Virtual Garment Pre-positioning

In this paper, we present an easy method for automatic 3D garment pre-positioning. Given a digital 3D mannequin and a set of 2D patterns, the problem consists in sewing automatically the patterns around the mannequin and give an initial position of the garment that the mannequin has to wear. Our method is based upon the use of a figurine. A figurine of a virtual garment, which is always present in the garment design, is associated to the 2D patterns used for producing the garment. This figurine is a 2D drawing which gives the flavor and the style of the future garment. The figurine is the key element of the technique presented in this paper. It can be stored in a 2D CAD file with the 2D patterns of garments or in a database. In this method, we use two figurines, corresponding to the front and the back view of the future garment and a standard silhouette. The designer just needs to work once on the garment construction to allow the automatic pre-positioning. Once the designer has specified the links between the 2D garments and the figurine, he has just to take some simple actions on the figurine to complete the pre-positioning. Our method provides a mapping algorithm from the standard silhouette to a silhouette of a future client, which is the starting point of the pre-positioning. When finalized the automatic pre-positioning will help the designer to see directly the garment he invented on a “real” body.