Greetings wizards!

I am exploring this Pixar paper called "Directing Cloth Draping through Blended UVs" that you can find here, with a video presentation of the method at the bottom:
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3721239.3734074 [dl.acm.org]

I experimented with it in Houdini and haven't come up with a proper result.
First, I am wondering if overriding the rest length is enough for maintaining original shape, because I struggle to figure out how ? Or is it involving Bend Rest Angle?

I made a test overriding rest length with UV, making sure they have the correct scale, it's indeed looking different in the way it's forming folds, but not preserving the shape especially.

I worked on what they call "fractured UVs" by matching the scale of each triangle on the flat "pattern" islands. The main issue is that, of course, Vellum Cloth will not generate bend constraints from individual triangles (the diagonal constraints), so I tried to transfer them back on "original" vellum constraints, based on fused and non splitted triangles.

Also the paper mention maintaining orientation and wrap/weft, so I feel that the correct scale is not enough and that I am missing something essential. The paper covers some technical aspects that my non so technical brain struggle to really figure out.

Hoping that some of you might have some ideas or inputs about this one, and if I come up with progress I would love to share it with you.

Have a wonderful day and happy new year !

I definitely wouldn't try to set restlengths directly, there is so many different constraints

I usually just match the areas of uv panels to the real geo and use it as input for the Vellum Rest Blend
Which more or less sounds like what that paper seems to be about

This of course is best when uvs represent the real rest panels like from marvelous