Research Journal of Textile and Apparel

3D Profiling of Cloth Appearances Based on Stereo Vision Method

Binjie XIN, Jinlian HU,
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Binjie XIN, Jinlian HU, (2005) "3D Profiling of Cloth Appearances Based on Stereo Vision Method", Research Journal of
Textile and Apparel, Vol. 9 Issue: 1, pp.13-20, doi: 10.1108/RJTA-09-01-2005-B002
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 RJTA Vol. 9 No. 1 2005

3D Profiling of Cloth Appearances Based on

Stereo Vision Method
Binjie XIN and Jinlian HU
Institute of Textile & Clothing
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University,
Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong

ABSTRACT

Cloth has the nature of three-dimensional, flexible and non-rigid, some traditional
methods based on 2D imaging and contact-type 3D surface measurement methods
can not work for this kind of material. In this paper we present a study of
digitalization of three dimensional cloth appearances based on stereo vision method.
The 3D stereo system includes a set of mirror group (3D lens) and a digital camera
with high resolution. Based on the camera geometry and stereo matching techniques,
the depth map of cloth could be calculated so as to evaluate the 3D appearance of
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fabrics and related objects. The results show it is effective and workable to use this
system to study the cloth/garment’s 3D deformation or draping profile.

1. Background One way of getting around these difficulties

In nature, cloth and related materials are three
dimensional and easy to be stretched; bended or
sheared these unique characters endow cloth with
aesthetic feeling, wearability, soft hand feeling.
Many researchers (Baraff and Witkin, 1998;
Breen, et al., 1992; Baraff and Witkin, 1998;
Eberhardt, et al., 1996; Hu, 2001; Jojic and Huang,
1997, Okabe, et al., 1992) tried to predict and
simulate the behaviour of cloth in computer using
digital methods, which is a kind of “Forward
Engineering” or CAD for textile industry.
However, it highly depends on the successful
modeling of basic textile elements from fiber to
yarn, which is still a difficult and challenging job
for textile persons.
On the other hand, a comprehensive
understanding of the real behaviour of cloth will
be obvious to speed the development of
simulating techniques. So how to characterize the
real 3D profile and behaviour of cloth in a digital
and objective way will be one of valuable topics
for both textile simulation and quality evaluation.
would be “data-driven” approach and “backward”
method in which the three-dimensional draping
profile of real-world cloth is first acquired
digitally and analyzed objectively.
In this research, we design and develop the 3D
profiling system for three-dimensional
characterization of cloth/garment. By using this
digital system, we could then be easy to make a
comprehensive study on the 3D profile and
related deformation behaviors of real-world
cloth/garment. First, we develop a set of 3D lens
attached with a digital camera to capture the
stereo images of objects, then we calibrate the
system to extract the external and internal
parameters of stereo cameras, after that, we build
up the point matching between left image and
right image using stereo match techniques, so we
could calculate the 3D coordinate of each points
on object’s surface, at last we generate the
triangle and mesh of object’s surface and map the
texture image on its mesh model. In this case, the
3D image of real-world object could be
digitalized in computer for further analysis.

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 RJTA Vol. 9 No. 1 2005

2. Methodology

System Set-up

1 Left side mirror

2 Right side mirror
1 3 4 2 3 Left center mirror
4 Right center mirror
5 Digital camera

Fig. 1. Schematic of 3D Camera System

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Figure 1 shows a schematic of a typical setup for
3D camera system. As shown in Fig.2, the 3D
camera is comprised of two main hardware
components: a digital camera, a set of mirror
group (Stereo lens). As well known, two cameras
are necessary for the capturing of stereo image
pairs, however, the two camera stereo system has
the disadvantage in spectral response, gain, offset,
calibration and synchronization especially when
capturing moving objects such as a skirt on
human body. So we adopt a set of mirror
reflection group to capture the stereo image using
one camera as shown in Figure 2. The basic
principle is to reflect two views into one image
using mirror reflection method; the mirror group
could achieve the best synchronization, which is
very important for 3D digitalization of moving
objects.

