Fabric Paint Environment Using 3D Haptics for Vocational Training

Abstract

Fabric art is an important aspect of fashion designing. Though there is lot of talent in this field, only a few are professionally trained and take it up as a vocation due to financial or physical disabilities. This paper provides a solution for such aspiring individuals to train in this field. Fabric painting is the art of painting on different textures and contours, hence making it a tough occupation because of the variety of materials that are available to be worked on; this is where the haptics technology comes to use. A three-dimensional haptic device, such as the Novint Falcon, converts hand gestures to virtual 3D motion. It is also equipped with force feedback technology which allows the user to “feel” the virtual object in contact within a cursor in a virtual environment. To create good applications using this technology a comprehensive toolkit is needed that efficiently puts to use the various features of this device to create realistic tutoring applications. CHAI 3D is one such toolkit and with the ability to provide support to multiple haptic devices and with the lightweight rendering prowess of OpenGL technology, it is the choice made for this purpose. CHAI 3D bridges two components—the 3D graphics and the haptic technology to simulate interaction with real-world objects. This paper provides an elegant approach to painting on a three-dimensional canvas, as opposed to the usual 2D canvas, that can translate and rotate around any axis. To add to that, the paper proposes to use the force feedback technology that is built into most 3D haptic devices to allow the user to “feel” every stroke of the brush on the virtual piece of clothing that can vary with texture and contour making the learning experience of an aspiring fabric artist a more realistic one.