ABSTRACT
Cloth modeling and simulation have come a long way since the mid-1980s, no doubt spurred on by the rich interdisciplinary and highly visual approach taken by researchers in computer graphics. Without the constraint “getting it right” in the engineering sense, researchers have been able to experiment broadly, discover, and tease out a variety of techniques aimed at “getting it to look right.” Many of these techniques are radical departures from those adapted by the engineering community. The exciting part of this approach is that in the end it does not preclude getting it right. Clearly when it is right it does look right but the converse is also often true. Frequently the endgame of the computer graphics approach to a problem leads to a solution that is on very firm theoretical and physically correct foundations. It is just that the opening moves and the way the main body of the game is played are motivated by visual criteria that are satisfied by incremental improvements of visual appearance, without necessarily using the usual quantitative frame of reference.
