Resizable outerwear templates for virtual design and pattern flattening

The aim of this research was to implement a computer-aided 3D to 2D pattern development technique for outerwear. A preponderance of total clothing consumption is of garments in this category, which are designed to offer the wearer significant levels of ease. Yet there has not previously been on the market any system which offers a practical solution to the problems of 3D design and pattern flattening for clothing in this category. A set of 3D outerwear templates, one for men’s shirts and another for men’s trousers, has been developed to execute pattern flattening from virtual designs and this approach offers significant reduction in time and manpower involvement in the clothing development phase by combining creative and technical garment design processes into a single step. The outerwear templates developed and demonstrated in this research work can provide 3D design platforms for clothing designers to create virtual clothing as a surface layer which can be flattened to create a traditional pattern. Point-Cloud data captured by a modern white-light-based 3D body-scanning system were used as the basic input for creating the outerwear templates. A set of sectional curves, representative of anthropometric size parameters, was extracted from a virtual model generated from the body scan data by using reverse engineering software. These sectional curves were then modified to reproduce the required profile upon which to create items of men’s outerwear. The curves were made symmetrical, as required, before scaling to impart resizability. Using geometric modelling technique, a new surface was generated out of these resizable curves to form the required 3D outerwear templates. Through a set of functionality tests, it has been found that both of the templates developed in this research may be used for virtual design, 3D grading and pattern flattening

A Reverse Approach to Virtual Shirt Prototyping and Pattern Cutting

Traditional virtual clothing prototyping is achieved by wrapping 2D pattern pieces on virtual mannequins. This paper describes a reverse approach that develops 3D garments first and unwraps 2D pattern pieces out of them. To achieve this, a 3D drawing board for men’s upper body outerwear was developed from bodyscan data by employing reverse engineering and geometric modelling techniques. The drawing platform was made scalable by integrating 12 size parameters that were found appropriate for loose-fitting shirt so that 3D grading in space can also be realised. This 3D platform can easily be used by fashion designers to develop virtual shirts by drawing simple lines and curves and by applying mesh generation tool, and to extract 2D pattern pieces automatically if an appropriate flattening engine is available within a 3D CAD environment. It has been found that a variety of shirt and jacket designs can be developed on this 3D platform. However, difficulties were faced with raglan sleeve and one-piece collar. This paper also describes the effects of technical parameters on mesh generation and pattern flattening processes

Advances in Virtual Prototyping: Opportunities for Clothing Manufacturers

This paper summarises the recent developments in 3D clothing design systems and discusses the features of available CAD systems. It also highlights the benefits of using such systems that the clothing manufacturers can enjoy

3D Grading and Pattern Unwrapping Technique for Loose-fitting Shirt, Part 1: Resizable Design Template

This paper describes the Reverse Engineering (RE) and 3D modelling techniques used to develop a novel resizable design platform for use in virtual design; pattern flattening and automatic grading of men’s upper-body outerwear. Advanced body scanning technology and RE technique are applied to extract a set of sectional curves. The extracted curves are further processed in a CAD software program and used for new surface generation by applying a 3D modelling technique to form a resizable design platform, which is intended to be used as a 3D drawing board for the creation of virtual shirts and for the execution of 3D grading and automatic pattern flattening. As far as can be ascertained, such a resizable design platform for combined virtual design, automatic pattern creation and 3D grading of men’s shirt has not been previously demonstrated

Avatar Morphing for Virtual Fashion Prototyping

Morphing avatars in right size and shape is an essential part of any virtual clothing simulation process in order to ensure the proper fit and appearance of any virtual prototype simulated on to them. It is also a precondition for evaluating fit of virtual clothing and for taking decision on the accuracy of digital pattern pieces used in simulation. Commercial CAD systems come with a library of parametric mannequins and provide tools and facilities for adjusting their sizes and shape before using them for the purpose of virtual clothing simulation. This paper deals with the features and techniques of avatar morphing in different commercial CAD systems and identified the similarities and dissimilarities in them. It was found that body measurements used in traditional pattern cutting, as can be found in available textbooks, are too limited for use in avatar morphing. On the other hand, the available CAD systems cannot make proper use of the many measurements that can be extracted from Body scan data. It has been experienced that none of the CAD systems in use provided absolute freedom to adjust all avatar-morphing criteria to reproduce the target anthropometry completely

