Cloth simulation development

Within the context of a WORTH grant and building on previous work done in WEARSustain in the solemaker project, I am further developing software to digitally design parametric clothing patterns under the name Hyperobjects.

One of the features of this tool is cloth simulation. This blogpost documents intermediary development steps made leading up to a full web-based javascript implementation of 3d clothing simulation.

This simulation engine and cloth modelling framework consists of:

• A Particle & Spring model.
• Functions to convert any path shape to a cloth patch.
• Connecting two cloth patches with a "physical" seam.

Custom patch shape

A commonly used mathematical model to describe cloth digitally is a particle & spring model. A cloth patch is described as a grid of particles which are interconnected with many small springs. In the below video you see a custom patch shape converted to a particle grid with interconnected springs being simulated with gravity.

Javascript-based Particle & Spring model prototyped in the Hyperobjects workbench.

Virtual seaming

The most common construction method for clothing is to seam multiple patches of fabric together. So this needs to be represented in the simulation as well. This video shows an experiment to prototype how we could do 3D simulation of seams between fabric patches.

3d positioning of patches

To get to a full garment simulation, each of the pattern pieces needs to be oriented in 3d and then virtually "seamed" together. This virtual "seaming" of a full garment piece is the next step for this project. In the video below you can already see how the different pattern pieces can be oriented in 3D.

Next steps

The next step of the project will be to add an interface to be able to specify which line segments of the patches are seamed together so that this will be simulated in 3d. As well as add a virtual parametric mannequin to allow you to evaluate the fit of a piece of clothing on various body types.