Digital Fabrics for 3D Clothing Simulation

February 24, 2022

Digital Fabrics

The Apparel Industry is slowly making its way in adopting 3D technology to optimize design, product development, and production processes. The adaptation of 3d fashion technologies carries myriad reasons for the sluggish progress. However, 3D clothing simulation is gaining momentum in its innovative, diversified utilization.

With the adoption of 3D technologies for clothing simulation, the apparel industry is stepping forward to improve overall efficiencies and significantly contribute to resource preservation.

One of the crucial parts of achieving true-to-life 3D digital garments is the accurate simulation and visualization of a wide range of fabrics with diverse content, weight, and structure.

3D Clothing Simulation Process

There are a few basic requirements to create and finalize a 3D clothing simulation for various purposes:

To achieve desired 3D results, the user must understand the nature of fabrics and closely model and mimic the drape and feel of real-life material. The actual benefits of 3d technology application for clothing visualization go beyond creating clothing images with a hyper-realistic look in the color and texture of the fabric. Before creating a “visual bonanza,” it is vital to capture the soft physics of the material for realistic drape simulation in the digital environment. This functional feature allows designers to digitally communicate their design creations for fit and styling to technical/production team members and vendors in less time and without needing initial physical samples.

Digital fabrics consist of two parts or properties:

Fabric physical property will determine the drape of the fabric and, ultimately, the final garment simulation outcome in a 3D digital environment. The fundamental soft physics of the material are thickness, bending, shear, tensile, and friction, derived from fabric measurement methods via fabric testing. Each 3D software has its own proprietary methodology and kits to test the fabric and transfer data into digital 3D clothing visualizations.
Texture properties are acquired via sophisticated scanners, enabling designers to “digitally paint” their 3D visualizations via PBR (Physically Based Rendering) texture maps and create a realistic digital replica of the actual garment. Adobe Substance is another source suitable for fabric texture creation.
3D CLOTHING SIMULATION STRUCTURE

hohenstein-workflow — Source: Hohenstein-Digital Material Parameters

3D Digital Fabrics Challenges

We are seeing an influx of innovative technologies that capture and visualize fabric properties for 3D clothing simulation use. However, each 3D system has its fabric testing requirements with different testing methods, file configurations, and data formats.

There is no testing standard of physical fabric to transfer the same or similar results on all 3D systems (in use among the fashion brands) for clothing fit and draping simulation. The lack of standards perpetuates inconsistent fit and drape simulation across 3D digital design platforms. Hence, we keep encountering difficulties in achieving accurate and consistent visualizations and fitting simulation results across all 3D systems.

In addition, there is such a diverse range of fabric and fabric blends used in the apparel industry that one would not know where to start just by identifying the differences and nuances of various fabric properties within the digital environment.

There are many efforts to create the testing SOP-s (Standard Operating Procedure) and make fabric testing procedures more aligned among all 3D systems. The standard testing method will create universal fabric physics data and greatly enhance digital accuracy and digital product development functionality for brands, retailers, vendors, and 3D software providers. In addition, a unified fabric testing methodology will solve common issues and challenges facing the apparel industry in adopting 3D technology to improve and advance the current “outdated” practices.

Ideally, the universal 3D fabric physics test set will have all relevant data needed by all 3D software providers through measurement and mathematical conversion that would uniquely provide the same data, resulting in the same or similar 3D clothing simulation results. Additionally, the universal nature of the test set will significantly improve erroneous confusion in communicating the fit and draping results among collaborators and vendors.

texture-map-fabrics — Source: Hohenstein-Digital Material Parameters; Texture Maps

3D Fabrics Unified

In the quest to make the development process more streamlined and efficient, many 3D software providers already promote their technologies as tools to reduce and ultimately eliminate the need for physical samples. One must notice that the accuracy of the digital sample requires far more than aesthetic appeal. Technical data such as garment and fabric construction and digital translation are essential for digital garment creation.

However, the simple digital fabric file format differs for all 3D systems, creating inconsistency in the 3D draping simulation results. Consequently, the need for digital fabric files compatible with all 3D systems is growing. U3M (Unified 3D material) is making its way to bridge the differences among 3D digital fabric files by replacing proprietary material formats with a single open-source format. If the U3M file format becomes a standard to accurately simulate digital fabrics (both physical and visual) on all 3D simulation software, it would be a giant leap forward for the entire effort to digitize the apparel industry.

Digital Fabric Libraries

The natural progression accompanying the implementation of 3D technologies for clothing simulation is the demand for digital fabric libraries.

A few Digital Fabric Platforms offer digital fabric libraries (Swatchbook, Material Exchange, and CottonWorks), allowing greater efficiency and consistency of 3D clothing simulations. Furthermore, with the broader adaptation of 3D technologies in fashion, the excess digital fabric swatch libraries will be an essential part of the 3D digital product creation workflow.

Conclusion

3D clothing visuals serve as a new aesthetic marketing and selling tool, with fit and sizing improvement falling further behind. With rapid 3D technology improvements to create universal fabric testing and unified digital file exchange, we can expect faster overall gain for bulk production and fit and sizing inefficiencies.

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References:
Comparison of Objective Measurement Methods Of Fabric-2020 Proceedings; Virtual conference ITAA (International Textile and Apparel Association)- research paper
Hohenstein-Digital Material Parameters Affect All Stages of Simulation
3D Retail Coalition-Standard Operating Procedures for Digital Fabric Physics Interoperability
3D Digital Technologies: Material Focus-Innovationintextiles.com
Optitex Fabric Management
Browzwear U3M
U3M-Unified 3D Material
Vizoo3D
the interline: Digitization: How 3D supports the fabric creation and selling process.