The problem
Commercial tools make you choose. 3D scanning captures shape but freezes time. Motion capture captures movement but reduces the body to a skeleton of tracked points. Neither describes what actually matters when you are designing something to be worn: how a body deforms, where it compresses, how soft tissue moves against a garment.
The platform
A high-density grid of markers applied to the body through a compression-fit garment, captured and reconstructed into a 4D model - a full spatiotemporal surface that holds up for moving, compliant and deformable bodies rather than rigid ones.
The technology was protected through an IP filing.
Why it matters
4D modelling could become the foundation for designing anything that interfaces with a body:
- Bespoke tailoring
- Protective sportswear
- Orthotics and prosthetic sockets
All three are currently designed against a static approximation of a body that never stays still.
Digitising the body surface
Later work integrated AR to overlay and register the 4D model back onto the physical body, effectively turning the scanned surface into a digitiser - much like an iPad's drawing surface. A designer could then sketch and build directly on the body.
The intent was to keep the hands-on workflow designers already have, rather than asking them to abandon it for a CAD window, while still producing something digital and manufacturable at the end.
My role
CTO - technical direction, architecture, and the engineering behind the capture and reconstruction pipeline.
Outcome
The company has since been discontinued.