Avatar Items
A socially critical game about the collective invisibility of homeless people in urban transit systems.
✦ 3D Design
✦ Art Direction
✦ Clothing Items
Project Brief
3D Items for the Social Game "Smeet"
Smeet is a 3D social multiplayer game where fashion is one of the primary ways players express themselves and connect with others. As the lead of the 3D design department, I owned the full pipeline — from trend research and community input to modelling, hand-painted textures, and QA across multiple avatar types and platforms. Each week, my team and I delivered up to 60 items as a cohesive, mix-and-match collection, alongside premium and event-specific pieces designed to drive engagement and revenue.
Details
Platform
Desktop, Browser, Mobile
Team Size
1-4
Focus
Art Direction & Team Lead, Project Management, 3D Modeling, 3D Texturing, User Research
TLDR
I designed up to 60 avatar clothing items per week and eventually led the department. I covered and oversaw the whole pipeline, everything from trend research and hand-painted textures to QA across avatar types and platforms. Beyond standard drops, I created premium, event-specific, and holiday items to support revenue goals. The central challenge was sustaining high output without compromising quality, solved through structured workflows, close team collaboration, and creative workarounds within an outdated engine.
The Final Design
Understanding the Player
Empathize
01
Each week began with research. Together with my interns and content manager, I tracked current fashion trends, monitored what competitor games were releasing, and closely analyzed what was already resonating with our own player base. Player-submitted ideas through community contests added another layer of direct insight, making sure designs reflected what the community actually wanted to wear and show off.
01 ✦ EMPATHIZE
What Do Players Want to Wear?
Every week started with research — understanding player desires, community trends, and what was already performing well in-game.
Fashion Trend Tracking
Runway collections, street fashion blogs, seasonal trend reports. Real-world references were actively translated into avatar-appropriate silhouettes, proportions, and texture approaches.
In-Game Analytics
Purchase rates, outfit frequency in fashion shows, and wardrobe usage data. Items that underperformed were analysed and the learning fed back into the next brief.
Competitor Tracking
Weekly review of rival avatar platforms — identifying gaps in our catalogue, styles not yet covered, and opportunities to set trends rather than follow them.
Player Contests
Regular community submission events where players sent outfit ideas. The best were turned into real items — creating massive engagement spikes and making players feel genuinely heard.
Team Insights
Weekly standups with community managers who relayed direct player feedback, forum threads, and recurring requests not captured in numbers. Qualitative signal that data missed.
Seasonal Calendar
Planning 4–8 weeks ahead for major events: Halloween, Christmas, Oktoberfest, Valentine's, Summer. Advance planning ensured thematic depth rather than rushed last-minute items.
01 ✦ EMPATHIZE
Three Player Archetypes We Designed For
Every week started with research — understanding player desires, community trends, and what was already performing well in-game.
The Trendsetter
Always first to wear new drops. Participates in fashion shows, influences peers, and drives first-day sales spikes. Wants bold, aspirational hero pieces.
The Social Butterfly
Uses clothing to express personality and individuality. Cares about color, style combinations, and unique details.
The Budget-Conscious Player
Looks for items with good value and wide usability. Prioritizes affordability and versatility.
01 Trend-Driven Research
01 Baby Steps
Setting the Direction
Define
02
From that research, I shaped a clear design direction for every weekly collection. The goal was never just a pile of individual items — each collection had to work as a complete wardrobe: one piece per category, fully wearable together, coherent enough to inspire fashion shows and partner outfit coordination, while still giving players room to mix and match across weeks.
02 ✦ DEFINE
Weekly Design Brief
A Collection, Not Just Items
Each weekly drop had to work as a complete, cohesive wardrobe — every category covered, every piece mix-and-matchable.
Tops
Shirts, Blouses, Jackets, Coats
Bottoms
Trousers, Skirts, Shorts, Dresses
Shoes
Sneakers, Heels, Boots, Sandals
Accessories
Bags, Belts, Jewellery
Hair
Hats, Cuts, Colours, Braids
Bottoms
Eyes, Lips, Blush, Freckles
Premium Items
Exclusive Rare Drops
Event Items
Limited Seasonal Exclusives
The outdated engine wasn't just a technical limitation. It was a design brief in itself. Working within specific data formats, absent shaders, and low-poly constraints forced every problem to be framed precisely:
01 Constraints as Creative Parameters
The outdated engine wasn't just a technical limitation. It was a design brief in itself. Working within specific data formats, absent shaders, and low-poly constraints forced every problem to be framed precisely: not "how do I create realistic fabric?" but "how do I suggest realistic fabric through hand-painted texture alone?"
Exploring Possibilities
Ideate
03
Concepts were developed with both creative ambition and hard constraints in mind. The game runs on an in-house engine with significant technical limitations. There are no advanced shaders, no real-time lighting, strict data format requirements. That meant hand-painting every texture from scratch in Photoshop and Substance Painter to achieve fabric realism, intricate patterns, and fine surface detail without relying on effects the engine simply couldn't support.
