Multi-Layer Implicit Garment Models

Roberto E. Pérez-Urbiola
Isaac Rudomı́n G.
Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey
Campus Estado de México
Km. 3.5 Carretera Lago de Guadalupe
Atizapán de Zaragoza, Estado de México, CP 52926. México
rperez@campus.cem.itesm.mx
rudomin@campus.cem.itesm.mx

Abstract proximate the appearance of hanging cloth from its corners.

This paper presents a new way to model clothing worn by
articulated implicit characters. A scalar field is produced
using ellipsoids as primitives. Isosurfaces are then used to
place garments in one or more layers. As each implicit sur-
face is independent, collision detection is not needed. The
cloth is a polygonal mesh whose vertices are in turn moved
towards their destination isosurface using the gradient of
the scalar field. In order to maintain the cloth’s shape and
size a net of simple springs is used. We improve appearance
by adding noise to simulate wrinkles and light wind.
1. Introduction
Computer animations that we can see today consist
mostly of rigid solid objects. Lately, however, we are start-
ing to see flexible objects being used more often.
Solid objects are usually described by a polygon mesh
that is too complex to manage in a vertex by vertex way,
as is often the case when dealing with flexible characters.
Implicit surfaces can be used to model them. An implicit
surface is defined as all the points that satisfy the condition
F (x; y; z ) = k in a given three dimensional scalar field.
Different constants k refer to separate isosurfaces.
In order to create realistic articulated soft objects, we
can use ellipsoids in combination with blending functions
to shape the scalar field. Our articulated model is similar to
Wilhelms’ [21] and includes a skeleton, joints and muscles.
Many researchers are working in the cloth design, mod-
elling and animation [4][10], with various approaches.
Both physical and geometric methods have been used to
model cloth. Geometric approaches try to imitate the shape
of cloth. For example, Weil [20] uses catenary curves to ap-
Hybrid techniques combine geometric approaches with
some sort of physical phase. Rudomı́n [13] approximates
the initial state of draping cloth on an object with its convex
hull, then continues with physical simulation.
Terzopoulos et al. [14] generalised deformable model
was one of the first physical methods introduced. Neverthe-
less, it requires solving a large system of simultaneous ordi-
nary differential equations.
Since then, physical methods have been commonly sim-
ulated by calculating the actual forces and energies involved
in a grid of particles. For static views of cloth, a minimum
energy state is searched. For dynamics, it is necessary to in-
tegrate the equations using Euler or Runge-Kutta.
Breen et al. [5][9] employ an interacting-particle model
which is based on the microstructure of woven cloth.
The modelling of clothing worn by virtual actors has been
investigated by Thalmann et al. [19]. Their algorithm is
generic enough to handle cloth by itself (i.e. clothing with-
out a person under it) [15]. They pursue physically accurate
clothing coupled with an optimised algorithm for collision
detection [16]. References to their hierarchical collision de-
tection solution and other algorithms can be found in [17].
Their clothing systems [19][18] include a collision detection
engine, a mechanical simulation engine, software for human
body modelling and deformation, garment design and sim-
ulation, and a graphical interface. Garments are first assem-
bled from panels and latter placed on a human model.
Baraff et al. [1] has dramatically reduced the time needed
to perform implicit integration which allows the simulation
to advance in larger steps that with either Euler or Runge-
Kutta.
Nevertheless, the issue of multiple layers of clothing has
not yet been addressed. The problem is the large amount of
time needed for calculating collision detection.
 In this paper, we propose a hybrid method where we take
advantage of the scalar field generated by the implicit sur-
faces to handle multiple layer clothing. This method avoids
the computation of collisions since each layer is placed on a
different isosurface. The isosurfaces are obtained from the
same ellipsoidal primitives that we use to model the char-
acters. A polygonal mesh with springs is used to maintain
the cloth’s shape and size. Moving the cloth is simplified by
storing the vertex’s positions relative to local coordinate sys-
tem of the nearest ellipsoid. Optionally, sinusoidal noise is
added to increase realism.
The rest of the paper is organised as follows: we first in-
troduce the use of implicit surfaces to model clothing. Then,
we outline the articulated objects used. We continue with
the garments’ design, placement and appearance. Next, we
summarise the implementation and results, and finally, we
discuss future work.