Fig. 2. Stereo image captured using 3D camera system

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 RJTA Vol. 9 No. 1 2005

Flowchart of 3D Reconstruction some light patterns could be projected on the

Conceptually, the system works as follows:
system calibration, stereo image captured, stereo
matching, depth calculation, mesh model
reconstruction, texture mapping. In some cases, in
order to improve the quality of stereo matching,
objects so as to build more high correlation of the
same point in left view and right view. Regarding
to cloth/garment, its natural pattern contains lots
of texture information for point matching, except
for those pure white or black clothes.

Objects Stereo image Stereo Depth

capture Matching calculation

Calibration
Texture Mesh
mapping Model
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Fig. 3. Flowchart of 3D reconstruction

System Calibration extrinsic parameters (3 for

rotation R = [r1 r2 r3 ] and 3 for
Before the 3D camera can be used, we need to
obtain the intrinsic and extrinsic parameters of the [
translation T = t x ty tz ]
T
). A 2d point is
system required for depth calculation: focal length denoted by m = [u; v] and a 3D point is denoted
T

fx, fy u ,v
( ), principle point ( 0 0 ), skew by M = [ X , Y , Z ]T , then the relationship
coefficient ( γ ), distortion ( k1 , k 2 , p1 , p 2 ) and 6 between 3D and 2D point is given by:

X 
u   f x γ u0 0
R T   Y  ~ ~
s  v  =  fy v0 0  T  , sm = HM ,
0 1  Z 
1   1 0   
1
~
~, M coplanar corners on the chessboard and 2d image
Where s is an arbitrary scale factor, m is
coordinate of its corresponding points, intrinsic
augmented vector of m, M . and extrinsic parameters could be estimated based
on nonlinear optimization method. In this paper,
Zhang (2000 & 1999) introduced a very flexible we adopt this method to calculate the intrinsic and
technique for camera calibration based on a planar extrinsic parameters of stereo camera. Figure 4
pattern shown at a few (at least two) different shows a stereo picture of printed chessboard for
orientations. By knowing the 3d coordinate of camera calibration.

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 RJTA Vol. 9 No. 1 2005

Fig. 4. Stereo image of chessboard for camera calibration

Stereo Matching image to reproject image planes onto common

plane parallel to line between optical centers, the
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Traditionally, the image point matching is two
dimensional problem, that means, searching the
corresponding points in both x and y direction.
However, knowing the intrinsic and extrinsic
parameters of camera, we could rectify the stereo
corresponding points are located on the same
horizontal scanline, so as to reduce the two
dimensional matching into one dimensional
searching (Sun, 2002).

Fig. 5. Rectified image of stereo image Fig. 6. Intensity curve of scanline

A correlation-based algorithm, defined in two rectified images pair I and I ' :

Equation 2 is used to do the matching between

∑
i =l
[ I (u + i, v) − I (u, v)][ I ' (u '+i, v) − I ' (u ' , v)]
C ( p, p ' ) = i =−l

(2l + 1)σ (u , v)σ ' (u ' , v)

In this equation, the similarity of intensities centered at p and p' . I (u + i, v) and σ (u, v) are
around two points p = (u, v) T ∈ I and the average intensity and standard deviation
p' = (u ' , v) T ∈ I ' along the scanline v . (2l + 1) is within the correlation window at point p
the width of the correlation searching window respectively, and defined as:

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 RJTA Vol. 9 No. 1 2005

∑ ∑
i =l i =l
I (u + i, v) I 2 (u + i, v) 2
I (u, v) = i=−l
, and σ (u , v) = i =−l
− I (u , v)
2l + 1 2l + 1

I ' (u '+i, v) and σ ' (u ' , v) have the similar around p and p ' are strongly correlated to each
definition and meaning for point p '∈ I ' . If the other. If the value is close to 0, the two profiles
are not similar at all.
value of C ( p, p' ) is close to 1, the intensities

Depth Calculation

Z
Image plane xL xR
pL pR
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f
OL OR
Camera center
T

