Patent Grant
8554523
The present invention relates to a method for creating a garment, which is written to introduce how to use the digital clothing technology for clothing design and production or how to create and animate clothes on the computer.
The present invention contrives to solve the disadvantages of the prior art.
An aspect of the invention provides a method for creating a garment in a digital clothing.
The method comprises steps of:
creating a garment on a garment window, wherein the garment initially comprises zero panel;
adding a first panel to the garment;
adding a second panel to the garment;
enclosing a plurality body parts of the human body with a plurality of panel positioning boxes;
positioning selected panels on faces of the panel positioning boxes disposed around the human body three-dimensionally in order to facilitate matching of corresponding seam lines;
defining a seam between the two selected panels which belong to the garment;
deleting a selected panel from the garment;
saving the garment into a garment file; and
opening the garment by reading in the garment file stored in a storing device.
The garment file may have a name selected by a user and an associated icon generated by a computer.
The step of deleting a selected panel may comprise a step of removing associated seams automatically.
The method may further comprise steps of:
saving on-going content of the garment window in a garment construction file; and
opening a selected garment construction file.
The garment construction file may save all panels in the garment window, positions of the panels, and seams defined among the panels.
The method may further comprise steps of:
turning on/off the human body from the garment window;
controlling transparency of the human body and the panels; and
switching the human body to another human body.
The method may further comprise a step of using a same human body throughout whole digital clothing processes including a panel creation stage, a garment creation stage, an attire creation stage, and a test-on stage.
The step of positioning may comprise a step of automatically placing the panels on the faces of the panel positioning boxes according to a plurality of panel positioning tips created in a previous panel creation stage.
The plurality of panel positioning tips may comprise discrete body coordinates and panel landmark lines.
The method may further comprise a step of modifying position of the panel within the faces of panel positioning boxes interactively.
The translucency of the panels and the human body may be controlled as needed.
The step of positioning may further comprise a step of displaying one or more panel positioning boxes in a plurality of views, and wherein the plurality of views comprise:
a parallel or perspective view;
an orthogonal, oblique, or arbitrary viewing direction; and
any subset of Front, Back, Left, Right faces.
The step of defining may comprise a step of creating the seam by selecting two corresponding seam lines, and each of the seam lines may comprise a line on a panel.
The two corresponding seam lines may form a seam line pair.
Each of the seam lines may comprise a seam start, a seam end, and a plurality of notches between the seam start and end, and wherein the plurality of notches mark places at which the seam coincide.
The step of defining may comprise a step of creating seams, and wherein the step of creating seams comprises steps for:
moving panel for translating or rotating a selected panel within a face of the panel positioning box;
setting pane/view for setting one or more active panes and viewing options;
creating notch on a selected seam line;
editing notch for editing a selected notch;
deleting notch;
reversing seam line for exchanging the seam start and the seam end;
reversing seam line with twist;
creating seam for creating a seam between a pair of seam lines;
deleting seam; and
changing seam color.
The advantages of the present invention are: (1) the method provides digital clothing; and (2) the method provides steps to combine panels to make a garment.
Although the present invention is briefly summarized, the fuller understanding of the invention can be obtained by the following drawings, detailed description and appended claims.
These and other features, aspects and advantages of the present invention will become better understood with reference to the accompanying drawings, wherein:
U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/289,354 was filed on Feb. 9, 2010 for an invention entitled “Method for Digital Clothing.” The disclosures of the application are incorporated by reference as if fully set forth herein.
1. Introduction
Among all the technological achievements which have been made throughout human history, if one is asked to pick an item that exerts the most profound effect to today's human life, arguably it would be the invention of computers. Computers have been continuously replacing humans in various kinds of tedious work. Since clothing design and manufacturing involves a large amount of tedious work, a question naturally arises: how much have the computers been relieving clothing people from the tedious work?
At early stages, computers were built for processing numbers and texts. Thus they were suited for scientific calculation or simple business computation, but were not suited for tasks which require complicated human-computer interactions. Meanwhile, an important innovation was made to computers. It was the development of graphics technology, which stores three dimensional (3D) representation of an object in the memory and visualizes the object from arbitrary vantage points. This new technique, which enabled seeing before making and true human-computer interaction, brought a huge impact to manufacturing industry. The technology initiated so-called computer-aided design/manufacturing (CAD/CAM), which has been settled as a standard methodology in many industrial areas (e.g., automobile production).
Now, let's go back to the original question: how well are the computer technologies exploited in clothing design and manufacturing? Computers are indeed being used in various stages of these days' clothing production. For example, it is commonplace to use a CAD software for creating/editing patterns; textile-design CAD softwares are also becoming popular tools among fashion designers.
However, the level of computerization practiced in clothing production has been far from satisfactory. Even though individual components (pattern editing/cutting, previewing of textiles) have been computerized, in actual clothing production, a significant amount of tedious work still has to be done by human hands. No reliable technology has been generally available which can tell, before sewing the actual panels in the conventional way, the panels you draw on a pattern-CAD window will produce a garment you really want. The clothes you synthesize on a design-CAD window often differ from what you really get.
