I must be very thick in the head. I have a very simple cloth animation in 3ds max and have been trying all night to export it to UE. Am I right in discovering this can’t be done? I’m getting very confusing answers the more I look on the web, and everything I try fails. If I’m beating a dead horse please let me know so I can move on. I thought this was going to be simple 
It has to be either through FBX or through Alembic.
Alembic can export the cloth sim easily, just file export as alembic file. But depending what you want or need, file sizes can go up significantly and it’s probably not the best option in some cases. Alembic is the easiest way to export cloth.
FBX cannot export cloth sim by default, becuase it does not support vertex animation. You have to setup a comprehensive rig on top of the cloth sim by multiple bones in max and then export the cloth as a skinned mesh through FBX. This can have multiple benefits over Alembic such as ability to use it with characters and blend baked cloth with realtime cloth sim etc… But requires a much longer and complicated setup time.
These are the two options available to you.
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Thanks, man for this great solution