Best Dynamic Cloth Solution?

What is the best way to bring a cloth simulation into Unreal? As far as I know there is no support for Geo Cache or Alembic.

I use Maya and would prefer to simulate the cloth there. I also have Softimage and 3D . I also have the ability (potentially I suppose) to export the cloth sim as a .obj object sequence. If I could do that would there be a way to import it into Unreal and play it?

Or is there another way?

Same question for hair, which I assume would have to be polygons.

Oh also important is that this is for characters with full collisions and so on. Not for something like a flag blowing or just a cape.

Take a look at nvidia apex v=81zCh8ASlRo :slight_smile:

Yeah actually I have heard of that.

This one is pretty cool too:
v=LqiBWaHegAo
As I find for my purposes - not in game real time - that this is really lacking something, Very cool though.

I should have rephrased. What is the best way to bring in dynamic sims from other 3DC tools for use with non-real time cinematics?

Basically I think there needs to be a solution to bring in cache of some kind. Alembic or FBX. If not object sequences.

For cached simulation, depending on the amount of frames, u could create a blendshape/morph target for each mesh in the simulation. The morph weight would be set to 1 when frame is active then 0 when not. Then export deformed animation to fbx or keyframe value. I would like to second nvidia cloth so your simulation will then be dynamic. You can apply animations to the joints that the cloth is skinned to, and limit the strength of the actual cloth simulation. Havent tested yet but maybe you could apply a morph target simulation with an nvidia cloth file for additional options… Although if its just for cinematic why not just render a movie?

The point (for this project I am doing at this time) is to use Unreal for the cinematic, or more precisely to render it in real or semi real time using Matinee. This is the testing I am doing now with Unreal Engine.

Basically by the time I am done setting up scenes to my liking there is not much of a chance of them working for game play anyway. The scenes will be too heavy. However I plan to leverage the use of Matinee for output of frames to then use in an NLE to construct a digital film.

So there is no need for me to have the cloth dynamic in Unreal, especially of that means sacrificing quality I can get from nCloth. But if a sequence of morph shapes will work, I’ll look into that more.

Thanks for the info.