The research aims to evaluate the level of perception of tactile and visual characteristics of digital protective textiles materials compared with the same materials in physical format. First, the materials were scanned using the TAC 7 system and their appearance was captured in a unique digital format. Next, the digital materials were processed using Keyshot rendering software and a number of three different digital evaluation scenarios were defined: S1-image, S2-video animation and S3-3D object, where it is possible to rotate and enlarge/shrink the material, the fourth evaluation scenario is represented by the physical materials. In the last stage, by applying a questionnaire based on a Likert rating scale from 1 to 7, data were collected from 24 subjects regarding the levels of perception of tactile and visual characteristics (subjective perception) of digital and physical materials, in each of the four mentioned scenarios. Boxplot diagrams were used to evaluate the subjects’ level of agreement on the perception of materials characteristics and the Friedman test was applied to evaluate and compare the perception from the three digital scenarios with the perception of physical materials from the fourth scenario. The results show a lower degree of agreement for digital materials compared to the physical ones and highlighted glossiness, colour and transparency having the highest level of agreement in all scenarios. Correlations between the materials’ attributes were high between softness, draping, elasticity and thermal sensation. Comparative analysis between scenarios highlights the difficulty of transposing tactile attributes into digital format compared with the visual attributes.
Bocancea et al. (Tue,) studied this question.