In recent years, there have been remarkable changes in clothing and fashion industry on a global scale. Currently, digital and social media dictate the most dominant fashion trends, undermining the role of fashion houses. Consequently, the fashion designers and the manufacturing experts of this field are obligated to incorporate new technological methods and techniques in order to cope with current demands and increase at the same time the productivity and the quality of customized and specialized clothing products. In this direction, the i-MANNEQUIN project is associated with the development of a system for automatic digitalization, rapid prototyping and setting of parameters for clothing 3D models. In particular, the utilization of this system is expected to improve the field of clothing industry, by meeting specific requirements of clothing design and manufacturing companies, as well as the emerging needs in multimedia industry (i.e. films, games, or advertising) for virtual character (i.e. avatars) design and dressing up. The aim of this project is to integrate a series of innovations, while providing clothing 3D model creation in a short period, without requiring special knowledge and specialization by the potential user. More specifically, in order to achieve this goal, i-MANNEQUIN project will develop the first “Digital Clothing Patron”, constituting a parametric structure that will provide all the individual fabric segments with their characteristics (e.g. geometry, type of fabric), semantics, assembly of clothing segments and constructional constraints for rapid clothing patron prototyping. In the second stage, the project will investigate the possibility of 3D model reconstruction and the semi-automatic digitalization of existing real clothes, by utilizing computational intelligence techniques implemented to 3D models or photos of clothing samples. Additionally, machine-learning techniques will be used to create models that will function in a group of hierarchically classified data of garment patron or 3D models, enabling the user to search the desired patron on the database by comparing common geometric or semantic characteristics. In a parallel manner, optimization techniques will be utilized to form and combine basic garment patrons in order to create the new approximate model that will meet the desired specifications. In the final stage, the utilization of modern 3D visualization and simulation tools will permit real-time photorealistic imaging on virtual clothing form pattern, based on virtual splice of a clothing patron of an available digital model.

Conclusively, the successful implementation of this research project is expected to create high potential for economic exploitation of the results, focusing on visualization and parametrization tools trade for clothing patron creation, implemented into various applications related to clothing design and manufacturing industries, multimedia industry and e-commerce sector.

Project Web Site: 

i-mannequin.iti.gr