Sketching garments for virtual characters

We present a method for simply and interactively creating basic garments for dressing virtual characters in applications like video games. The user draws an outline of the front or back of the garment, and the system makes reasonable geometric inferences about the overall shape of the garment (ignoring constraints arising from physics and from the material of the garment). Thus both the garment's shape and the way the character is wearing it are determined at once. We use the distance from the 2D garment silhouette to the character model to infer the variations of the distance between the remainder of the garment and the character in 3D. The garment surface is generated from the silhouette and border lines and this varying distance information, thanks to a data-structure that stores the distance field to the character's body. This method is integrated in an interactive system in which the user sketches the garment over the 3D model of the character. Our results show that the system can be used to create both standard clothes (skirts, shirts) and other garments that may be worn in a variety of ways (scarves, panchos).