Many museums have valuable collections of historical clothing items. Textile materials are generally more sensitive to handling and age more quickly over time than other materials. A specific characteristic of clothing objects is that they are best presented as people wore them, including the movements of the fabric.

Digital replicas of historical clothing objects are a unique form of documentation that will preserve their appearance and characteristics for future generations. At the same time, they allow the presentation of the objects in a realistic environment. The presentation can be time unlimited, available to large groups of visitors and enables users to view rare collections of textile objects without the need for physical handling.

Digitising textile collections and presenting them in real-time animations requires a specific process that differs from the digitisation of other types of collections. Our goal was to propose a workflow for creating realistic 3D digital models of historical clothing objects that allow their simulation in motion. In addition to virtual exhibitions, such models can be used, for example, in educational applications, game animations and other virtual reality environments.

CESNET has designed a process for digitising and realistically presenting textile collection objects. The procedure was tested in cooperation with the Museum of Prague, FEL CTU and improtech company. The work was done within the Virtual Digital Wardrobe project supported by the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic under the ÉTA programme (project no. TL05000298).

Examples of static 3D models of selected textile collection objects can be viewed in the Virtual Wardrobe (https://modely.cesnet.cz/vwardrobe).

Motion simulations of digitised textile objects can be viewed in the interactive kiosk at the Museum of Prague's exhibition From Prehistory to the Tailcoar in the House at the Golden Ring (https://www.muzeumprahy.cz/en/events-from-prehistory-to-the-tailcoat).