Can We Get There From Here?: Current Challenges in Cloth Design, Modeling and Animation

Abstract

This panel will address the technical, economic and marketing hurdles that inhibit the widespread use of cloth/clothing modeling, design and animation technology. Many of the fundamental technologies needed to support cloth modeling have already been developed. Still, we do not see computer-animated characters wearing realistic clothing, and clothing designers are not creating new fashions with computer-based 3-D design systems. The CAD industry is capable of providing the systems for designing the Boeing 777, but almost none of the clothing we wear is designed with 3-D CAD tools. The panel will explore the reasons that the design of cloth and clothing, a material that has been a part of the human experience for thousands of years, has not yet been fully computerized. A variety of issues related to cloth/clothing modeling will be explored. Are there fundamental technological barriers preventing us from fully deploying computer technology when modeling, designing, or animating cloth/clothing? Have the technical problems been solved and our computers are just not fast enough? Do we simply need good user interfaces to solve this difficult modeling problem? Is realism always important when modeling cloth? Does computer-based manufacturing place special demands on cloth modeling? Are designers, artists and clothing makers resisting the computerization of their "black art"? Can the average user even afford to do cloth modeling? Is the technology too expensive? These are some of the questions that the panelists will address. Before describing the challenges involved in modeling and animating clothing, the panelists will provide a snapshot of the state-of-the-art in the field. Topics will include the detailed modeling of cloth, the research involved in clothing virtual actors, bringing clothing animation to the entertainment industry, textile mechanics and engineering applications, and the latest in apparel CAD software and technology. Each speaker will briefly describe their work in the field, augmenting their talks with images, animations and live demonstrations. The panel will strive to achieve several goals. It will highlight cloth/clothing modeling as a separate field of study. Very often cloth modeling is seen as simply another application of deformable models. Cloth is a unique material with unusual properties that requires new and different modeling methods. In the CAD field, software systems for designing clothing are certainly different from conventional CAD systems that model collections of rigid parts. Given the unique nature of the field, it is important to seed the SIGGRAPH community with new ideas and challenges. The panel will educate the audience in a way that stimulates future research in cloth/clothing modeling. Another goal of the panel is to expose the SIGGRAPH community to those people working in the field of cloth/clothing modeling who are interested in more than just visual effects. The panel includes speakers who have a broader view of cloth modeling, including those working within the textile engineering and CAD communities. They are more concerned with accurately modeling cloth as an engineering material and bringing powerful CAD tools to the marketplace than the making of pretty pictures. The panel also consists of an international participant, in recognition that some of the best clothing modeling research is being conducted overseas.

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