An essential part which has been missing for a satisfactory computerization of the clothing production process was the interplay between the pattern editing and previewing of the resulting outfit; fashion designers could not see the final look (draping, fabric details, etc.) of the clothes they constructed on the pattern-CAD software. Providing such a feedback can be done in principle if we can predict the static draping or dynamic movements of the CAD-constructed clothes in response to the body posture or motion. But it turns out a difficult problem. Experts in textile/mechanical engineering have been studying this problem for decades.
It is worth to note the breakthroughs made at the beginning of the 21st century in physically-based simulation of cloth. In 2002, so called the immediate buckling model proposed by Choi and Ko brought remarkable improvements in both realism and simulation speed. In the following years, additional improvements have been made in the other aspects of clothing simulation. As a result, complex clothes can now be constructed on a computer, and their dynamic movements can be simulated with a reasonable degree of realism.
The physical simulation of clothes and other necessary components to enable computer-aided clothing design/manufacturing (CACD/CACM) are not fully mature yet. But it is significant to realize that the current technology is already enough to bring revolutionary changes in clothing production. As word processors profoundly changed the writing culture, the above technology can reduce cumbersome work in clothing production to a remarkable level. A new era is coming in which you can produce clothes by designing/editing them on the computer and finally submitting the results to a CACM system. The author of this disclosure believes that now is a good time for a clothing expert to start studying this new technique. We will refer this new branch of study (i.e., creation, previewing, and manufacturing of clothes with a full utilization of the computer technologies) as digital clothing. This disclosure is prepared as a disclosure to introduce digital clothing.
This disclosure can bring more vivid experiences if the readers experiment relevant topics using a digital clothing software.
1.1 Goal of Digital Clothing
The goal of digital clothing is to make clothing design and manufacturing easier by making a full utilization of computers. The computer technology has made striking improvements over the past sixty years. Nevertheless, various kinds of cumbersome work still exist in clothing production. A fundamental source of such incumbrance is that clothes can not be previewed/assessed until they are constructed with real fabrics. A critical feature of digital clothing is that it allows the users to preview, assess, and make modifications to the clothes on the computer without constructing real ones. Digital clothing will be connected to a manufacturing hardware in the future, so that the clothes constructed on the computer can be manufactured by just clicking the ‘output’ icon. With a proper utilization of the digital clothing technology, people can focus more on creative aspect of clothing production, and clothing production cycle can accelerate tremendously.
1.2 Overview of Digital Clothing Process
The most typical usage of the digital clothing technology may take the following process: firstly the user constructs clothes on the computer, then previews the fabric details and draping behavior of the clothes, makes necessary modifications to them, and finally she/he manufactures the result.
In this disclosure we will call the stages involved while working with the digital clothing technology collectively as the digital clothing process. The remainder of this section takes a closer look at the digital clothing process, which consists of the following stages:
Clothing production is targeted to a certain body. Therefore preparation of the body should be the starting point of the digital clothing process. The details of this body preparation stage will be presented below.
For the prepared body, we can now construct clothes. For constructing clothes, a fundamental step would be pattern-making. For pattern-making, various kinds of lines need to be drawn. The details of line drawing are presented later. By selecting a subset of the above lines, we can define panels. Creation of panels is presented later. We can construct a garment by specifying seams between panels. The details of this garment construction stage is presented later. Attire is a collection of garments which are put on the same body. The concept of attire becomes significant when a try-on test (i.e., draping simulation) is to be performed, since most preparations for the try-on test are done while setting up the attire. The details of attire setup are explained below. The physical property (e.g., stretch stiffness) of the fabric used for the garment need to be specified. This task is done in the physical attribute specification stage.
With the physical attributes being set, now draping simulation can be performed to examine the dynamic movements of the clothes while the human character takes a walk. The steps involved in draping simulation is going to be presented later. In addition to the physical attributes of the fabric, the fabric details (e.g., texture, fabric structure) need to be set. This task is done in the fabric detail specification stage. Visualization of the 3D clothes on the computer is called rendering. In order to get desired rendering of the scene, the user need to control the vintage point or the colors/positions of the light sources. The details of this step are presented later. In digital clothing, some auxiliary components such as hair, shoes, accessories can be added to the result of the above.
If the result of the try-on test is not satisfactory, the user can go back to a relevant stage and make necessary modifications, and perform the try-on test again. This loop can repeat until the user obtains a satisfactory result. Then, the user can finally manufacture the result.
1.3 Goal of a Digital Clothing Course
The goal of a digital clothing course (offered in a university) could be set to teach how to design and manufacture clothes with computers. The course can let the students experience that the components which used to be done in the conventional way can be done on the computer, that their clothing design can be stored/modified, that their result of design can be previewed with a photo-realistic quality and manufactured on any machine in the world as long as they can find a machine supporting it.
Most students majoring in clothing are not familiar with working on 3D scenes. The author notes that it is worth while to take some time/effort to become familiar with the manipulation of 3D scenes, since it will lead to innovations the digital clothing technology can readily provide.
