Berlin-based artist Blockschmidt takes us behind the scenes of his visually stunning 3D creations, where fashion, music, and storytelling collide.
Get an exclusive look at how Blockschmidt’s visionary 3D work for brands like Adidas and Footlocker comes to life through CLO LiveSync’s seamless workflow.
Can you introduce yourself and share a bit about your background?
Hi, I’m Blocki, a Berlin-based 3D artist and the creative behind Blockschmidt. My work lives at the intersection of fashion, music, and visual storytelling. I utilize 3D animation to bridge those creative fields — bringing my envisioned worlds to life. In 2020, I got into 3D through a Blender online class and eventually added tools like CLO and Unreal Engine to push my work further. Since then, I’ve created large-scale projects for artists and brands like Adidas, A$AP Rocky, Foot Locker, and Champion. I led the 3D mainstage visuals for Splash! Festival and contributed to Coachella. My focus is crafting visuals that evolve into immersive digital experiences and impactful real-world moments, from brand campaigns to stage visuals.
We can't kick off the interview without talking about the Adidas x Footlocker 3D MEGARIDE sneaker trailer. Could you give us an overview of the project?
Gladly, to put this project into context, The Midnight Club London approached me to direct my 3D vision for this European campaign from Adidas and Footlocker.
The main brief focused on creating an engaging 3D trailer that showcases the Adidas Megaride sneaker from various angles in a futuristic environment - everything else to get to this final trailer was them putting their trust in me and my direction, which I truly appreciate.
Therefore, I was in a position to craft my creative direction mood board as the first step, where I gathered references for the environment, the digital avatar, and the general look and feel. I was tired of seeing 3D shoe animations that depict a single shoe floating around – I have done that before, and for this project, I wanted to think bigger and bolder. Hence, I envisioned to showcase the experience of the Megaride sneakers being worn by a digital human who is exploring an unknown urban futuristic world.
After the creative direction was confirmed, I moved on with the storyline. The essence of the narrative was twofold: to create a 3D trailer that showcases the features of the sneakers while conveying the feeling of wearing those new sneakers simultaneously. The joy, the excitement, the straight-out-of-the-shoe-box sensation – that’s the core of the storyline, which is experienced through the digital avatar.
After the storyline was also confirmed, the whole 3D execution journey started by creating a custom Megaride Metahuman, Rokoko motion capture to bring this avatar to life, Cascadeur to refine the animation, and CLO to create and simulate the outfit. Furthermore, the scale of this project and my vision span so widely that I wanted to get support from two Unreal Engine colleagues, @jay_ribas for layout, lighting, and environment, and @con_buch.3d, who assisted in lighting, environment, and a technical role. After numerous refinements, the 3D Megaride trailer was done within 2 months.
We heard CLO LiveSync for Unreal Engine played a significant role for the Adidas x Footlocker project. Can you share your experience with CLO LiveSync and what you liked best about it?
Absolutely, the CLO LiveSync was a crucial feature I utilized to bring the simulated geometry cache from CLO to Unreal Engine. Due to the refining process of the avatar’s body animation, the garments were updated and simulated many times. Hence, I appreciated the swift workflow with the CLO LiveSync, which enabled me to send my body animation from Unreal to CLO, simulate, and then send the simulated garments back to Unreal. In addition to this time-efficient workflow, this direct back-and-forth link, the garments’ shaders worked pretty well too in Unreal Engine.
What specific tools or techniques did you use to overcome the challenges in this project?
Narrative-wise, the biggest challenge was to find out what exactly I wanted to depict in this 3D trailer and how I would convey it, while staying within the assigned brief’s boundaries of showcasing the Megaride sneaker in a futuristic environment. My creative direction phase, with extensive mood board work, helped me to overcome this challenge. The storyline phase is built on that to further flesh out the direction. I knew the trailer’s creative direction and storyline were on point when I was able to state the essence of the narrative within one sentence.
Technically speaking, this whole approach of using a digital avatar as a medium to showcase the shoes came with many challenges. To name a few aspects: the shoes had to be optimized for this use case, a whole world had to be created, an avatar with garments, face, and body animation was built that blends smoothly into this Megaride world – and an extensive shot list with detailed camera work to ensure various shoe angles, too.
I could continue with many more aspects of new learnings that I have acquired during this whole project. When I pitched the storyline for this project, I had never created a narrative-based avatar and shoe trailer. This was the most complex visual I have ever thought of. I just knew that I wanted to showcase this on-foot 3D shoe experience and then put all my efforts into it to make it work.
How did collaborating with Adidas and Footlocker influence your design process?
Since the whole context of this project was to create a 3D trailer that is part of Footlocker’s exclusive Adidas Megaride campaign, the overall look and feel had to match the aesthetic of the shoe, the brief’s futuristic world, and my direction. This results in thoughtful decision-making when building this 3D trailer – e.g., subtle but impactful details such as adding a silver nose band-aid on the avatar’s nose to match him closer to his worn silver Megaride sneakers.
Beyond the art of this trailer, one has to be aware of its use case, which is a social media activation content piece. Hence, the whole journey of creative direction, storyline, and 3D execution is closely linked and communicated to Adidas and Footlocker. Thankfully, I was in a position where the brief specifically asked me to execute my style and direction, which then had to be embedded in this campaign context.
Can you share any feedback or reactions from the client or audience about the final product?
Both client parties told me that the project looks great. In this context, Adidas told me that this animation almost feels like a Megaride movie trailer. That was the moment when this trailer wording was picked up to treat this 3D animation as a movie trailer from then onward. Needless to say, I was very happy and proud of Adidas’s and Footlocker’s praise, which led to the collaboration post between Footlocker EU and Blockschmidt on Instagram for the Megaride trailer’s release.
