How do I make cloth in UE4?

Development World Creation
1

For some reason I can’t find a tut anywhere that explains how to get Cloth in UE4. I don’t want it on characters or anything, I just want simple curtains, or a flag or something. Really simple, that waves in the wind a little.

Thanks.

2

Here is a tutorial about that topic: :smiley: (you do it the same with a flag)

3

Thank you, but is there a way to do it without Nvidia, and APEX? It requires different sign ups, and waiting for Nvidia confirmation etc.
I just need quick simple 3ds > UE4, waving cloth, like in UDK :slight_smile:

4

As far as I know it isn’t possible :slight_smile:

5

I’ve been trying to download the wrong thing lol. Sorry, I found the right download now :slight_smile: Thank you

6

If you don’t need something terribly dynamic, you can look in the content examples. In one of the maps (Animation, I think?) There’s a waving flag done with WorldPositionOffset in the material editor.

7

This is probably a silly question, but when using APEX cloth (as in the tutorial video you linked), do you need to rig/skin/weight that skirt as if you weren’t using APEX first, or is the process (before the plugin comes into play) different for APEX vs. non-APEX driven animation?

8

You will have to assign the e.g in my case skirt to one of the bones of the rigg and then you also have to assign some vertices to the vertex group of the bone

e.g

://www.fotos-hochladen.net/uploads/flaglwpbrk46vs.png

The vertices of the stick are assigned to the bones at the stick and I have done the same with the cloth part

9

Yeah, the bone that’s assigned to the flag verts will be the bone that’s responsible for moving the verts that aren’t effected by the cloth simulation.

10

Just curious - Would it be the same if I were to do this on a character as well?

11

What do you exactly mean? You also have to set proper vertex groups when you rigg a char.

12

OK, hardcore animation-newbie-question…

I want to have waving cloth objects in my level. But since I don’t have an nVidia-card I and don’t need to have it simulated in real time I just would like to simulate a wind effect in my modeling software (autodesk softimage), bake the simulation (position offset of vertices) and import this in UE 4 and get the animated object…
Buuut I am heavily confused with everything I read so far… Do I need bones for that? If yes, why?? How do I have to import everything and set it up?

Best regards!

13

Hi ,

To clarify, you do not need an NVIDIA card to run APEX cloth in UE4. All of the out of the box NV tech, such as Destruction and Cloth, is card agnostic. The goal is not to segregate the community between NV and AMD cards.

For your cloth simulation, you can do this by baking your cloth simulation out to the timeline > Export the FBX with animation > Import into UE4 as a skeletal mesh with the option to import animations checked.

You should now have a skeletal mesh with your animation imported.

There is no need for Bones in this type of setup. If your flag is composed of several different pieces, just make sure that you group these before export. I have a similar mini tutorial I did over in this forums post: https://forums.unrealengine/showthread.php?56777-Photons-Be-Free-Mini-tutorials-and-other-curiosities&p=209958&viewfull=1#post209958

Even though this is using a fractured mesh, the idea behind it is the same.

I hope this helps.