Virtual Apparel: from the Customer to the Garment

In this paper we present a graphic environment to model and simulate garments taking into account that their shape is not only the consequence of styling, but also the result of several design, manufacturing and finishing operations. We focus the attention on geometrical and construction issues to make possible the complete description and simulation of a real complex-shaped garment within a CAD clothing environment. The well known particle-based model has been extended to take into account the physical effects of seams and darts, construction constraints, layered parts, and other manufacturing processes. Various garments test-cases have been simulated on rigid mannequins from simple cloth geometries up to complex-shaped models for real apparel manufacturing.