1.4 Goal
The goal is to disclose at least one aspect of digital clothing courses. This disclosure teaches how to construct clothes on the computer, how to perform try-on tests, how to preview and manufacture digitally generated clothes.
In the process of delivering the above, this disclosure attempts to establish some terminologies which might facilitate the digital clothing study. In contrast to the conventional clothing, in digital clothing, you instruct the computer to do the job. For precise human-computer communication, digital clothing often needs to have terminologies which refer to very detailed/specific features. For example, when creating a dart, the user may want to equalize the dart legs, the meaning of which will be introduced in a subsequent chapter. Establishment of terminologies for human-computer communication might also contribute to facilitating human-human communication.
1.5 Differences from a Manual
The heart of digital clothing is doing it with computers. This disclosure has a practical goal of teaching the readers how to perform the clothing design/production steps on the computers. Then, how is this disclosure different from the manual of a digital clothing software? Digital clothing does not have a great deal of theoretical aspects, but it does contain some abstract and fundamental elements. Education of abstract/fundamental elements is contrasted from practicing a software in that the former needs to explain the why parts which are usually not included in manuals. Certain parts of digital clothing process are not intuitive when compared with the conventional clothing production process. For example, digital clothing elaborates on collision handling. Readers may feel curious why they have to be aware of collisions in dealing with clothes. This disclosure explains the state-of-the-art digital clothing program spends 70% of its computation on collision handling, and the program can spend a lot more unless the user provides some kind of hints about the current colliding/contact situation between body and garment or garment and garment. The organization of this disclosure follows the general clothing production process rather than the software menu structure. The disclosure does not attempt to explain all the menu items or keyboard functions. The disclosure rather looks like a conventional clothing construction disclosure except that it is augmented with how to do it with computers.
1.6 Scope of this Disclosure
The current edition of this disclosure will be mostly about CACD, with a very limited coverage of CACM. The main reason of this unbalanced coverage is because CACM is still on its way. When CACM becomes available, a new edition of this disclosure will be prepared to accommodate the updates.
1.7 Organization of this Disclosure
This disclosure can be viewed as consisting of five parts. It is a logical structure; the chapters constituting a part do not necessarily come consecutively. The content of each part is summarized below:
All the clothing production steps are targeted to a certain body. Therefore the capability to generate a body which suits to your own purpose and/or take measurements from a given 3D body is a natural thing to master at the beginning of a digital clothing course. This chapter is about creation and measurement of human bodies. 3D scan is becoming generally available and is clearly a way of obtaining human bodies. But for the moment scanned bodies are not directly useable for try-on test. A critical reason is because the scanned body is not segmented into articulated parts so that joints can be bent. The current version of this disclosure does not discuss scanned bodies. But as the digital clothing technology can embrace scanned bodies, updates will be made to this disclosure in the future to cover the scanned bodies.
Description on creation/measurement of a human body inevitably entails some ground knowledge on human anatomy and anthropometry. With an intention to become a self-contained disclosure, this chapter starts with introductory materials including the body landmarks, landmark lines, and primary body measurements. Then, the chapter will come back to the main topics, i.e., creation/measurement of a human body. The readers, who are not going to take any body measurements or the readers who are not going to generate any novel bodies but will simply use one of the bodies provided by DC-SUITE may skip some parts of this chapter.
The materials presented in this chapter refers various landmarks, landmark lines, and circumferences in the body, the names of which turn out easier to memorize when we comprehend a few basic terminologies for anatomical planes and directions:
This chapter starts with the study of body landmarks and landmarklines, and introduces how primary body measurements are taken. Then, it explains how various measurements in general can be taken from a given body. Finally, the chapter presents how a desired body can be created.
2.1 Body Landmarks
Body landmarks (BLs) mark the key locations on the surface of the body, which play an essential role in the measurement and creation of a body. The ability to identify the location of each landmark as well as to memorize its name can facilitate professional communications regarding human body.
Several groups of researchers attempted to standardize body landmarks. Unfortunately there isn't yet a single set of landmarks which is accepted as standard throughout the world. The lack of standardization can cause inconvenience in the use as well as in the development of a digital clothing software; a software which cover a set of BLs may not cover a few BLs which are adopted by the current users.
We note that we can take the union of the landmark sets proposed so far, so that the result may contain any landmarks which can possibly arise in the study of body. We will call such comprehensive set of body landmarks as the BL-superset. What DC-SUITE attempts in order to circumvent the above inconvenience is to let the body have all the landmarks in the BL-superset, so that any practical BL-set can be covered. With this provision, the user can freely have his own set of BLs, as long as those BLs are included in the BL-superset. In a DC-SUITE body, BLs are already marked (by a body expert). When the user creates a novel body by transforming an existing DC-SUITE body, the BLs undergo the same transformation. DC-SUITE provides an additional user interface so that the user can make further modifications to the location of the BLs if needed.
