AUB participates in joint project to develop virtual fitting room

CMPS will receive around $80,000 to help in the improvement of a web-based "Virtual Try on (VTO)" application for the fitting of garments, after the project was recently approved by the European "Fonds Froncophone des Inforoutes."

In the procedure, a personalized 3D human model bearing the specific measurements of the user is built. The user may then choose a garment from a database and try it on his/her virtual body. The dressed model is animated in a real time simulation of realistic cloth behavior. Applying this application, samples of historical clothes from the Al-Mehdia Museum will be used.

"The dressed model is animated in walking and turning pauses in real time simulation of a realistic cloth behavior," says computer science professor Ahmad Nasri, AUB director of the project.

The CMPS contribution will consist of developing a module that will be integrated in the main VTO system as the basic rendering engine. The module is expected to provide ways to control the level of details (LOD) in the garment, thus improving the quantity of 3D information that can be transferred between the server and the client.

Using subdivision surfaces, the state-of-the-arts in computer graphics, and animation, the CMPS department will contribute in developing a module which will be integrated in the main VTO system as the basic rendering engine.

The subdivision scheme implemented is Loop's scheme for triangular meshes. The newly created faces and vertices obtain their topological, geometrical, and animating data from the coarse mesh.

"A dressed and animated coarse model is input to the subdivision module which refines all associated data and renders it ready for display," explains Nasri.

"Taking on-line shopping a major step forward, this project presents end users with the ultimate service a real life shop would never provide. A number of measurements of the customer's body are used to build a personalized virtual model. The virtual model is dressed and animated in walking and turning postures," says Nasri.

In addition to Nasri, a number of AUB students are in the team. They include graduate students such as Zahraa Yasseen, Wajih-Halim Boukaram, and Samar Al-Fatayri. The MIRALab team consists of Professor Nadia Magnenat Thalmann, who is the main director of the project, Dimitris Protopsaltou, Pascal Volino, and Etienne Lyard.