A real-time cloth draping simulation algorithm using conjugate harmonic functions

This paper describes a simplified mathematical model and the relevant numerical algorithm that simulates a draped cloth over a virtual human body. The proposed algorithm incorporates an elliptical, or non-consecutive, method to simulate the cloth wrinkles on moving bodies without having to reference the results of past drape simulation time steps. A global–local analysis technique was employed to decompose the drape of a cloth into large-scale deformation and local wrinkles. The large-scale deformation is determined directly by the rotation and translation of body parts to generate a wrinkle-free yet globally deformed shape of the cloth. The local wrinkles are calculated by solving simple elliptical equations based on the orthogonality between conjugate harmonic functions. The large-scale deformation and the local wrinkles are then superposed to simulate the draped cloth. The elliptical equations used to simulate the local wrinkles require no interpolative time frames, even for rapidly moving virtual bodies. Avoiding the incremental approach of time integration used in conventional methods, the proposed method yields markedly enhanced computational efficiency as well as enhanced simulation stability.