Metaverse fashion interoperability is happening. Here’s how.

Photo by Vadim Bogulov on Unsplash

Metaverse interoperability is often spoken of as a priority for those developing in the web3 space, with the vision that any in-game asset could be seamlessly moved between platforms. Digital fashion interoperability is the holy grail of this challenge. We at Gravity Layer developed the technology to make game skins wearable across different metaverses regardless of graphics or avatars, allowing users to be who they want wherever they go.

The current game skins market

The first buyable game skins were introduced to users in 2012 by Valve in Team Fortress 2 and CounterStrike:GO. The implementation of game skins allow users to customize and tailor the appearance of their character. Many skins do not change or increase character abilities, referred to as ‘cosmetic skins’–they simply exist for gamers to show off particularly in massive multiplayer online (MMO) games.

Now hundreds of video games support skins, where users buy them with in-game currency or real money. The market of game skins is estimated at 40 billion dollars in a year. Currently these assets are limited to use within the game which creates them. If that game stops receiving updates they’re useless, they aren’t granted tradeability, and users repeatedly pay for those assets in every game they play. However, 75% gamers have expressed that if skins have value beyond self-expression in one game, they will purchase more often and for more money.

How can we increase the value of skins within the existing architectures of metaverses? In the following sections we will discuss some possible solutions for this giant shortcoming.

Existing approaches

Blockchain, as a decentralized ledger, makes it much easier to add value and utility to game skins for the benefit of gamers. NFTs — ownable digital objects whose data are stored on a blockchain — are a great solution to make game skins tradeable between users. With the democratization of blockchain technology, several solutions have appeared in the market which attempt to solve some of the old limitations of game skins.

We can divide these solutions to three categories:

1. Skin trading platforms which cater to Steam games
   (Dmarket, Skinport.com, Bitskins.com, Skins.cash, Tradeit.gg)
   These Steam games include TF2, CS:GO, Rust, Dota 2 and the items can be purchased with fiat or crypto. These platforms sell official game skins and weapons on Steam (owned by Valve). These skins can only be used on Steam within the game it has been created for. Game skins can be traded on the Steam marketplace or a 3rd party marketplace. Players are not able to transfer the skin into a different game. Valve chooses which skins from users will be included in their drops. Meanwhile, Dmarket is a 3rd party marketplace which sells the skins which are minted into NFTs from some blockchain games and metaverses — however these NFTs still cannot be used in other games.
2. Digital fashion NFT marketplaces
   (Dematerialized, XRCouture, DressX)
   These began popping up in 2020–2021 when digital fashion NFTs started to rise. These companies mint NFTs with unlockable content (which can only be opened by the owner of NFT) built into the 3D model of the digital outfit. These cannot be used in metaverses and don’t have much usefulness on their own other than as a collectible. Wanting to claim ‘metaverse interoperability,’ some have begun to airdrop several additional 3D garments to owners which are each manually portable into one particular metaverse. So in this case we have several different copies of 3D garments separately floating around, and the original NFTs are not terribly useful.
3. Metaverse game assets minted as NFTs
   (Decentraland, Sandbox, Cryptovoxels)
   These game skins are minted as NFTs for use exclusively within the Web3 metaverse that creates it. This allows the assets to be bought and sold by users on Opensea. Some metaverses allow third party 2D NFTs to be imported for display within their world like wall art. In this way, a Cryptopunk NFT could be used as a picture on your wall in multiple metaverses. However, with 3D assets like digital fashion, interoperable usability has not been built.

None of these solutions are complete and each only solves one problem relating to game skins. None are interoperable. They’re not terribly useful used outside the platform they were created on, and the duplication of designs for portability into different worlds blurs the assets’ ownership, value, and uniqueness.

Current roadblocks

Let’s unpack the two main reasons game skins are not interoperable yet.