The main purpose of this section is to list the BL-superset and then provide necessary explanations/drawings so that the readers can locate each BL. Standardizing the names is a daunting task. What this disclosure do is to follow ISO standard whenever possible, and list the synonyms to facilitate the identification of the Bls. DC-SUITE allows the user to rename a BL. Therefore, as long as the BL-superset includes all the desired BLs, the user can define his own set of BLs with his own naming. Although the explanations/drawings given in this section will suffice in most cases, the readers are encouraged to refer to additional literature when it is needed.
2.1.1 Body Landmarks in the Head and Neck
When DC-SUITE reads in a body, the body already equips with a set of BLs. DC-SUITE provides the following operations for the manipulation of the body landmarks:
Landmark lines (LLs) are (imaginary) lines which can be considered on or around the surface of the body. LLs are defined in terms of the BLs; if the user makes modifications to some BLs, then the LLs dependent on those BLs are redefined accordingly.
2.3 Body Measurements
Waist girth, arm length, etc. Taking measurements of the body are essential for making the constructed garment fit to the body. Body measurements can be classified into two categories: lengths and girths. Lengths are measured between two BLs. Girths are the circumferential lengths.
Each body measurement (BM) is defined in terms of the BLs and Lls in one of the following ways: (1) a BM is the distance between two BLs, (2) a BM is the length of a girth, (3) a BM is the world-aligned distance between two LLs or body extremities, (4) a BM is the length of an LL, or (5) a BM is the summation of several other BMs. Some measurements do not belong to any of the above categories. Since the differences are subtle, by limiting the measurements to the above categories, we can expect some standardization in body measurements.
Classification of Atomic Length Measurements (Length measurements can be classified into the following):
The length measurements can be classified into atomic or non-atomic measurements. Measurement of the (body-aligned, hull, or surface) length between two BLs which belong to the same body segment is called an atomic length measurement. Non-atomic measurements (e.g., total length, arm length) are obtained by summing several atomic measurements. For example, the arm length, which measures the surface length over two segments, is not an atomic measurement.
Classification of Girth Measurements (Girth measurements can be classified into the following):
World-aligned surface girths
2.3.1 Primary Body Measurements
The set of BMs and their names haven't been standardized yet. But this disclosure attempts a moderate version of standardization: we allow only BMs which is an atomic length measurement, a girth measurement, or a non-atomic measurement. Then, from a given comprehensive set of BLs, any BMs can be defined according to the five conventions introduced above.
Although any combination of the BLs or any circumference can be defined as a BM, typically used BM are the ones listed below. In this disclosure, we will call them as the primary body measurements. The readers are expected to be able to identify the definition of each primary BM.
DC-SUITE provides the following operations for body measurements:
Human body can be viewed as an articulated collection of body segments. In this context, a body can be defined in terms of the skeletal part and the geometrical part. Skeletal part defines the lengths of the body segments. Geometrical part defines the shapes of the body segments. Professional modeling of a 3D human body involves a large amount of handwork. Since body modeling itself should not be a primary time/effort taking part of digital clothing, DC-SUITE provides an easy-to-use interface for the creation of the body.
2.4.1 Creating a Body with DC-SUITE
DC-SUITE provides the following operations for creating bodies:
Select Walk lets the user select a walk and shows the preview of the walk the current body takes. This operation retargets the prototype walk for the current body. This operation puts the body into the walking-mode until Select Pose is performed.
2.5 Modeling Other Components
Although auxiliary components such as face, hair, shoes, and accessories are not directly related to the construction of clothes, their presence in suitable forms is important in assessing aesthetic impression of the clothing design. DC-SUITE provides various means to model those components.
2.5.1 Face Modeling
The face of the current gross body can be replaced from the selections provided by DC-SUITE. DC-SUITE internally makes necessary modifications to the base of the face so that it seamlessly attaches to the neck of the gross body. DC-SUITE does not allow the users to modify the details such as the face geometry. Currently face modeling in DC-SUITE is done by the following single operation.
Human hair is not a part of clothing construction itself. Nevertheless, an aesthetic judgment of an outfit in association with a particular person can be made properly unless we can see the hairstyle of the person. The hairstyle modeling of DC-SUITE is a self-contained, state-of-the-art technology which is developed for the fashion experts. DC-SUITE provides the following three levels of hairstyling so that people can work on simple models when less visual details need to be worked on the hair, and can move on to more sophisticated models when more detailed/realistic hair is needed.
The hairstyle of the current face can be switched to one among the selections provided by DC-SUITE. The user can apply interactive operations to the selected hairstyle to create a novel hairstyle. DC-SUITE provides the following operations for hairstyling:
DC-SUITE provides a collection of shoes. There are two types of shoes: high heel shoes and low heel shoes. For simplicity, DC-SUITE assumes the shoes have the following fixed dimensions: for the high heel, the toe height is 0.7 cm, the heel height is 8 cm, the foot length is 24 cm, and for the low heel, the toe height is 1 cm, the heel height is 3 cm, and the foot length is 24 cm for women, 28 cm for men, 20 cm for boys, and 18 cm for girls. For woman, DC-SUITE provides two sets of walking motions: one set for high heels and another set for low heels.