03 ✦ Ideate
How to filter the best ideas
Ideation Methods
Team Concept Reviews
Weekly concept reviews included interns and the content manager. Different perspectives and tastes helped avoid narrowing down the style and theme too much.
Evolve, Don't Reinvent
Successful designs were reanalyzed from the past week's collections. Was there room to iterate further on the design? Could the same textures be used for the next season?
Mood Boarding
Every design collection started with an initial mood board. Created through fashion editorials, historical costumes, and current examples, this determined the mood before even opening a single software tool.
Theme First
Colours were finalized before modelling even started. It was the one skill that allowed for the creation of one cohesive collection despite having 60 pieces and multiple artists working on it.
Silhouette Sketching
Rapid silhouette sketching allowed for experimentation with garment shapes without creating the actual 3D model yet. This quick iteration saved time and reduced unnecessary changes later on.
Cultural Event Theming
For holidays such as Halloween, Oktoberfest, Christmas, Valentine's Day, and many others, ideation was largely based on culture and historical references.
01 Coherence at Scale
01 Baby Steps
Bringing Concepts to Life
Prototype
04
Modelling was done in Autodesk 3ds Max and Blender, with each asset built as low-poly while still reading as visually rich. Clothing had to fit seamlessly across multiple avatar body types, accounting for different proportions, animations, and dynamic movement.
04 ✦ Prototype
Production Schedule
Research & Brief
Trend review, mood board, brief sign-off, task distribution to team
Modelling
Low-poly meshes from base templates, UV layout, initial proxy fit test on avatars
Texturing
Full hand-paint pass — diffuse layers, shadow bakes, fabric surface detail
Fitting & Rigging
Avatar fit across all body types, animation state checks, clipping fixes
QA & Delivery
Final review, engine export, cross-platform check, handoff to implementation
Research & Brief
Trend review, mood board, brief sign-off, task distribution to team
Modeling
Low-poly meshes from base templates, UV layout, initial proxy fit test on avatars
Texturing
Full hand-paint pass — diffuse layers, shadow bakes, fabric surface detail
Fitting & Rigging
Avatar fit across all body types, animation checks, clipping fixes
QA & Delivery
Final review, engine export, cross-platform check, handoff to implementation
02 Design System
I built a modular component library with themeable design tokens, enabling rapid seasonal reskins - all while preserving visual consistency across the game's design system. The most fascinating challenge emerged in balancing macro- and micro-adaptivity. How could individual components adapt fluidly at the micro level while maintaining visual cohesion across the macro system?
04 ✦ Prototype
Efficiency systems
Sixty Items in Five Days
Each texture was fully painted by hand. There was no procedural generation, no high-poly baking tricks. The hand painting technique allowed for complete control over all seams, creases, and highlights, and importantly, ensured lightweight assets compatible with the engine.
01 Base Mesh Library
All textures were fully hand-painted, ensuring complete control over seams, creases, and highlights, while keeping assets lightweight and engine-compatible.
02 Texture Template System
Photoshop templates with dedicated layers for all key texture elements, enabling interns to produce consistent, high-quality results from day one.
03 Export Automation
Custom 3ds Max scripts automated batch exporting with proper naming conventions, saving hours of manual work per week.
04 Parallel Task Execution
Modeling and texturing ran in parallel, maximizing team efficiency throughout production.
05 QA Process Standards
A 10-point checklist per asset eliminated recurring mistakes and minimized post-release updates.
06 Intern Training Program
Standardized documentation and templates made new interns productive within a week, crucial during team fluctuations.
Special Items & Costumes
These full-body costume sets are designed for themed events and seasonal celebrations. Each costume tells a visual story while offering cohesive male and female variants that work together as a complete collection.
Tops, Jackets, Sweater
The pieces are built to mix and match freely within and across collections, to give players as much flexibility as possible.
Dresses & Skirts
Elegant and expressive dresses were crafted for a wide range of occasions, from casual social hangouts to festive in-game events
Shoes
Good footwear can make or break an outfit, so every pair receives the same level of detail and care as larger pieces.
Testing with Users
Test
05
After implementation, every item went through me, before even thinking about giving it to QA. I checked for common mistakes and verified visual consistency. Afterwards, player feedback and in-game data revealed which designs resonated and fed directly back into the next week's creative decisions.
04 ✦ Test
Ensuring Quality
10-point QA checklist
Every item went through a structured review process, covering everything from mesh integrity to in-game presentation.
What We Achieved
Impact & Learnings
06
Working on such a scale for four years showed that quality and efficiency can only exist together if processes are designed purposefully. This is what I learned from my experience.
✦ Impact & Learnings
Final Notes
Key Takeaways
Communication
✦ Impact & Learnings
Final Notes
The Impact
✦ Contact Me
Have a project in mind?
Looking for collaboration? Send an email to contact@vhoffmann.design for inquiries and projects or fill out the form.