually set them. Selecting a preset will result in the plug-in ignoring the settings in the next part.
- Optimization Settings: Select various settings to determine the geometry and texture optimization levels, apply draco compression, and set a pivot point.
Metadata
The final screen gives you the option of adding Tags and / or Attributes to the products created by the plugin. This is optional and is applied broadly to all products created in that run of the plugin, so if there are any garment specific Tags or Attributes these will have to be created manually on the Platform.
Import Workflow
The Import workflow simply allows you to browse the files you have on the VNTANA Platform and directly download and import them into VStitcher, with a couple caveats.
Asset Library
As shown above, the Asset Library is the default view and allows you to view the individual Assets you have on the Platform, select one or more, and directly import them to VStitcher.
Searching
When viewing the Asset Library, search capabilities allow you to do keyword search from the top search bar for info such as tags, asset name, project name, and attribute keys. You can also filter by Asset Type or root Project in the left panel.
Preview
When an asset is selected, a preview will also be displayed showing key info on the Asset, attributes, as well as any attachments.
Attachments
When an asset has attachments, you can download/import them while ‘previewing’ the asset, either individually or all at once by clicking the ‘Download All’ button.
Project List
Accessed via the Project List button in the left panel, this view allows you to import assets from specific projects. By default, it will show you the root projects, however clicking one will navigate inside the project and show the next level down, both sub-projects and contained assets.
From within a Project, assets can be selected, previewed, and imported the same as from the Asset Library view.
Search
Search is more limited than for assets, you can locate root projects via name and tag keyword searches from the top search bar.
Filetypes and What to Expect
There are a number of filetypes that can be downloaded, however not every filetype will behave the same as when handled manually due to limitations of the API.
Download and Import
The following filetypes can be downloaded and directly imported into VStitcher via the plug-in:
- Garment
- vsgx, vsp, bw, dxf
- Avatar
- vsa, fbx, obj
- Material
- u3ma, jpg, jpeg, png, bmp, tif, tiff, svg, tga
Note: VStitcher will only recognize fbx and obj imports as avatars. To have them imported as materials they need to be in a u3ma.
The following filetypes cannot be imported:
- sbsar
- xtex
- ai
- psd
While these cannot be imported directly, the will still be downloaded and the plug-in will open their location in the native file explorer to simplify the process of manually bringing them into VStitcher.
Additional Notes on Imports
When importing .bw files via the API, it will always close any currently open .bw file. The plug-in will attempt to intelligently determine the order of imports to ensure this doesn’t cause disruption, however trying to import multiple .bw files will not have the results you expect.
Images technically cannot be imported, however since there isn’t really any special material info needed, a new material can be created with the image as the sole texture, which is how the plug-in handles these.
Plugin Operations and Possible Issues
Batch Process
When running the plugin on a batch of files, it is important to understand what the plugin is doing to pull the files it will process. The directory that is set gets scanned for any .bw file, but the plugin has no way of knowing whether a .bw file is ready to be exported or not, other than in cases where there is no snapshot in which case it’ll just move on and not upload it. The most likely outcome of loading unintended files is just that they will be uploaded to the Platform, but it would result in more work after having to remove these files.
The scanning process is recursive, meaning it will search all subdirectories as well. We recommend placing files that are ready to be processed in one folder to avoid issues with processing unintended assets.
Update Products
The option to update existing products instead of always creating a new product is available through the plugin. We understand the process can entail constant minor reworks as well as exploration into the best settings for your assets, and as such having the ability to push an edit through to an existing product without needing to then delete the old product while still being able to create multiple of one asset with various settings to compare is important.
With this functionality, it is also important to note how updating works on via the VNTANA API. The name of the resulting exports will be used to attempt to find a match on the Platform. This means, if colorway names are changed, or the base .bw name is changed, it may not be able to find a match and will instead default to creating a new asset.
VStitcher Messaging
When importing a garment into VStitcher, a pop-up message can display for a number of reasons. These cannot be handled by the plugin and if left unresolved can cause the plugin to timeout or crash. These tend to relate to garments that have been designed on multiple workstations resulting in different versions for certain components such as avatars.
Re-Installing a Plugin
VStitcher has a tendency to crash when re-installing a plugin. This isn’t an indication of an issue with the plugin, but it can cause some confusion. Generally, just reopening VStitcher shows everything is fine, the newly updated plugin can be accessed from the plugin menu. Sometimes, however, when it crashes the ‘Plugins’ option will be removed from the top navigation bar despite the plugin still being loaded. When this happens, it can require a complete restart of your computer to get that menu option back.
How the Plugin Communicates
The plugin makes use of the Python library Requests for all of it’s communications. If you are having trouble simply logging in to the plugin, there is a very high chance that security measures on your workstation are preventing the plugin from making the requests it needs to function. In order to circumvent this, your IT and Security teams will need to decide whether they are comfortable whitelisting everything the Plugin needs to function properly.
