How to create APEX hair in Maya and export to UE?

I’m trying to create hair for a mermaid so that she always has flowing floaty hair that flows behind her head. I have the animations created for the mermaid. I binded the hair mesh to the mermaids hair and made it an APEX clothing object. Next I painted the max furthest distance weights and made the max value 90. I press on Play in the PHYSX menu in Maya and it moves dynamically, but it looks like garbage. Also, before I make the hair object an APEX clothing object, my hair mesh, which is a single side planar, shows properly in the viewport on both the sides, but when I make it an APEX clothing object, one of the side becomes invisible while the other side stays visible. Does this mean that I need a double sided hair object or will it show properly in Maya ?

Also, before I press play for the simulation to play, I also created the head and shoulders as a rigid body (capsules) for the hair to collide with, but the deformations are pretty weird.

How can I add a flowing floating feel to the hair in the UE ?

Kindly help.

I’m a 3DS Max user, but some stuff you’re asking can be solved in UE4 so, here goes.

The hair being two-sided: do it in UE4. Create a material for your hair and set it to be Two-sided. If you import the SkeletalMesh to UE4 with the Import Materials option on, I believe only your texture will have an effect. You’ll still have to set the material as 2-sided.

About the floating feel in UE4: I haven’t done something floaty yet, but I think you just need to turn Gravity down on the APEX physics settings (it appears when you import the APEX file).

You said the simulation looks like garbage… how so?