•   When: Friday, October 29, 2021 11:00 AM to Friday, September 24, 2021 12:00 PM
•   Speakers: Dinesh Pai, Professor The University of British Columbia
•   Location: ZOOM only
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ABSTRACT

3D avatars currently used in the apparel industry are hard. They do not behave like real human bodies and do not change shape in response to the garments. This is a major challenge for use of 3D technologies for predicting fit, especially for close-to-body garments such as intimates, athletic apparel, swimwear, and footwear. I will present recent advances in my group on developing realistic data-driven soft avatars for fit testing.
First, I will describe a multi-year effort to capture not only the 3D shape of a human body but also its physical properties, including elasticity, soft tissue volume, and how the body responds to touch with garments and other objects. Second, I will describe recent advances in realistic simulation of soft tissues, including simulating frictional contact with smooth elastic solids, and enforcing volume preservation in finite element simulations. Finally, I will present applications of these methods to virtual fit testing.

BIO

Dinesh K. Pai is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia, and founder of Vital Mechanics Research - a startup developing high-fidelity soft avatars for apparel fit testing. His current research is focused on data-driven digital human models, frictional contact between soft objects, machine learning for design, and technology for efficient measurement of material properties. His research is multidisciplinary, spanning computer graphics, scientific computing, computational mechanics, artificial intelligence, robotics, biomechanics, and the neural control of movement.
He has received many prestigious recognitions, including a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair, the 2020 CHCCS Achievement Award for Computer Graphics, UBC's Killam Research Prize, three NSERC Discovery Accelerator/Supplement Awards, and an international Human Frontier Science Program grant. A dozen of his trainees are now faculty at leading institutions. Dr. Pai has been a Professor at Rutgers University and has held visiting professorships at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, New York University's Center for Neural Science, the University of Siena (as Santa Chiara Chair in Cognitive Science), and the Collège de France, Paris (elected Professeur Invité). He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, and his B.Tech. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. See http://sensorimotor.cs.ubc.ca/pai/ for more information.