Issue creating cloth with blender

Development Character & Animation
,
1

I have been working at this for 2 days and am starting to feel a little crazy :slight_smile:

I am new to blender and am working on creating a cloth flag on a flagpole. I can create what I want but importing into UE4 is where I am having problems. I can import the static mesh fine and its great but static. I have tried pinning and I added 2 bones and weighted them correctly I think to import as a skeletal mesh. I can’t get the cloth to move correctly in game. I tried creating a physics asset but couldnt find out how to make anything clothlike. Also, when I import as a skeletal mesh instead of static, its about 10x smaller. I have managed to have the asset be a decent size when first added to UE4 by making the bones smaller or the flag very very big. Any help or advice would be much appreciated.

I have attached my blend file and a fbx below

://www.mediafire/download/xb8b3ob3km2m2w4/flagcloth.zip

2

You can’t create a cloth asset with blender -> you need apex for it

3

Ok, I will try to use the APEX SDK tool to do it. Does it need to be a skeletal mesh or can you use a static mesh and APEX to make something?

4

It has to be a skeletal mesh

5

danke, by the way, your videos have been awesome, I have watched every single one so far

I got the skeletal mesh into the APEX SDK and painted the and latch sections and the simulation looks good. I then import the skeletal mesh and then add the apex file I generated. I am getting closer but the cloth isn’t moving. I see places to disable cloth simulation, is there anything special I have to do to enable it? I dont have any animations etc, I am trying to just treat this like a simple object

6

is it not moving in the persona editor or in the level

in the persona editor , to preview the cloth click on show then go down and tick the apply wind box and increase the strength

not sure about in level though might need a wind actor

ps done a quick video of it

7

Aha, I didnt see the drop down in the materials to associate it with the clothing file a 2nd time. It works now!

I will update with more details once I polish it up a bit and nail down the process. Using the APEX SDK clothing tool was very straightforward.

8

it is now but it was crashing in the beta which is why i don’t have much prepped on that

9

Cool video, made a day of hair pulling for me look easy! what was your bone structure like? Did you pin the material to the pole?

10

i’ll be doing a quickish video later today on the work flow eg in blender - apex cloth - UE4 . if it works :slight_smile:

11

for reference, geodav’s video

Nice, same process I used, I had painted the backside of the flag with a latch but thats because I had also applied a thickness to my flag