Scanning and animating characters dressed in multiple-layer garments

Abstract

Despite the development of user-friendly interfaces for modeling garments and putting them onto characters, preparing a character dressed in multiple layers of garments can be very time-consuming and tedious. In this paper, we propose a novel scanning-based solution for modeling and animating characters wearing multiple layers of clothes. This is achieved by making use of real clothes and human bodies. We first scan the naked body of a subject by an RGBD camera, and a statistical body model is fit to the scanned data. This results in a skinned articulated model of the subject. The subject is then asked to put on one piece of garment after another, and the articulated body model dressed up to the previous step is fit to the newly scanned data. The new garment is segmented in a semi-automatic fashion and added as an additional layer to the multi-layer garment model. During runtime, the skinned character is controlled based on the motion capture data and the multi-layer garment model is controlled by blending the movements computed by physical simulation and linear blend skinning, such that the cloth preserves its shape while it shows realistic physical motion. We present results where the character is wearing multiple layers of garments including a shirt, coat and a skirt. Our framework can be useful for preparing and animating dressed characters for computer games and films.

Publication
The Visual Computer
Pengpeng Hu
Pengpeng Hu
Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor)

Pengpeng Hu is currently a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) with The University of Manchester. His research interests include biometrics, geometric deep learning, 3D human body reconstruction, point cloud processing, and vision-based measurement. He serves as an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, and Engineering and Mathematics in Medical and Life Sciences, as well as an Academic Editor for PLOS ONE and a member of the editorial board for Scientific Reports. He is also the Programme Chair for the 25th UK Workshop on Computational Intelligence (UKCI 2026) and an Area Chair for the 35th British Machine Vision Conference (BMVC 2024). He is the recipient of the Emerald Literati Award for an outstanding paper in 2019.