Effects of bending properties and drapability on the hand and appearance of wool-blended Fabrics: Comparison of real clothing with online and 3D virtual garments

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of bending properties and drapability on the hand and appearance of wool-blended fabrics for comparison of real clothing with online and 3D virtual garments. Objective evaluations were performed by measuring mechanical properties of fabrics, while subjective evaluations were performed by subjects evaluating sensory images of fabrics; real clothing evaluations were performed offline and online, and 3D virtual garments were evaluated. Bending properties and drape coefficients of fabrics were affected by wool blending ratio, and fabrics with high wool blending ratio showed low stiffness, warm-cool, weight, and high smoothness, drapability image. In the real clothing evaluation, stiffness image showed many differences with online evaluation with respect to wool blending ratio. Objective bending properties and drape coefficients showed no correlation with subjective sensory images offline. For the online results, objective mechanical properties had good correlations with all sensory images except smoothness. Stiffness and warm-cool online scores were higher than the offline ones and the offline drapability was higher than the online one for 100 % wool fabrics. Thus, clothing was generally evaluated online as more hard and moist than real clothing. For the virtual garment evaluation, sensory images had no difference according to wool blending ratio compared with real clothing. Many differences in subjective sensory images between real clothing and virtual garments were observed, except for smoothness and weight images. The results showed that it is difficult to exactly predict the hand and appearance of clothing according to fabric properties using 3D virtual garment system.