A Virtual Clothing System for Retail and Design

In this paper we describe a virtual clothing system for retail and design, created for Bodymetrics Ltd., at their request. In the retail setup we installed the system at Selfridges, a well known department store in London. To our knowledge this is a world first installation of a fully automatic virtual try-on system. Sizing and body landmark information is extracted from 3D scanner data in a fully automatic process and customers can try-on garments from a database on their virtual selves within seconds. The system uses very fast numerical methods and collision detection mechanisms that harness the capabilities of graphics hardware for cloth body collision detection and response. Fabric property measurements from a Kawabata evaluation system are mapped onto our cloth model to ensure appropriate virtual drape behaviour. The information required in order to simulate particular garments is provided in a format tailored to the computational requirements for defining the garment pieces, seaming, partitioning on the body, cloth reflectance and patterning, and location of accessories such as buttons, etc. Based on the realistic visual feedback customers are able to decide whether to buy or not. The whole process in which a customer is scanned, registered to the system, and virtually tries on ten different garments in different sizes takes less than ten minutes. The acceptance of the system is shown by the high interest and demand, the willingness of customers to pay for the service, and an increased sale of items available in the virtual garment database. The system was also designed to be usable over the Internet and has been made freely available. We show that the same system in combination with global illumination for near photo-realistic augmented reality is also of interest for garment designers.