With a focus on pattern design and simulated materials, Clo offers a wide range of tools to enhance a users E-commerce space with high quality renders and fabric simulations using their built in simulation environment. VNTANA works to further enhance the Clo users E-commerce space by optimizing the assets designed in Clo, allowing them to be brought directly into your space. With the Clo Plugin, a VNTANA user can export their patterns and garments and have them directly uploaded to the VNTANA Platform for optimization.
The current initial release of the Clo Plugin will require manual installation following special steps to ensure a functioning plugin. The instructions are included within the download, and if you run into any issues you can contact our support team at support@vntana.com
Plugin Overview
Using the Plugin
The VNTANA Clo Plugin allows you to easily export your garments from Clo 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
Both the MacOS and Windows versions are included in the plug-in package. A set of installation instructions are included in the download. The plug-in does not need to be installed anywhere in particular, you just need to indicate where the plug-in is located to CLO. This is covered within the provided instructions.
Note: The ability to place the plug-in anywhere only applies to plug-in versions from 1.1 on, any prior version must be installed within the CLO installation directory, see that versions included instructions for more information.
Authentication
To make use of the plugin you must first authenticate with the VNTANA Platform using either a valid Authentication Token (see below for instructions on generating this) or email and password. After 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.
Folder Select Page
The first screen you are brought to upon successful authentication is the Folder Select page. This is where you will indicate the Organization and Folder on the VNTANA Platform you wish the garment(s) to be uploaded to, as well as whether the plugin is to be executed on your ‘Current Project’ or a batch.
For the ‘Current Project’ option, the .zprj file has to already be opened within Clo before the export and upload processes start. The directory that is selected is used to indicate to the plugin where .zprj files are to import in the case of a batch run, or simply to indicate where to export the ‘Current Project’ if selected.
You cannot progress in the plugin until a directory is set.
Export Settings
The second screen covers the various CLO settings available to change. These include inclusion of avatars, which colorways to export, as well as whether to use Unified UV coordinates or not. We use our recommended export settings for all export settings.
‘All’ colorways will always be exported/uploaded when running a batch, however when running the plug-in on a project that is already open in CLO you can choose which colorways to export. A configurator will always be created on the Platform regardless of the colorways chosen.
VNTANA Settings
The VNTANA settings refer to the same settings you can adjust when uploading an asset to a product on the VNTANA Platform. By default, our recommended settings for use with CLO files are populated, however should you choose to change any and land on a set of settings you feel give your assets the best outcome, the plugin automatically stores the settings from the latest session and defaults to those instead so you don’t have to adjust them every time.
In addition to these settings, version 1.1 and newer offer Templates, allowing you to save the various settings you use to quickly load and re-run. The ‘default’ template contains our default recommended CLO settings and cannot be deleted.
Tags and Attributes
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.
About
This page is accessed via the dropdown menu by your username. This page contains a brief FAQ regarding the plugin and how or why it produces the outcome it does. The same information is available on this page.
Plugin Operations and Possible Issues
Avatars
Avatars can cause issues for a number of reasons including missing permissions files, missing or unsupported materials, and inability to properly export due to the need for special export settings. It is generally recommended that if a complex avatar is needed the asset should be processed manually.
Crashing on MacOS
Generally, Clo has some compatibility issues with Mac computers, specifically with the newer M1 chips. This can cause crashes during export, extremely long export times, as well as running out of resources requiring Clo be ‘Force Quit’. If issues occur with the Mac version, please contact our support team at support@vntana.com to determine if it is a bug in the plugin.
UI Scaling
Some users may experience broken or squished UI’s in the plugin if they have a zoom setting on their desktop other than 100%. The plugin attempts to correct its scaling based on this zoom, but it may not be able to correct itself completely.
Missing or Ignored Files
The plugin searches for files in the given directory that are .zprj files. If any of these files contain this extension with any non-lowercase letters (i.e. .Zprj), it will ignore them. This is by design as Clo can behave in unpredictable ways with these files when using the API.
Extra Files
The process by which the plugin searches for .zprj files in the given directory is recursive, meaning it will pull from all subdirectories it reaches. This can lead to projects that aren’t ready to be uploaded being processes if they are accessible via the directory set in the plugin. This generally only causes the inconvenience of having to delete these, but depending on their completeness they can cause unexpected errors.
It is generally recommended to create a single directory to save out ready to process projects to ensure only those that are ready are processed.
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.
Base URL: https://platform.vntana.com
Endpoints:
/v1/auth/login
/v1/auth/login/token
/v1/auth/refresh-token
/v1/organizations
/v1/clients/client-organizations
/v1/clients
/v1/clients/slug-availability
/v1/tags/search
/v1/tags/create
/v1/products/{productUuid}/search * (The productUuid can be different each time)
/v1/products
/v1/storage/upload/clients/products/asset/sign-url
/v1/variant-groups * (Query Parameters will be added to this: ?clientUuid=zzz&name=zzz&organizationUuid=zzz)
/v1/variant-groups/search
/v1/variant-groups/add-products * (Query Parameters will be added to this: ?productsUuids=zz,zz&uuids=zz,zz)
Additional URL
https://vntana-platform-2-development.wl.r.appspot.com/plugin-version-clo
https://vntana-platform-2-development.wl.r.appspot.com/plugin-version-bw (for the BW plugin if that will be used)
Google Signed URL
https://storage.googleapis.com *
Some endpoints pass information in the URL as query parameters and as such will not be the same every time. Additionally, the final endpoint used in the process of uploading an asset to the Platform uses a signed URL generated by Google.
Additional Resources
Authentication Token
An Authentication Token can be generated on the VNTANA Platform to allow secure authentication through the VStitcher and Clo plugins. Once used, this token will allow automatic authentication upon launching either plugin so long as the token isn’t revoked or regenerated, in which case you would simply need to login again through the plugins with a new token to resume automatic authentication.
To generate an Authentication Token, login to the VNTANA Platform and navigate to your profile settings by clicking ‘My Profile’ in the dropdown accessed via your profile picture.
From your profile settings, click on the “Authentication Key” tab, located towards the upper left of the webpage, to access the key generation screen.
The first time you visit this tab you will simply see a button labeled “Generate”, clicking this will generate the Authentication Token for your user account. You can click the copy icon on the right of the generated token to copy it to your clipboard or manually copy it.
As a security measure, you will only be able to copy the token for the first 30 seconds after it is generated. After this time you will have to regenerate a new token the same way should the need arise. Additionally, while a token is active you have the option to revoke it without generating a new one from the same screen.
Compatibility
Due to major improvements by CLO from 6.2 to 7.0 in their gltf exporter, the API corresponding to CLO versions 6.2.* aren’t compatible with CLO 7.0 (when using the GLB export methods, which this plug-in uses). As a result, it was decided to create two versions while users may still be using 6.2. Despite there being a version for 6.2, there are a number of issues which exist with the various patches of 6.2 which directly interfere or break the plug-in, and as such we highly recommend using the CLO 7.0 compatible version of the plug-in.
- Clo 6.2, 7.0
- Windows
- MacOS