The plugin makes use of HTTP for it’s communications and will make calls to a variety of endpoints depending on your usage of the plugin. The important domains to note are:
- *.vntana.com
- storage.googleapis.com
Changelog
Import Flow
- Added support for Alvanon file types in import flow.
- Support for .apf and .ava file types on VNTANA Platform goes live 8/5.
- .apf files cannot be handled via VStitcher’s API and will only be downloaded by the plug-in.
- .ava can be imported by the plug-in but will be blocked by VStitcher if no permissions file is found for it.
Quality of Life
- Updated scaling of UI to ensure devices with high UI scale do not cause elements of the plug-in to overlap.
- Note: if your machine has a high scale, the UI may be fairly squished. This update ensures they prioritize scroll bars so the elements are interactable.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug which caused the plug-in to try and export colorways that don’t exist when handling a batch of files.
- This specifically occurs if you run a batch while a file is already open in VStitcher. It is important to note that the only way to process the open file is to select the Current Garment Only option.
Quality of Life
- Updated the behavior when switching Workspaces to not pull a list of assets unless actively viewing the Import panel of the Plugin.
- This change improves the speed of Workspace changes in all other parts of the plugin.
- Added a size check for Windows users to better account for non-100% UI scale settings.
- Due to the type of window Browzwear uses for plugin UI’s, if your monitor has a non-100% UI scale the plugin could crop content if resized instead of properly adjusting it.
- This change scales down the size of the window and locks resizing when non-100% scale settings are detected.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue where attempting to authenticate into an Organization with zero Workspaces would prevent successful authentication.
- Quality of Life
- Added a Home button to the left side bar when in either the import or export work flows.
- Thumbnails now download at a more manageable size to increase load time.
- Bug Fixes
- Minor UI improvements throughout.
- Fixed an issue where changing workspace would update the visible content, but the selected workspace would revert back to the original.
- Import Functionality
- Added the ability to search and import assets from the VNTANA Platform.
- Search assets via asset type, tags, and projects.
- Added ability to import files from an asset’s attachments.
- Added the ability to search and import assets from the VNTANA Platform.
- Export Functionality
- Added ability to select the snapshot(s) to export.
- Added Viewer Preset selection to upload settings.
- Changed Optimization Preset selection to utilize presets from platform instead of locally saved presets.
- Added option for source file upload to upload as either a separate asset or an attachment.
v1.1.5 – 4/11/2023
- Added the Auto Publish option to the VNTANA page of the plug-in.
- Defaults to ‘No’ indicating the products created will remain in DRAFT status. Set to ‘Yes’ to publish created products to LIVE.
v1.1.1 – 7/21/2022
- Bug Fix – Fixed a bug related to a batch process while a project was currently opened in VStitcher, causing one of the intended files in the batch to be skipped in the process.
v1.1.0 – 7/15/2022
- Improved Installation process.
- The plugin no longer requires installation within the directory of VStitcher.
- Permissions requirements are only dependent on the users choice of installation location.
- Improved Error logging and handling.
- Introduced secondary plugin from VStitcher Plugins menu called ‘Error Logs’ which will display logs found for the last use of the plugin.
- Added buttons to both the main plugin and ‘Error Logs’ plugin that will directly open the location of the log files. In the main plugin, the button to open the logs directory is located on the ‘About’ page.
- Improved control of ‘Current Project’ runs.
- When a .bw garment is loaded in VStitcher, you can now select the exact colorways you wish to export and upload.
- When a .bw garment is loaded in VStitcher, you can now select the exact Snapshot you wish to use for the export.
- Introduced Optimization Settings templates.
- You can now save, load, and delete templates for the VNTANA Optimization settings to avoid having to reconfigure for repeat setups.
- Note: These are different than the Presets made on the VNTANA Platform and are only stored locally.
- Additionally, the plugin automatically stores the VNTANA Recommended settings for Browzwear garments in the template ‘default’, as well as the last used settings by you in the template ‘settings’.
- You can now save, load, and delete templates for the VNTANA Optimization settings to avoid having to reconfigure for repeat setups.
- Updated the handling of file naming to address unexpected ‘Update Product’ behavior.
- The colorway name will always be appended to the end of a GLB that is exported, even if the .bw file only has one colorway and it is the default named ‘Colorway 1’.
- This was to avoid a situation where the user exports all / multiple colorways but has to reprocess only one colorway and wishes to just update the product that exists for it. Previously, when only a single colorway was exported it wouldn’t add the colorway name meaning in this scenario it wouldn’t have updated the Product as expected.
- Updated available VNTANA Optimization settings.
- Added the ‘Force Polygon Count’ and ‘Bake Ambient Occlusion’ settings.
- Removed the ‘Lossy/Lossless’ option and reduced range of ‘Aggression’ from 0-10 to 0-5 in accordance with changes made on the VNTANA Platform.
Compatibility
- VStitcher 2021.3.*, 2022.*, 2023.1, 2024.*
- Windows, MacOS