2. Implicit Surfaces for Modelling Clothing

The fundamental idea behind the work described in this
paper is to use implicit surfaces for modelling clothing of
implicit articulated characters.
Clothing is usually worn by humans in layers, however,
in computer graphics this is hardly ever animated due to the
time needed for calculating collision detection. We solve the
problem by using isosurfaces that surround the subject. As
the scalar field can not have two different values for a given
point, we conclude that we can place each layer of clothing
in different isosurfaces without having to worry much about
collisions. See figure 1.
To accomplish this, we first have to create a scalar
field. We designed our character using ellipsoidal primitives
blended together using a formula introduced by Blinn [2]:
Figure 1. Using isosurfaces to place gar-
ments
root controls the position and orientation of the character.
Each segment is a local coordinate system whose origin is
used as a joint.
Ellipsoids are specified by the two ends of the main axis,
the volume, the orientation of a second axis and the ratio be-
tween the second and third axis. The coordinates are given
in the local coordinate system of the segment to which they
are attached. It is possible to specify different segments for
each end point. See figure 2.

g(r) = ae,br
2

In our case, r is the distance to the centre of a sphere,

while the constants a and b equal one and 0.8 respectively.
The sphere is also scaled and rotated to adjust it to the axis
and orientation of the desired ellipsoid.
Each layer of clothing is assigned to a different isosur-
face. In order to maintain a similar distance between the lay-
ers, offset isosurfaces were considered, but discarded later
because the required numerical method was too expensive.
Instead, long ellipsoids where replaced by two or three more Figure 2. The three points shown, the volume
spherical ones. and the ratio of axis 1 and 2 define an ellip-
soid.
3. Implicit Articulated Objects
The character is animated by changing the joints’ angles
The model for implicit articulated objects used is a sim- and axes of rotation. This data was stored in a text file. As
plification of the one presented in Wilhelms’ article [21]. the animation proceeds, ellipsoids are automatically moved
A hierarchy of skeleton elements is implemented where the and reshaped without any other user intervention. We calcu-
late the lengths of the three axes to preserve the volume of
the individual ellipsoids at each frame. Nevertheless, the fi-
nal volume might vary due to the blending operations. In [6]
local volume variations are corrected but were not imple-
mented for this research.
Blending groups (of ellipsoids) and the following steps
avoid unwanted joining of nearby members:
 To calculate the value of the scalar field at a point
(x; y; z ):

– Compute the sum of all the ellipsoids in each

blending group. Ellipsoids can belong to more
than one group.
– We select the highest value from the groups.
We first used marching cubes [3] to display the isosur-
face of the character, but later we changed to pieces of “skin”
placed as we describe in section 5.

4. Garment Design
Figure 4. Correspondence between polygons,
Garments consist of pieces of clothing to be worn on dif- springs, triangles and vertices.
ferent layers. The design of each piece is performed in a
Computer Aided Design program, using quadrilateral and
triangular elements. See figure 3.
We found that the cloth’s shape didn’t need to be a per-
fect match with the isosurface, because we kept the cloth at-
tached to it. Nevertheless, any extra cloth was cut in order
to prevent the mesh from folding over itself.

5. Garment Placement

Pieces’ vertices are locked to the respective isosurface

using the gradient of the scalar field, like in Witkin and
Heckbert [22][8]. So far, the number of particles remains
constant but multi-resolution extensions of the method pre-
sented in this article could change that.
The gradient is easily calculated due to the nature of the
blending function (an exponential, already described in sec-
tion 2). The direction in which we have to move a parti-
cle that is outside or inside the target isosurface is decided
by comparing the scalar field value at the particle’s position
with the desired value of the isosurface.
The isosurface-locking algorithm is:

 For each vertex:

