Virtual Dummy To Try On Clothes

Roland Piquepaille writes "BBC News reports that Toshiba is working with a Japanese software company to create a 3-D fashion simulator that will allow virtual modelling and coordination of clothes, cosmetics and accessories in real time. This means that by as early as 2006, you will no longer have to contortion yourself in a minuscule fitting room. 'Video cameras snap the shopper, then clothes and accessories are selected and displayed immediately. The process of turning the images of the shopper into photo-realistic avatar -- or virtual representation -- happens in real-time.' This summary contains more details and references. It also contains images of a virtual model trying different clothes and accessories adapted to different backgrounds."

Comments

Virtual dummy software to use apt-get

[Debian Troll's Best]

This is a really interesting article, and shows just how deeply computers have permeated the crevices of our everyday lives. I was recently in attendance at the Toshiba Developer's Forum in Tokyo, and they gave an extensive 1 hour presentation of the real-time virtual modelling system. Let me tell you, it's damned impressive. I especially liked the part where the virtual dummy was clothed in a promotional bomber jacket from the 1998 JavaWorld convention, and then they were able to use an accelerated aging feature to show how the jacket would look today in 2004, after being subjected to the rigors and weather effects of 5 years of unemployment and living under the Golden Gate bridge that is so typical of a Java developer these days. Simply brilliant!

But that wasn't the most interesting part. Behind the scenes, the software draws upon a vast digital library of clothing images, and it needs to be able to drag them off a centralised clothing server and install them quickly on the computer running the kiosk in the clothes store. Of course managing a digital inventory of several thousand clothing packages and being able to quickly install them on remote machines is a challenge. And it gets harder when you consider the short lifespan of today's fashions: what is current today is an embarrasment tomorrow, and the clothing definition files need to be constantly updated. Fortunately the Toshiba engineers had a very powerful open source resource to draw upon: apt-get!

At Toshiba, they saw that Debian's apt-get package management system was a perfect 'fit' for a digial clothing management system. New fashions could be installed as easily as getting the central controlling software to issue an 'apt-get install boob-tube'. By checking the sources.list file, the kiosk computer is able to download regionalised versions of whatever clothing is being requested...Japanese versions of the same item are sometimes radically different to the Albanian version! Updating to a new look is just as simple. For example, 'apt-get dist upgrade aguilera-crack-whore'. Simple!

You'd be really surprised where apt-get is turning up these days. For so many problems, it fits like a glove! (sorry, couldn't resist!). It's a great day to be an apt-get user! apt-get dressed to kill!