DC-SUITE provides the following operations for shoes modeling:
DC-SUITE provides a collection of accessories. Available accessories are categorized into earrings, bracelets, broaches, rings, hairpins, and handbags. DC-SUITE provides the following operations for attaching accessories:
Clothes are constructed by sewing panels together. For the preparation of panels, drawing straight or curve lines is probably the most fundamental operation. In this disclosure, the term ‘line’ is used to refer a straight or curved line. A panel can be created by selecting a set of lines. As in the conventional clothing production, therefore, the capability to draw lines of various shapes needs to be mastered thoroughly in the study of digital clothing. Line drawing and panel creation are collectively called as the pattern-making stage. This chapter presents the line drawing part, and the next chapter will present the panel creation part.
3.1 Working on Points with DC-SUITE
Points are zero-dimensional entities. Nevertheless, when lines (one-dimensional entities) need to be drawn, points play an important role. For example, a straight line can be defined by giving the two end points, and a curved line can be defined by giving the control points along the curve. DC-SUITE provides the following operations for the manipulation of points:
Suppose that a point is lying on a line. What would be the possible relationship between the point and the line? There are three possibilities:
We emphasize the difference between dividing and cutting. We say a point divides a line when the two resulting pieces meet at a point and continue to be connected at that point. On the other hand, we say a point cuts a line when the points cuts the original line into two separate independent lines.
3.3 Operations for Two Crossing Lines
Two different operations can be defined in the context of two mutually crossing lines:
DC-SUITE provides the following operations for the manipulation of lines:
The results of the above operations can be saved into a pattern-making file (.pmf), which is the groundwork for creating panels.
4. Panel Creation
In order to construct a garment on the computer, the first thing you should do is to prepare the cloth panels. This chapter is about creating panels. If you have prior experience on conventional clothing production, the basic mechanism of digital panel-creation should be intuitively understandable.
We use the term cloth panel or simply panel to refer to a piece of cloth (which is cut according to the shape of the pattern. In the conventional clothing, a pattern is a prototype made of paper used to prepare a panel. In digital clothing, however, as soon as a set of lines are selected, the result is regarded as a panel. Therefore patterns (in the conventional meaning) are never made. For this reason the term “pattern” alone is rarely used in digital clothing. But in this disclosure we will still use the compound term “pattern-making” to refer drawing of points and lines in the process of creating panels.).
Panel contour refers to the boundary line(s) which define a panel. Seams are usually made along the panel contour. A panel is cut with some margin for seams, which is called the seam allowance. In this disclosure, we will refer the panel without the seam allowance as the panel, and the panel with the seam allowance as the master panel.
4.1 The Textile Coordinate System
The selvage (or selvedge, self-edge, list, listing) refers to the edge of a textile role. Weft is the fiber which runs across the width of the textile, while warp (or filling, pick, woof) is the fiber which runs in parallel with the selvage. The grain collectively refers to the warp and weft.
For creating a panel, its geometrical shape is not the only thing that needs to be specified; its orientation with respect to the grain also has to be specified. When drawing panels on the screen, therefore, we need to have some sort of coordinate system. This disclosure will use the following convention. Unless otherwise told, we will assume that x-axis (horizontal rightward direction) of the pattern-making window is along the warp direction, and y-axis (vertical up direction) is along the weft direction. The right side of the textile is facing toward us from the screen. When textiles are manufactured, one side is supposed to be outside and the other side is supposed be inside, which are referred in this disclosure as the right side and the wrong side, respectively. This convention will be used throughout this disclosure.
4.2 Pattern-Making vs. Panel-Creation
A pattern-making file (.pmf) stores a collection of points and lines, along with the panels which are currently under construction. Those points and lines, which are called the pattern-making points/lines, are just geometrical entities, and do not define a cloth piece yet. A pattern-making file stores a number of pattern-making layers each of which contains its own collection of points and lines. The layers are visualized on the pattern-making window. Each pattern-making layer can be translated, rotated, scaled. Display of each pattern-making layer can be controlled. For example, display of a pattern-making layer can be turned on/off, dimmed, darkened, etc.
A panel is a cloth piece which is the building block to form a garment. Points and lines comprising a panel are referred as the panel points/lines. Each panel in the pattern-making window can be saved into or read from a panel file (.pnl). A .pmf file is contrasted from a .pnl file: a .pmf file stores the whole workspace of points, lines, and panels, which can be in incomplete/intermediate states, on the other hand, a .pnl file stores only a complete panel.
A new pattern-making file can be read or imported while working with a pattern-making file. When a pattern-making file is read, the old panels and pattern-making layers are all removed and the new panels and pattern-making layers are read into the pattern-making window. When a pattern-making file is imported, instead of removing the old content, the pattern-making window is augmented with the new set of layers (and panels if the user specifies so). The user can save the current content (it does not need to be complete content but can be on-going intermediate content) of the pattern-making window into a pattern-making file, in which case all the pattern-making layers and panels in the window are saved.
