A system for modelling and visualization of cloth material

Abstract This paper describes some developments in techniques for the visualization of the shapes of cloth materials when suspended at given points or draped over a rigid surface. The material is modelled by a set of energy equations, which takes the bending constant, density, elasticity, diagonal-to-axial strength ratio, and rigidity into account. The material will be in an equilibrium state when the energy is a minimum. The work described extends existing methods by employing a more efficient energy minimization technique and by reducing directional errors of the relaxation process. The technique has been implemented for a PC in the C language and generates data in a standard format suitable for display on commercial rendering software packages.