Figure 3. A sample garment before using iso-
surfaces.
Springs are added to each side of the polygons and
between opposite corners in the quadrilateral elements as
shown in figure 4.
– The value of the scalar field is calculated at the
vertex’s position.
– If the value is close enough to the target isosur-
face, we are done with this vertex.
– The gradient at the point is obtained.
 – If the value of the field is higher than the isosur-
face sought, we subtract from the vertex’s posi-
tion the unitary vector of the gradient multiplied
by a small predefined distance. Otherwise, we
add this same vector.
– If a maximum number of iterations has been
reached, we continue with the next vertex.
The method combines the isosurface’s lock that holds
the pieces in place with springs that approximately preserve
cloths’ size and shape.
The algorithm for the springs is simple. All the springs
try to move their vertices in order to arrive to a rest distance.
The sum of the effect of all the springs is what finally adjusts
the positions. The spring algorithm follows:
 The displacement variable for all vertices is set to zero.
 For each spring:
– We accumulate the distance that the vertices i and
j of the spring r will move:
dir + = (vj , vi )

jvj , vi j , r )
r
( movement.
jvj , vi j
(jv , v j , r )
r
djr , = (vj , vi )
j i
jvj , vi j
Where dir is the displacement that vertex i (of
spring r) will have. vi , vj are the positions of
the vertices expressed in terms of the global co-
ordinate system. r is the rest distance of spring
r. r controls the amount of movement. Finally
+= and ,= are the usual C language operators.
 Optionally, we check that no vertex is moved more than
a user-defined distance. This is especially useful when
the constant r is greater than 0.20.
 We can restrict the displacement direction to the tan-
gent plane of the isosurface. This is expensive because
we need to calculate the gradient for every vertex even
when the final position is close enough to the isosur-
face. In our tests, it was faster to let the isosurface-
locking algorithm take care of the errors.
 The vertices’ positions are updated according to the fi-
nal values of the displacement variables.
Before the first frame, it is necessary to position the cloth
close to the object, and then run the previously described al-
gorithms many times until we reach a stable initial state.
During the animation, a great amount of movement oc-
curs that would be expensive to compensate only by means
of the above algorithms. Instead, before each frame, the po-
sition of each vertex is saved in terms of the local coordinate
system of the nearest ellipsoid in the vicinity (more about
this below). After the joints have been calculated the world
coordinates of the vertices are updated. This allows the ma-
jority of the vertices to be very close to their final position
for the frame.
With vicinity in the previous paragraph, we refer to the
fact that a vertex is restricted to move from adjacent blend-
ing groups only. That is, a vertex whose coordinates were
assigned to the isosurface of an arm can only stay there or
move to the elbow, it can not jump to the isosurface gener-
ated by the thorax ellipsoids.
The final corrections and movements of the clothing are
done combining the isosurface-locking algorithm with the
spring algorithm. In our model we use an I-S-I-S-I combi-
nation per frame where I is an execution of the isosurface-
locking algorithm and S is a run of the spring algorithm.
6. Appearance
In order to improve the appearance of clothing it is nec-
essary to simulate the wrinkles and some sort of wind-like
We considered some alternatives. We could use a tex-
ture map, either bump or displacement based. Unfortunately
the time (in the order of minutes) required for displacement
mapping using flow fields [11] is beyond our goals. In gen-
eral, displacement textures using the normal of the surface
could be used but would have problems with multi-layer
clothing, as collisions are likely to occur. Bump mapping
would require the recalculation of the texture bitmaps in or-
der to produce moving wrinkles. Finally, applying textures
directly to the isosurface proves too costly (also in the or-
der of minutes per frame), because a parameterisation is re-
quired as shown in [12].
We settled for the option of adding noise to the scalar
field, as it is simple and it can be controlled to give the im-
pression of light wind. In addition, the noise function can
be designed to be continuous so that the layers do not col-
lide even after it is added.
A noise scalar field is generated from the ellipsoids,
where each one contributes with six sinusoidal functions
that vary in frequency and amplitude. Even these character-
istics vary in time to avoid cyclic effects and achieve wind-
like movements of the cloth.
The noise is consistent in time, as it is based on the el-
lipsoids. It moves with the character’s limbs. For example,
a wrinkle in an arm doesn’t suddenly disappear as the arm
moves.
The noise is added to the value of the isosurface searched.
This could cause some self-collisions between adjacent lay-