The feedback from the audience was overwhelmingly supportive and packed with appreciation, and I felt, and still feel, very proud about this whole project since it pivoted my 3D perspective into a narrative-based, storytelling perspective.
Last year, you created the mainstage 3D visuals and coordinated the project for the Splash! festival. Can you give us an overview of this project and share the festival's response to your 3D art? I heard it helped increase merch sales and led to an invitation for this year.
Let me start by saying that Splash! festival is not only Germany’s biggest Hip-hop festival with 30,000 people on its ground, but it’s also the festival that I have attended most often with my friends. I already bought a festival ticket before this opportunity arose to coordinate the 3D mainstage visuals in 2024 for Splash! – so this project and festival have a special meaning to me.
Personal anecdotes aside, let’s get into the project overview. The festival upgraded its mainstage with sidewing screens left and right to its main 16:9 screen, with measurements of 6 meters in width and 10 meters in height. The project scope was to develop a creative direction and then create 3D animations that display various visuals linked to the festival's identity and branding. Those 3D assets ranged from showcasing the festival’s merchandise, festival chains, its rubber duck mascot, and the iconic Splash! excavator, and many more. I led and coordinated a team of 3D artists who contributed to this project: @marcikola, @wintermute.studios, @nagelsmann3d, and @starboyvisuals. We finished those 3D animations before the festival. During the festival, we had two VJs at the festival venue @nachtgeschuetz and @frischvergiftung who integrated those 3D animations onto those huge sidewing mainstage screens.
During mainstage concerts, the VJs used the live camera signal input, which depicted the crowd and mainstage artist, and blended our 3D visuals with an alpha background into this live camera footage. By doing so, we created a blend of engaging, festival-themed 3D visuals and live camera footage. This resulted in experiences where Offset was performing, the crowd was getting heated, and they just opened up their moshpit circle. Due to the nature of VJing, we were able to instantly react to the current mood of the crowd. The VJs sensed the moshpit-hungry crowd and then instantly played the 3D moshpit character visuals on the side wings. In addition to the 3D visual integration during performances, we also created slower-paced 3D visuals that were used during performance breaks.
What impressed you about translating Unreal Engine’s settings to CLO?
Besides the project coordination role, I created a Splash! themed digital avatar with Unreal Engine’s Metahuman who wears the festival’s iconic balaclava ski mask and a pair of shorts. His outfit matches the purple corporate identity from 2024 with patched Splash! logo details on his ski mask and shorts. The ski mask is based on Splash!’s balaclava 2D branding logo, which I translated into a 3D model together with @fashionx3d.
The concept of creating this Splash! Metahuman was twofold. On the one hand, we want to showcase the festival merch being worn by the Metahuman. On the other hand, the Metahuman animations are festival-themed to blend well into the mainstage performances and transition periods between sets. There are more engaging Metahuman animations like the moshpit “open up” animation, which are used during the performance, or rather calm animations, where the character stands beside a music box or lies on a Splash! beach towel. The calmer, less dynamic character animations were used for the transition periods between performances. Thereby, we can showcase different moods and different Splash! merchandise pieces through the avatar in various situations.
To sum up, Unreal and CLO’s intertwined strengths are a great match for my Metahuman and garment workflow. Firstly, due to the CLO LiveSync which creates a smooth link between both software. Secondly, this workflow enabled me to work efficiently, because Unreal displays high-detailed CLO garment simulations, along with a high-detailed Metahuman, being played in real-time.
What is the most useful feature in CLO for you, and how did it help your work?
The most useful feature of CLO is its power to create high-fidelity garment simulations based on custom-made garments while working with a custom digital avatar. I was faced with a bulk of different merch pieces that had to be translated into 3D and simulated with various Splash! Metahuman animations.
In addition to that, I textured the garments within CLO as well, and in the end, I was very pleased with the fidelity of the garment simulations and CLO’s translated texturing in the Unreal Engine.
How did CLO's stability for animation and motion captures impact your projects?
I have always used CLO for my garment creation and simulation when working with digital avatars. I am a sponsored creator of Rokoko, and I use their motion capture gear for my work to bring digital humans to life. With CLO’s flexibility when it comes to importing custom animated avatars, it is a great match for my workflow. I can use my motion capture suit, record a full body performance, adjust the animation, get it into CLO, and then I can be sure I will end up with a high-fidelity garment simulation in the end.
What were the main challenges you faced when simulating complex character animations in CLO, and how did you address them?
Since the engaging character animations were complex and quite dynamic, it was challenging to avoid garments poking through the avatar’s skin in very high-paced, quick movement changes. By tweaking the physics settings within the simulation tab, I was able to get rid of most issues to avoid garments being impacted too much by the avatar’s movements. With the detailed facial geometry of the avatar, I had to make sure I deleted his lashes and further details that could interfere with CLO’s simulation – other than that, I had no worries.
Do you frequently use any other tools or software alongside CLO and Unreal Engine?
In addition to CLO and Unreal, I use Blender as my main toolkit for whatever I can’t do in Unreal, such as 3D asset creation or rigging specifics. In addition to that, I use Rokoko Studio and their motion capture gear to create full-body motion capture performances. For Metahuman customization, I use Substance Painter, and for final touches and color grading, I use Davinci Resolve with ACES workflow.
How do you plan to use CLO LiveSync in the future? Are there any dream projects or collaborations you hope to work on?
I am looking forward to working on this year’s Splash! festival – new merch pieces to be created and animated within my CLO and Unreal LiveSync workflow. If there is another project where I am trusted to create my vision for product visualization, such as the Megaride trailer or stage visuals, I am more than happy to use the CLO LiveSync.
On a personal project note, I have been gathering references for a short film I am planning, which surely a hero with high-fidelity garments will be a part of.
CLO, thank you so much for having me.
Blockschmidt
