The real killer app that many are waiting for, is the ability to match an item to our figure and a get a real-time preview. I've seen suggestions of this at Siggraph but nothing consumer-ready.
I agree 100%, this is the killer app. My wife independently suggested this idea after buying some clothes online that technically were the right size but didnt provide a good fit for her body. I told her that it was a very difficult problem from a computer science perspective. Have you got any links (to Siggraph or others) which have taken a look at this problem in detail?
Aside from the obvious technical challenges, I did wonder how a site like this would handle some of the delicate issues around uploading pictures and/or 3D models of a woman's figure. How would this work? Would women be standing in their underwear in front of a webcam and rotating the body as prompted? Even if the collected data is a single texture or point cloud, it still could be considered a little...invasive? Not to mention the privacy issues.
You're overthinking it. The solution to this problem, in this instance, is non-technical.
Women already have a rough idea of how different sizes from different brands will fit them. Once they find another woman with a range of things that would also likely fit them well, they can have a reasonable assurance that their other clothes will be similarly sized and cut.
Once they find a few women of similar size, shape and taste, they can draw preferentially from that pool of users.
You'd need to be able to upload pics, convert to a 3d point cloud based on height and weight entries and not store the original pics.
Then use that information to construct a 3d model and apply clothing textures accurately to them
What would be really cool though, is an inflatable mannequin which could be inflated to near perfectly match that point cloud, which would then be clothed in the garment you want and you would receive a pic of your figure in that actual garment.
Interesting idea there with the mannequin. This bypasses some of the limitations of just applying clothing textures to the 3D model. A mannequin would probably give a much better indication of how items of clothing stretch (or dont stretch) in different places across the body. I imagine this would be very difficult to simulate with current tech.
Logistics though? How do you (cheaply) mass produce mannequins with entirely different dimensions? 3D printer?
Also how would the clothing be fitted to the mannequin? Robots? Do we have a robot that can dress people yet?
There is an easier way. http://www.upcload.com/. From my research in the past year this company is the only one that provides the closest measurement to the nearest mm. They are out of Berlin if my memory serves me correctly.
Seems quite complex, it's a hard problem to solve. My girlfriend routinely sends back clothes cause they don't "feel" right, even though the fit/size is fine. This is something you can't really solve with a computer.
I think it could be done while keeping all 3D model data on the client. I'm picturing something akin to a computer game, where people install the game/tool on their PC. If you've ever created a detailed RPG character, that's what I imagine it to be. Something where you can sit and browse real clothing/accessories/makeup, and fit it onto a detailed, exactly proportionate 3D model of yourself, then add the entire ensemble to your shopping cart would be a very killer app. Oh, and then you could have mods for 'if I lost 20 pounds' '3 months pregnant' and sell people clothes they don't need yet and may never fit.
This is probably something Facebook or Google should do. They already have the users, if they had something functional like this they could get a significant cut of the global retail industry overnight.
Once you had that working, you could go about providing the same model for homes, interior and exterior. And buy Fedex.
I agree 100%, this is the killer app. My wife independently suggested this idea after buying some clothes online that technically were the right size but didnt provide a good fit for her body. I told her that it was a very difficult problem from a computer science perspective. Have you got any links (to Siggraph or others) which have taken a look at this problem in detail?
Aside from the obvious technical challenges, I did wonder how a site like this would handle some of the delicate issues around uploading pictures and/or 3D models of a woman's figure. How would this work? Would women be standing in their underwear in front of a webcam and rotating the body as prompted? Even if the collected data is a single texture or point cloud, it still could be considered a little...invasive? Not to mention the privacy issues.