4.3 Pattern-Making Window
Visualization of both pattern-making points/lines and panels is done on the same window, i.e., the pattern-making window. It can be viewed as that the panels are drawn on top of the pattern-making layers. When a panel is deleted or its display is turned off, the pattern-making points/lines beneath the panel are exposed. When a panel line is elongated, the pattern-making line underneath it remains intact. Display of panels can be contrasted from the display of pattern-making points/lines by controlling the darkness, line width, line type, etc.
4.4 Creating Panels with DC-SUITE
DC-SUITE provides the following operations for the creation of panels:
Open Pattern-Making File reads in a .pmf file into the pattern-making window. This operation removes the previous content (if there was any).
In the pattern-making window, (1) additional points and lines can be created on a new pattern-making layer or on an (user-specified) existing pattern-making layer, (2) a new panel can be created, and (3) a panel can be edited by applying various operations to the panel points/lines, the pattern-making points/lines, or the mixture of those two (e.g., cutting out a portion of the panel with a pattern-making line, or replacing some portion of the contour with a new line).
The system records the time when the last modification is made to the panels. When a subsequent stage (i.e., the garment/attire/simulation/rendering stages) is performed, if the recorded time is more recent, then the program may automatically perform some necessary steps.
4.6 Editing Panels
A panel can be modified by moving its points, stretching or dividing its lines. Operations for editing panels are borrowed from the pattern-making operations (i.e., the operations defined for drawing/editing points/lines.) For editing panels, we take only the pattern-making operations which leave panels in valid states. A panel is said to be in a valid state if the contour is simple and closed. For example, a Cut Line or Clip operation can cause the panel to go into an invalid state. Three additional operations are defined to allow for more dramatic editing of panels. Replace Contour replaces a portion of the contour with a new sequence of lines. Cut Panel cuts a panel with a given line and creates two new panels. Merge Panels is the inverse of Cut Panel operation.
4.7 Editing Panels with DC-SUITE
DC-SUITE provides the following operations for editing panels:
There are several additional operations in DC-SUITE which can apply to already existing panels:
In order to create a garment out of panels, the panels need to be positioned at proper places. It is so obvious in the conventional clothing that it may sound even odd to mention it. In the conventional clothing, people position panels almost subconsciously. In digital clothing, however, panel positioning is an important component which the user needs to pay a great deal of explicit attention. Adjacent panels need to be positioned at neighboring locations for the creation of seams, which is same as in the conventional clothing. But panels also need to be positioned properly in 3D with respect to the body in digital clothing. This new requirement may not look intuitive. But proper body-relative panel positioning is a very important requisite if the previewing of the clothes needs to be done.
DC-SUITE provides an interface to aid the user to arrange the panels into desired locations. The result of user's positioning effort can be stored so that the panels can be positioned at proper places without any further user intervention.
4.9.1 Grain Lines and Panel Positioning Frame
The lines representing the warp and weft directions are collectively called the grain lines. In this disclosure the grain lines are visualized as two orthogonal crossing axes, the longer one representing the warp direction. Since the grain lines encode only the directions, the position of the lines does not carry any information. Since the pattern-making window is aligned with the grain lines, visualizing the grain lines do not make much sense in the panel creation stage. But in subsequent stages, the grain lines may need to be displayed. The display of the grain lines can be turned on/off, the default being turning off.
The panel positioning frame is the 3D coordinate system imbedded in the panel to encode the relative position of the panel with respect to the body when constructing the garment. The panel positioning frame is visualized as two orthogonal axes and another axis coming out of the panel which is not shown in the figure. The display of the panel positioning frame can be turned on/off, the default being turning off.
The local frame is created/used implicitly; the user does not need to know whether a frame exists or when such a frame is being used. But the concept of local frame can facilitate technical discussion on panel positioning with respect to the body in the garment creation stage.
4.9.2 Panel Positioning with Offset Planes
There are five offset planes: the front, back, left, right, and top offset planes. The amount of offset from the body can be modified. In the garment construction stage, when a panel is double-clicked with the front [back, left, right, top] view, the panel is placed on the front [back, left, right, top] offset plane. The user may need to further translate/rotate the panel to a proper location. The required accuracy of the positioning depends on whether it is in the garment creation stage or attire setup stage.
4.9.3 Creating the Panel Positioning Tips
The body-relative position of a panel (i.e., the position of the panel around the body when the garment is put on the body) is encoded by the discrete body coordinates and the panel landmark lines. These two kinds of information is collectively called the panel positioning tips. The panel positioning tips are stored in the panel data, so that the information can be accessed in the subsequent garment/attire creation and try-on stages. The tips are initialized when a panel is created, and can be modified as needed subsequently.
