Exporting APEX cloth issue

Hello all!

I’m pretty new to animating so forgive my inexperience but I ran into a problem that I just can’t find the solution for. I’m using the PhysX plugin on Maya 2015. When I try to export my apex clothing, it always saves as a .pxproj but when I go over to UE4 and click “Add APEX clothing file”, it seems to only want to read either .apx or .apb. I’ve tried just giving it the .pxproj file anyway but an error message comes up and nothing happens (“Failed to import APEX clothing asset from the selected file”). I managed to find a post that was made on these forums about a year ago that seems to have my exact problem. Sadly there was no solution to that thread even though there was discussion. Here’s a link to that thread just in case https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?52944-Exporting-Importing-apex-cloth-problem.

I have considered the possibility that my plugin might be outdated, but I don’t really know how to check its version or update it. Looking up “how to update maya plugins” and “how to update physx plugin for maya” didn’t help me much. If anyone can help me with my problem that would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Sophie

First - get the latest Maya plugin for your version here: PhysX SDK | NVIDIA Developer

You may have to get an account, may take about a day to get approved (there aren’t any real requirements, you can put “N/A” in fields that don’t apply to you).

Secondly, you definitely want to export a .apx or .apb for it to work - .pxproj is going to be basically a file type for you to save your work in Maya, where as the .apx/.apb actually have the data as it’s needed for APEX to use in the game.

Unfortunately I can’t tell you what to press and stuff for the Maya version, but there are some tutorials you may be able to look at.

Hope this helps! Feel free to add me on Steam (where I’m usually available) if you want some more real-time help. I recently dealt with getting APEX clothing I made myself into the engine as well and it’s kind of a pain to get right. That said, I haven’t used the Maya version of the plugin.

Thanks for the quick reply! Yeah I had a feeling it might be the version that is the issue but I’m not quite sure. The latest version of PhysX was release waaaay before I started learning Maya/UE4 so the issue might persist but I will try. Thanks for the offer, I would love to add you on steam. What is your steam name? And I will update as soon as I can. Downloading the latest plugin while I’m typing this.

Update
I’m really ashamed to say that I don’t know where to extract these files to. I downloaded the latest version of PhysX from the link but I have no idea where the files go. I tried searching online but nothing’s come up yet. I’m guessing it’s the plug-in folder in my Maya files but I didn’t see a pre-existing PhysX folder so I just left everything alone for now. Please help! Sorry!

Update
So going into my plugin manager for maya, I see that the location for my current physX plug in is C:/Program Files/NVIDIA Corporation/PhysX For Autodesk Maya/2015 64bit/bin/plug-ins. So I’m guessing I extract the new version into my “PhysX For Autodesk Maya” folder? I haven’t done anything yet because I’m really scared of messing something up lol

You should be able to just put the new plugin in the same spot the old one was in.

Ok. So I’m fairly certain that my PhysX plugin is up to date: PhysX SDK Version 3.3.3, APEX SDK Version 1.3.3

But I still can’t export my APEX clothing as .apb or .apx, only .pxproj and an xml file :frowning: I really need help.

I dunno about Maya, again, but in Max you just select the Cloth Mesh and the bone(s) for it, then do Export Selected, and in the drop down for file type, select .apx or .apb.

Try these settings

it’s probably solved by now, but in case anyone else needs it, It happened to me and I fixed it by flooding the physx weights at 0.01 before starting to paint. I guess it can’t save data from a 0 or something.

Works for me with flooding 0. And those settings, not sure, I use these:

Totally having the same problem, Maya 2017 and PhisX 3.4.0, it just exports Pxproj. even if I choose APX or APB…

Same here with Maya 2017.

You need to check the Export PhysX Assets under the PhysX Clothing drop down.