"Our project falls into the field of augmented reality. You see yourself on TV and we are digitally adding historical clothing," said Dr Sedláček. One of the specifics of the FEL mirror, according to the scientist, is that it is based on existing pieces of historical clothing photographed using photogrammetry. The team then used the possibility of a partial 3D reconstruction of the person trying on the garment. "3D reconstruction of clothing is not commonly used for magic mirrors. Normally, models generated from a clothing design program are used and the resulting geometry of the garment is simpler. We apply complex geometry," the scientist explained.
He described that their technology therefore works not just with a video record of a person, but with a "point cloud" of that person. "So we can better separate background and foreground, although we don't have the classic green screen that is commonly used for these techniques. Or we can hide certain parts of the body. So we don't show the parts where the person is supposed to be wearing historical clothing at all. We don't create the data there at all," Dr Sedláček pointed out. The goal is to get the best possible result both in the representation of the garment and in how it "fits" the person.
According to the scientist, the current virtual offer includes five clothing options plus accessories. "For example, there are women's dresses from around 1900, a coat from the 1840s, and a hat. There will also be a Celtic woman's garment - a linen tunic," Dr Sedláček added.
According to the scientist, the team started working on the idea of digitally reconstructing clothing about four years ago. "We collaborated with CESNET and the Museum of the City of Prague. Then, while preparing a grant project, we agreed with PhotoRobot to develop a special robot for scanning clothes. CESNET concentrated on processing the data that 'flows' from the robot, resulting in a 3D model. And then we create a visualisation using a magic mirror," said the scientist.
Dr. Sedláček said that CESNET has prepared another type of visualization for the exhibition using a kiosk, which will show clothes animated on a figure using physical simulation. "At the same time, people can try on the clothes in our magic mirror and compare which method of presentation they like the most - whether our virtual interactive ones or the traditional display in a showcase," the scientist stated.
Prof. Jiří Žára, Dr. Ivo Malý, both from the Department of Computer Graphics and Interaction, student Margarita Ryabova and students Jiří Jordán and Martin Pišna also collaborated on the magic mirror project with Dr. Sedláček. The exhibition was created within the Virtual Wardrobe project supported by the ÉTA programme of the Czech Technology Agency.