The discrete body coordinates of a panel is a 3-tuple (A,B,C), where A, B, and C are taken from the body parts, longitudes, and latitudes, respectively. The choices for the body parts are Head, Left-Head, Right-Head, Neck, Left-Neck, Right-Neck, Torso, Left-Torso, Right-Torso, Left-Arm, Right-Arm, Legs, Left-Leg, Right-Leg, Left-Foot, and Right-Foot. The left/right is taken in terms of the body, not in terms of the viewers. Bold-faced ones are the most frequently used ones. Left/Right-Torsos [Left/Right-Heads, Left/Right-Necks] are used rather than Torso [Head, Neck] when such use is more convenient. For example, when a non-separate panel covers both left and right torso, people may find using Torso more convenient. However, when panels are created separately for the left and right torso, people may find using Left/Right-Torsos more convenient. The choices for the longitudes are Front, Back, Left, and Right. For Left/Right-Head/Neck/Torso, the longitude Right/Left is not used. The choices for the latitudes are Top, Bottom, and Middle.
The landmark lines of a panel consists of y-axis (the vertical up line) and x-axis (horizontal line) which are orthogonal to each other. When the longitude is Front/Back/Left/Right, the landmark lines come on the front/back/left/right plane of the panel positioning box. The origin, x and y axes of the landmark lines are determined as follows: In the panels for Torso and Left/Right-Torso, y axis indicates the projection of the torso center line onto the front plan of the box and x axis indicates the waist line. (The two axes must form a right-handed 2D frame.) For Legs, y and x axes indicate the (projection of) midway line between the two legs and the waist line, respectively. For Left/Right-Leg, y and x axes indicate the (projection of) leg center line and the waist line, respectively. For Left/Right-Arm, the landmark lines indicate the (projection of) arm center line at the Acromion (top of the shoulder) level. For Head and Left/Right-Head, the landmark lines indicate the (projection of) head center line at the Vertex level. For Neck and Left/Right-Neck, the landmark lines indicate the (projection of) vertical center line at the Anterior Neck level. For Left/Right-Foot, the landmark lines indicate the (projection of) lower leg center line at the sole level. At the initial creation, they are drawn (of course, the display can be turned off) at a default location on (sometimes in the outside of) the panel, so that the user can freely translate or rotate to a desired location. In addition to the information encoded in the discrete body coordinates, the landmark lines provide more detailed information about where the panel should be positioned. Landmark positioning needs to be done with some accuracy but does not need to be done with an utmost accuracy. The latitudes are used to determine the default position of the landmark lines. But they become obsolete as soon as the user positions the landmark lines to a proper place.
4.9.4 Grouping Panels
The task of positioning a set of panels can be done more conveniently if the user can treat them as a group. For example, panels created for the left leg can be grouped to position them together. When panels are grouped, the group landmark lines are newly created, so that the user can locate the group into a desired position. The relative position among the panels is kept fixed after they are grouped. If the relative position needs to be changed, the user must un-group the panels, set them into new positions, and then group the panels again. For the panels which form a group, the original individual landmark lines are not editable by the user. They are maintained internally by the system.
4.9.5 Three Stages of Panel Positioning
The user is expected to perform panel positioning in the panel creation stage, garment creation stage, and attire creation stage. The purposes and required accuracies of the positioning in those stages are all different.
DC-SUITE provides the following operations for positioning panels:
Panels existing in other formats (e.g., DXF, Gerber, Lectra) may need to be imported. Most digital clothing softwares provide format conversion functions to deal with such situations. In some cases, printed or hand-drawn patterns or actual cloth panels may need to be imported. For those cases, scanner or camera based importing is employed. Importing a panel or printed pattern can be done also with a digitizer. However, this kind of importing is becoming obsolete; it is being replaced by scanner/camera-based importing. So this disclosure will not cover digitizer-based importing. This section presents how such imports can be performed. Depending on the design of the course, this section can be postponed to the end of the course.
5. Garment Construction
A garment is a dress piece formed by sewing a set of panels to each other. In the garment construction stage, atomic elements are panels. Garment construction consists of two major parts: panel selection and seam creation; a set of panels must be selected before seams can be defined among them.
Garment construction is done on the garment window. The garment window is different from the pattern-making window. For the garment construction, panels need to be positioned around the body in order to facilitate the matching of corresponding seam lines. Therefore, 3D position of the panels with respect to the body is practically important information in the garment construction stage. Display of the body can be turned on/off, with the default being turning on. The translucency of the body and panel display can be controlled. The current body can be switched to another body at any time of the garment construction stage. In the garment construction stage, the body is visualized just to aid finding the corresponding sides (seam lines) of the seams. But it is recommended that the same body is used throughout the whole digital clothing process including the panel/garment/attire creation and the try-on test.
5.1 Creating a Garment with DC-SUITE
DC-SUITE provides the following operations for creating garments:
In constructing a garment, identification of corresponding seam line pairs should be done extensively. The garment window is designed to facilitate viewing of the corresponding seam lines. In the garment window, five [six] boxes enclose the torso [left/right torsos], arms, legs, so that the panels are positioned on the faces of the boxes. Those boxes are called the panel positioning boxes. DC-SUITE automatically places the panels according to the panel positioning tips (created in the panel creation stage), but the user can interactively modify the position of the panel within the face if it helps perform the seam line matching task. Translucency of the panels and the body can be controlled as needed.
