ABSTRACT
The fashion industry’s progression towards full digitalisation of the design and product development process will be partly dependent on achieving a mirroring of the physical and digital apparel prototyping processes. This chapter will outline some of the key differences that currently exist between physical and digital apparel prototyping and how designers and software developers can assist in closing some of these gaps to further enhance the technical accuracy of 3D apparel prototyping. Rather than focus on a specific named software, generic terms which are relevant to the majority of 3D fashion prototyping software will be used so as not to prioritise one specific software over another. The key prototyping processes that will be explored will include stitching, seam pucker, puffer effect, seams, fitting, and fabric performance. These processes were chosen on the merit of their value in the sampling process as well as the existence of a clear virtual representation of each tool in current versions of popular 3D visualisation software.