1. Differences in graphics and avatars
   Although skins are always created and stored as a 3D model, these models differ in their sizing, file formats, animations, physics, and rigs, which change the way clothing moves with the avatar body. Skins have to be entirely rebuilt for different game engines, skeletons, shaders, graphic styles, and efficiencies. This is time-consuming. There are few standards among game developers, so game-ready assets can rarely be reused elsewhere.
2. Security
   The use of a skin outside of the official game is traditionally piracy and copyright infringement. Game studios securely store the files in their own server and do not allow them to be used anywhere else. How do game studios prevent others from using their skin designs? What if someone managed to access and download a 3D model of a game’s skin design that was meant to be one-of-a-kind and sold it to another person? There would then be two owners and the asset would no longer be unique.

For definitively assigning ownership of a digital asset, NFTs remain the best solution — but the way some developers are using them for game wear (by airdropping duplicates) is highly dubious.

The Gravity Layer solution

We built an infrastructure accessible to all fashion creators, digital fashion marketplaces, and metaverses. By adding massive utility for existing digital fashion NFTs, Gravity Layer enables users to wear their digital fashion across any metaverse we’re integrated with by purchasing the NFT as an access pass. The owner is then able to use the design across metaverses, games, mobile applications, AR, VR, and anywhere else we integrate in the future.

When the Gravity Layer SDK is integrated by a platform, owners of our compatible digital fashion NFTs can see and wear their items in the in-app inventory or personal account like usual. Our SDK works seamlessly with the metaverse’s existing user flow.

This is how our technology solves compatibility and security issues:

1. Compatibility
   For each design we create a separate 3D version of an asset compatible with each app/metaverse/game and store them separately from the NFT itself. So one NFT is tied to multiple 3D assets, but the other 3D assets are not themselves NFTs. They are merely accessible solely by the owners of the key NFT.
2. Security
   All 3D files are stored in IPFS nodes encoded by the public key of the metaverse it’s compatible with, so nobody can upload a 3D file and distribute it illegally. Each metaverse stores only the 3D assets compatible with their platform and have no access to other versions of the same design.
3. Technology
   We handle and resolve all the ownership checks, usage, and distribution in-game using our SDKs, built for different game engines and platforms.

Tech overview

1. Fashion
   We can support all existing fashion NFTs, or create new custom collections including NFT minting. We both collaborate with other artists and have digital fashion designers in-house to help achieve a vision. If you are a fashion brand or designer and want to add metaverse utility for your fashion NFTs, contact us to talk about how we can work together.
2. Blockchain
   We built our first iteration on the Polygon blockchain because most web3 metaverses support it. In future we’ll add bridges to other blockchains.
3. Storage
   We use IPFS to store our 3D models, they are not open to the public and encrypted with the key of the metaverse for which it was created. This is to support consistency with stored information. All additional information and metadata we store in MongoDB.
4. API
   All data between services — blockchain, backend, storages, SDK — are managed by requests to our API.
5. 3D
   Our in-house designs are currently made in Marvelous Designer and Cinema 4D, which are skinned, meshed, rigged, and weight-painted in Blender and transformed into game-ready assets for each metaverse.
6. Game Engines
   We currently support Unity and Unreal Engine, and will add different game engine support in future.
7. Rigging
   After exporting the 3D asset from Marvelous Designer, the model is retopologized and skinned in Blender. This also includes polycount reduction, filling holes, and welding the model to be ready for rigging. As we bind each design to different metaverse-specific skeletons, these digital outfits will be weight painted individually.
8. Animation
   Following the rigging process, we are able to integrate animation assets for different metaverses by retargeting bone animations to ensure that the clothing is animated and fitted to the avatar. Animation through shape keys and cloth simulation will be used, depending on the target platform.
9. Integrations
   If you are a game or metaverse developer and want to integrate interoperable assets, contact us to integrate our SDK and get your ID in our system.

Future development

Our infrastructure solves each problem we identified. A major opportunity for increased scalability is progressively automating our universal game-readiness process. We’re solving this with three.js scripts in Blender, and AI. Once we reach 100% automation, we’ll be able to release a tool to give the power of our infrastructure directly to digital fashion creators.

Summary

We’ve built what many have called impossible. Gravity Layer can provide metaverse interoperability to digital fashion through blockchain technology, ushering in a new era in how we express ourselves online. Users will have a single digital wardrobe and won’t need to rebuy it moving from one platform to another. Soon, anyone will be able to digitally wear anything, anywhere they want.