How to correctly configurate the Physics Asset of a human then using the Clothing tool (Apex) ?

Development Character & Animation
1

Hi everybody!

I’m struggling a lot to configurate the physics asset… (which had been created during the import of my skeletal mesh).

I downloaded the Content examples which contains the character Own: Physics + Coat animations thanks to the Clothing Tool.
To use it as a reference.

I have my character + one animation recorded from motion capture.
Right now, I’m just focusing on the bodies Hips - Left/Right legs and their constraints…
In the physics tab, when I preview my scene with the animation, the bodies Hips - Left/Right legs are not linked and the bodies of the legs don’t follow the orientation of the bones they are so supposed to be linked with.

Which settings I’m missing?
I compare with Owen, it’s really similar but I can’t find the answer / I don’t really know which settings to modify…

Thanks in advance!

2

Hi Kevin,

Have you seen this part of the video in the course? It’s all in Section 2: Video 11 : Fine tune your clothing movement in skeleton mode.

https://www.udemy.com/course/learn-how-to-do-cloth-animation-in-unreal-engine-4/learn/lecture/12089926#overview

It’s about 5 minutes in and goes over some physics assets. Also, really important is to have the ‘physics asset selected’ in your cloth settings so it can react to your character. This is mentioned around 6:40 in the video.

We’ll figure it out together. Let me know how things are coming along.

3

Thanks Michael for your answer.
I checked the part you mentionned but you “just” add a capsule to the pelvis bone.
In my screenshots above, I firstly work on the physics bodies and their constraints, how they are linked together. For the Clothing tool, I already checked how it works (painting vertices, playing with the damping/gravity values etc etc)

The first problem I would like to solve is how to correctly link the capsules colliders together… Once they will correctly follow the positions/orientations of my bones while animations will be played, I could then work on my clothing settings.

4

Hi Kevin,

Here is a tutorial that will help you with the physics setup of a character from scratch:

Keep me posted on your progress!

5

Thanks Michael for this useful link. The tutorial is quite old (2014) but it’s still helpful.

When I simulate physics it seems ok, but when I preview my bodies + constraints with my animation, the bodies are not linked anymore… The capsules don’t follow the bones orientation / position.

I selected my bodies and set the option Physics Type = Kinematic, like the tutorial…

6

Some progress, that could help a person who can encountered the same issue…

  1. I added a capsule for the “hips” then “Right up leg” then “Right Leg” bones. => Wrong

  2. Only add a capsule for the “Hips” or pelvis then a capsule for the “Right up leg” bone but the capsule will follow the orientation / size / position of the "right leg " bone !

  3. Then select your Hip in the skeleton tree and a constraint by selecting the “Right up leg” for the “constraint with” option. The order is important !