A Novel Approach to Fit Analysis of Virtual Fashion Clothing

A number of 3D design systems are available on the market for use in the fashion industry. They support simulation of 2D pattern pieces on an adjustable virtual mannequin to visualise the 3D appearance of fashion clothing. This offers an opportunity to check fit and pattern flaws in the virtual state so that the initial 2D pattern pieces might be refined. This enables faster detection of any error and earlier correction of design elements, material selection and assembly technique to reduce the dependency on physical prototyping and to shorten the development lead-time and the associated costs. At the same time, virtual prototypes can be used as a marketing aid for online product presentation and Internet-based retailing. However, published literature reveals that only visual presentation and analysis of drape simulation is solely not enough to ensure the meaningful use of such tools in the fashion-product-development process, especially in the situation of decision- making on accepting or rejecting a virtual prototype, or altering pattern pieces to achieve the desired fit. This paper discusses an objective approach to virtual fit analysis by identifying and analysing three technical parameters of virtual drape, namely tension (gf/cm), stretch (%) and pressure (dyne/cm2 or gm/cm2), that work on virtual clothing. Digital pattern pieces of ladies’ blouse with varying eases were drafted using a clothing CAD system; a female avatar was appropriately adjusted using the extracted average measurements from a set of body-scan data before simulating virtual blouse on to it. For use in virtual simulation, the physical and mechanical properties of a selected woven fabric were tested by the FAST (Fabric Assurance by Simple Testing) system. Findings indicate that the change in drape parameters (tension, stretch, and pressure) follows a definite pattern when the ease is varied within the pattern pieces keeping the fabric properties unchanged. This correlation between ease and virtual drape parameters leads to the development of a novel technique of virtual fit analysis by combining the objective technique (numerical analysis) with the prevailing subjective technique (visual analysis). It is expected that this approach to fit analysis of virtual clothing will make the available virtual simulation tools more meaningful and useful to the designers, fit technicians and pattern cutters in the industry

3D CAD systems for the clothing industry

The approaches for designing virtual garments may be categorised as ‘2D to 3D’ and ‘3D to 2D’. The former refers to draping flat digital pattern pieces on a virtual mannequin, and the later indicates the development of clothing design on a realistic body and subsequent flattening into 2D pattern pieces. Several computer-aided design (CAD) systems for garment visualisation in space from flat patterns have already been introduced into the clothing industry. Any industrial application of the pattern flattening technique is yet to be made, due to the non-availability of an appropriate CAD system on the market. This article reviews the historical developments of 3D CAD systems for the clothing industry, and assesses the features of currently available systems on market

3D Grading and Pattern Unwrapping Technique for Loose-fitting Shirt Part 2: Functionality

The functionality of a resizable template developed for the creation of virtual loose-fitting shirts, along with its support of automatic 3D grading and pattern flattening is described in this paper. The capacity of the system for performing as a 3D drawing platform and for supporting pattern flattening and 3D grading is tested and evaluated. Aspects of the design work are limited because the sleeves have been created separately from the body; this constraint may be addressed by building the template as a single shape. In other respects the template was found to be fully functional and ready for use by fashion designers and pattern technicians, allowing them to combine fashion illustration and pattern creation into a single step

Engineered Material from Natural Fibre for Interior Design Applications

Some natural fibres including jute, flax, hemp, kenaf and sisal have been found very promising for potential applications as reinforcement in engineered composite materials. The environmental drivers, such as ability to absorb CO2 during production in contrary to synthetic materials and having non-toxic characteristics, have made them ideal candidates for incorporation into composites for industrial and technical applications that do not require very high mechanical resistance, for examples, window and doorframes, indoor furniture panels, automotive panels and upholstery, parcel shelves, noise insulating panels etc. This paper discusses fabrication and mechanical performance testing of multi-layered jute fabrics reinforced thermoplastic composite material. Jute hessian fabrics were sandwiched in 0° orientation into several layers of High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) polymeric sheets and pressed at high temperature and pressure to form composite laminates. Microscopic analysis revealed that the fibre and yarn orientation of fabrics within composite remained intact and no visible void was identified. Mechanical performance of the composites having a small percentage of fibre content was found to have improved significantly when compared to the pure HDPE laminates. The tensile and flexural strength of the laminate composite with optimum number of layers (6-layer makes a weight fraction of 18.50%) were improved by more than 50%, while flexural modulus was also increased significantly. Fracture morphology of the composite investigated by a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) showed good adhesion of the jute fabrics with the polymer matrices

The effect of link-length and vertex angle on mesh generation and pattern flattening for virtual clothing

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to identify optimum operating parameters, namely link-length and vertex angle, for producing virtual clothing prototypes for the purpose of pattern flattening. Design/methodology/approach – Commercially available physically-based simulation and flattening engines were utilised to carry out the computational part of this study. Two separately developed 3D garment templates were used for the creation of virtual garments in the form of a triangulated mesh and later for pattern unwrapping by taking differential link-lengths and vertex angles into account to ascertain their effects on the mesh quality and on the ultimate pattern flattening process. Findings – It has been found that a link-length between 10 and 15 mm and a vertex angle between 120º and 160º are optimum for the virtual clothing prototyping process. Practical Implications – The findings of this study can universally be applied to simplify the tasks of virtual clothing prototyping and pattern unwrapping using commercial software packages. Originality/Value - Previously, there has not been any guidance available for the selection of specific operational parameters to promote 3D garment design