ers, but was, in most cases, solved by calculating the noise
before every iteration of the isosurface-locking algorithm,
this way, the layers converge into a non-penetrating state. In
 Method Seconds including
1 second to write the
VRML file to disk.
Noise & spring-projection 7.7 sec/frame
Noise only 6.4 sec/frame
Spring-projection only 4.6 sec/frame
Plain algorithm 3.3 sec/frame
Table 1. Statistics of a 40-frame animation.
the few cases where they didn’t, it was because not enough
iterations were made or because the triangles intersected due
to the curvature.
7. Implementation and Results
The code was written in C. VRML was output with a
speed of 6.4 sec/frame (5.4 sec discounting the VRML gen-
eration), considering a total of 12,000 triangles in three cloth
layers with noise (quadrilaterals were split to display them).
See Colour Plate 1. The tests were done in a Pentium II at
233Mhz with 96MB RAM. Clothing without wrinkles was
as fast as 2.3 sec/frame, discounting the time needed to write
the VRML file. Table 1 contains more details.
In the table, noise refers to the sinusoidal functions added
to improve appearance, while the spring-projection con-
strains the movements caused by the springs to the plane tan-
gent to the isosurface. As we can see, the spring-projections
lowers the amount of displacements towards the isosurface
but requires too much time.
The animation was performed without collision detec-
tion, but as desired, the layers of clothing behaved well
thanks to the isosurface-locking algorithm. It is possible to
use parallelism, as each garment is independent, they can be
computed separately.
The springs helped, mainly at the joints, to adjust the gar-
ments’ size and prevent polygon deformation.
The clothing automatically followed the character, while
maintaining its shape and size closely. The constraint that
avoids a vertex to jump to the wrong isosurface worked well
but not perfectly, still if the concavities are very pronounced
the vertices may move from vicinities and not be able to find
their way back naturally. Our model required some fine-
tuning of the ellipsoids and blending groups in the armpit
section.
Texture was added experimentally, simply by specifying
it in the VRML file (see Colour Plate 2). While VRML did
a fine job showing the textures’ potential, it doesn’t map the
texture consistently and uniformly throughout the frames.
This isn’t a limitation of the model, the mesh can be param-
eterised for texture mapping as any other, but for now, we
didn’t implement this.
Colour Plate 3 shows the same character and clothing
with wrinkles, rendered with BMRT (Blue Moon Render-
ing Tools). The use of shadows enhanced the overall appear-
ance.
8. Conclusions and Future Work
When working with multiple layers of clothing, colli-
sion detection is usually a time consuming process. We
presented a method that combines implicit surfaces with
multiple-layer garment modelling that makes that phase un-
necessary. The algorithms presented are focused in cloth-
ing for articulated implicit characters. Special attention was
given to the garments’ size, shape and placement.
This approach can be complemented by more investiga-
tion in the following areas:
 Lower cost noise, one that doesn’t need to be constantly
calculated in order for the layer to converge into a non-
penetrating state or one that does not use the expensive
sine functions.
 Textures should be mapped correctly to the garments.
 Modelling software designed for this approach would
provide better-looking characters and clothing for the
animations.
 Some springs calculations could be avoided, at least
in the second iteration of a frame, if we identify the
springs that affected insignificantly their vertices in the
previous iteration.
 Adding physics and other effects could be investigated.
For example, by applying deformations from impacts
directly to the isosurface as in [7].
 Shapes that differ from the character’s silhouette can be
implemented. For example, skirts could benefit from
modifications made to the scalar field after the char-
acter has been polygonized. Likewise, Flared trousers
can be modeled by adding some ellipsoids to the legs or
by letting the vertices move using physics, but limited
between two isosurfaces. See figure 5.
 Resolution of the mesh could vary depending on the
curvature of the isosurface.
 Buttons, pins and alike can be added. Collisions could
be avoided by generating an extra contribution to the
scalar field before attaching the next clothing layer.
 Clothing by itself using isosurfaces, with no character
wearing it, is still an open research subject.
 Dressed avatars could be obtained with a simplifica-
tion of this approach and a lower resolution.

Figure 5. Flared trousers. A) Using an extra
ellipsoid. B) Using two isosurfaces as bound-
aries.
9. Acknowledgements
This article is a summary of the Master thesis presented
by R. Pérez, who thanks his thesis advisor I. Rudomı́n for
the insights given, and the reviewers for the corrections.
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