The garment window shows individual boxes or any combinations of the boxes in the following views:
A seam line is a line on a panel along which a seam will be created. A seam can be created by selecting two corresponding seam lines. Those corresponding seam lines are collectively called a seam line pair. The two seam lines of a seam line pair do not need to have the same length, in which case the seam is called an anisometric seam.
The start and the end of a seam line is called the seam start and the seam end, respectively. A panel can have notches which mark the places at which the seam must coincide. Notches are internally represented as dividing points. Therefore, whether panels contain notches or not, we just need to define seams between seam lines, without giving any further consideration on notches.
A seam, when it is anisometric, can be seamed with the following eight options: (1) proportional, (2) easy-start, (3) easy-end, (4) easy-middle, (5) easy-start-easy-end, (6) easy-start-easy-middle, (7) easy-middle-easy-end, and (8) easy-start-easy-middle-easy-end.
When a panel is brought up on the garment window, each panel line automatically becomes a seam line. It is more accurate to say that panel lines and seam lines are identical; we just call the lines on the panel contour as panel lines in the panel creation stage, but we call the same lines as seam lines in the garment creation stage. The same operations defined for editing the panel lines can be used for seam lines.
5.4 Creating Seams
Creation of a seam consists of three parts: (1) preparing seam lines, (2) creating seams, and (3) specifying seam options:
DC-SUITE provides the following operations for creating seams:
Set Seam Type: sets the seam type to (1) plain, (2) flat-felled, (3) French, etc.
An aspect of the invention provides a method for creating a garment in a digital clothing.
The method comprises steps of:
creating a garment on a garment window, wherein the garment initially comprises zero panel (S1000);
adding a first panel to the garment (S1100);
adding a second panel to the garment (S1200);
enclosing a plurality body parts of the human body with a plurality of panel positioning boxes (S1300);
positioning selected panels on faces of the panel positioning boxes disposed around the human body three-dimensionally in order to facilitate matching of corresponding seam lines (S1400);
defining a seam between the two selected panels which belong to the garment (S1500);
deleting a selected panel from the garment (S1600);
saving the garment into a garment file (S1700); and
opening the garment by reading in the garment file stored in a storing device (S1800).
The garment file may have a name selected by a user and an associated icon generated by a computer.
The step (S1600) of deleting a selected panel may comprise a step of removing associated seams automatically.
The method may further comprise steps of:
saving on-going content of the garment window in a garment construction file (S1900); and
opening a selected garment construction file (S2000).
The garment construction file may save all panels in the garment window, positions of the panels, and seams defined among the panels.
The method may further comprise steps of:
turning on/off the human body from the garment window (S2100);
controlling transparency of the human body and the panels (S2200); and
switching the human body to another human body (S2300).
The method may further comprise a step of using a same human body throughout whole digital clothing processes including a panel creation stage, a garment creation stage, an attire creation stage, and a test-on stage (S2400).
The step (S1400) of positioning may comprise a step of automatically placing the panels on the faces of the panel positioning boxes according to a plurality of panel positioning tips created in a previous panel creation stage.
The plurality of panel positioning tips may comprise discrete body coordinates and panel landmark lines.
The method may further comprise a step of modifying position of the panel within the faces of panel positioning boxes interactively (S2500).
The translucency of the panels and the human body may be controlled as needed.
The step (S1400) of positioning may further comprise a step of displaying one or more panel positioning boxes in a plurality of views, and wherein the plurality of views comprise:
a parallel or perspective view;
an orthogonal, oblique, or arbitrary viewing direction; and
any subset of Front, Back, Left, Right faces.
The step (S1500) of defining may comprise a step of creating the seam by selecting two corresponding seam lines, and each of the seam lines may comprise a line on a panel.
The two corresponding seam lines may form a seam line pair.
Each of the seam lines may comprise a seam start, a seam end, and a plurality of notches between the seam start and end, and wherein the plurality of notches mark places at which the seam coincide.
The step (S1500) of defining may comprise a step of creating seams, and wherein the step of creating seams comprises steps for:
moving panel for translating or rotating a selected panel within a face of the panel positioning box;
setting pane/view for setting one or more active panes and viewing options;
creating notch on a selected seam line;
editing notch for editing a selected notch;
deleting notch;
reversing seam line for exchanging the seam start and the seam end;
reversing seam line with twist;
creating seam for creating a seam between a pair of seam lines;
deleting seam; and
changing seam color.
While the invention has been shown and described with reference to different embodiments thereof, it will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that variations in form, detail, compositions and operation may be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention as defined by the accompanying claims.
This application is a Non-provisional application of the provisional patent Application No. 61/289,354 for “Method for Digital Clothing” filed on Feb. 9, 2010.
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| Number | Date | Country | |
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| 20110153281 A1 | Jun 2011 | US |
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 61289354 | Dec 2009 | US |
