Determination of 3D necklines from scanned human bodies

Accurate recognition of the human body is an essential procedure of clothing pattern making, garment fit evaluation, and sizing survey. Over the years, many research efforts have been devoted to define and/or identify features (points and lines) of a human body. However, the neckline, one imperative feature of a human body is still difficult to accurately identify. It is complicated to determine a neckline geometrically due to the large variety of body figures, and the defined neckline must fulfill the requirements of apparel manufacturing and textile properties. The aim of the paper is to propose a new and practical method to identify the neckline from 3D digitized bodies. Firstly, a torso represented by piecewise B-spline curves is generated from a triangulated human mesh model. Secondly, important feature points including front neck point (FNP), back neck point (BNP) and side neck point (SNP) are identified. A cutting-surface is defined and the profile of such cutting surface is construed by those identified feature points. By intersecting the cutting-surface with the piecewise B-spline curve torso, a neckline is then properly determined. The proposed method is verified to be effective for generating necklines for human subjects with varied neck silhouettes. A neckline fitting survey through real subjects’ wear trial is conducted to evaluate and compare the proposed method with the traditional methods.