Fig. 7. Depth calculation for parallel cameras

As shown in Figure 7, P is surface point of object, The Generation o f Mesh Model

p L and p R are left image and right image points
of P . f is the focal length of camera, and T is After we computed the depth of each surface
point, the 3D point cloud of object could be
the baseline of two parallel cameras. After we generated very easily, just displaying the discrete
finish the correspondence of one point in left and surface point by point. As we already have the
right image, the horizontal coordinates of this point data, the next step is to retrieve the triangle
point in left image and right image x L , x R could mesh so that all of these points are meshed
be determined. Then the depth Z of point P together into a solid. Each vertex in the triangle is
could be calculated using the following equation: represented as an index into the point array we
created earlier. Every triangle is constructed by
T + x r − xl T T three neighborhood vertexes according to the
= ⇒ Z= f . sequence of x, y coordinate as shown in Figure 8.
Z− f Z xl − x r

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 RJTA Vol. 9 No. 1 2005
P0(x0,y0) P1(x1,y0)
P2(x1,y0)
y
Fig. 8. Triangulation of surface points
Texture Mapping
Instead of casting a ray from each pixel to the
mesh model and computing the texture blending
weights on a pixel-by-pixel basis, we use a more
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efficient approach. For each vertex on the mesh,
we compute the blending weight for two views
based on the angle between normal and the
camera direction. If the vertex is invisible, the
weight is set to 0. The weights are then
C ( x, y ) = W L ( x, y )C L ( x, y ) + WR ( x, y )C R ( x, y )
3. Experiments and Results
In this research, we choose several cloths to verify
the 3D camera system developed for digitalization
of flexible object’s 3D surface. One shirt on
human body, one knitting fabric covering on a
ball, and one seam of jacket are digitalized and
investigated by using our current system as shown
in Figure 9-14. Both 3D coordinate and color
information of each surface point could be
18
x
normalized so that the sum of the weights over all
the images is equal to 1.0. We then use the
rectified image of the stereo image as the texture
map, set the colors of the vertexes according to
their blending weights and texture map. Let
C L and W L be the texture map and weight map of
left view, C R and W R be the texture map and
weight map of right view, then for each pixel
( x, y ) , its color on the final blending texture map
is:
calculated in digital way. The 3D coordinate
information could be used for the investigation of
surface deformation due to the external forces or
gravity, if we digitalize the 3D coordinate
sequences of one cloth during its deformation, we
also could evaluate some mechanical behaviors of
cloth. The color information could be used for
appearance evaluation or identification of color
defects.
 RJTA Vol. 9 No. 1 2005

Fig. 9. Stereo image of knitting fabric Fig. 10. Mesh Model of knitting fabric
covering on a ball covering on a ball
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Fig. 11. Stereo image of a shirt on Fig.12. Mesh Model (texture mapping)
human body of a shirt on human body

Fig. 14. Mesh Model (texture mapping) of

Fig. 13. Stereo image of one seam of jacket
one seam of jacket
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 RJTA Vol. 9 No. 1 2005
4. Conclusion
A workable 3D camera is developed in this paper
for digitalization of cloth/garment and other
related profile. We have described the design and
implementation of a 3D color camera based on a
set of mirror group (stereo lens) and single digital
camera. Our approach is automatic and
significantly suitable for 3D reconstruction of
cloth/garment, especially it works well to
digitalize the moving objects so as to investigate
the deformation of cloth and garment dynamically.
Both 3d coordinate and color information could
be extracted using this system, so it could be
further developed for quality control and surface
measurement. In the next step of our research, we
will apply this equipment to do the “Data Driven”
prediction and simulation of cloth/garment, which
is much more close to the real-world. At the same
time, all of three-dimensional features, such as
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wrinkle, pilling, bagging, draping, and body size
and so on could be digitalized and investigated by
using this method. However, the model merging
is not available in this system, so it can not build
up a 360° model by merging three or more mesh
models from different viewing direction.
Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge the financial
support of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
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