I have a base character skeletal mesh, and bunch of clothing skeletal meshes (Shirt, pants, what have you). The character has morph targets. The clothing doesn’t follow the base character’s morph targets. How can I make it follow?
Do I have to make separate morph targets for each of the clothing?
The clothing are skeletal meshes as a children of the base mesh, and they follow the animation of the base mesh by “Set Leader Pose Component”.
I’ve read the question a few times and I really don’t even know where to begin as to an answer as to assuming the purpose that needs to be served as with most similar questions lacks context. The basics of context is an understanding of how the current design and intent works as to a result that could be considered best practice and best practice can not be determined with out context. It’s like saying “I know how to operate the turn signal but how do I drive the car?”
That said I’ll switch to game design theory mode.
I have a base character skeletal mesh, and bunch of clothing skeletal meshes (Shirt, pants, what have you). The character has morph targets. The clothing doesn’t follow the base character’s morph targets. How can I make it follow?
With what you have do you understand how components could be used to create characters built from individual parts and driven by the same skeletal rig? If so then your shirt and pants don’t need to be simulated unless your looking for a more realistic result. If your actor is wearing a dress then the dynamic nature of the object requires a cloth simulation if it need to function in real time.
How can I make it follow
Adds confusion as pants and shirts are cloth based objects as in they need to share the same skeletal mesh and added as part of the base character model and dynamics add after the fact as to movement requirements in real time.
Do I have to make separate morph targets for each of the clothing?
Lacking context as to what the result needs to be then the simple answer is yes if your attempting to drive cloth simulation via the use of morphing which as to best practice changes due to the process being used for a “reason” over the simple use of a cloth simulation from with in UE5.
Cloth simulation is not compatible with morphs.
Well yes and no as to once again context is lacking as to the purpose the design needs to serve. Both morph and cloth simulations are additive based as being vertex animation so they are not incompatible but rather in conflict if used both at the same time. The difference is cloth is algorithm drive where morphs are target drive and has similar behaviour as to cloth via progressive morphing.
You completely misunderstood the question, and instead answered 10 other questions that were never asked and have close to nothing to do with the original question.
I am not using cloth simulation. The “Clothing Skeletal Meshes” are regular skeletal meshes, that have the appearance of clothing (a shirt, pants, overcoat, shorts).
As I clearly mentioned in my first questions, they follow the base mesh by using “Set Leader Pose Component”, which is nowhere near a cloth simulation.
As for the very simple question - can different skeletal meshes, that use the same skeleton, follow a morph target, without me having to make separate morph targets for each of the meshes.
This is a purely technical question, and you don’t need to know the game plot and the developer’s date of birth to answer it.
Sorry if I’m a bit confused but use it as an example of how confusion is created based on my question “why are you using morphs to follow the main skeletal mesh?” You say the main mesh has morph targets but I’m not sure why the pants and shirt needs to follow as driven by a morph as they can follow by inherent the transforms from the main component.
So yes your clothing will follow using “Set Leader Pose Component” as long as its a child of the maser component.
But no morphs will not follow based on the above node as morph are not based on skeletal transforms off the skeletal mesh as they are transformed as additive and not not based on transform data.
This leads to additional questions as to the reason the clothing needs to follow the morph off the main body? As in the tutorial you don’t need the full body in most cases, unless your actor needs to run around nude, and your morph requirements added the the clothing as to the desired final result.
Once your have your actor configured as a single actor using components you can then apply you could add the morphing requirements on top of the current pose
If you can say what the desired result would be as to the requirement of a morph might get us on the right path.
I want to make the character’s body shape customizable, so that players can make it fat, skinny, muscular, whatever.
The clothing naturally needs to conform to the body type. If I make the clothing for the skinny body, and player applies the fat morph, the belly will be sticking out of the shirt. If I make the shirt initially for fat body type, then that’s not really customizable, as regardless of the body type player chooses, with that shirt it will look fat.
My current approach is not a modular character where each clothing has it’s own torso. Instead it is a nude body, and separate clothing meshes on top of it. Hence I need the clothing meshes to also follow the morph targets of the base body.
I know that I can make morphs for each of the clothing meshes. So for example if I make a fat morph for the base body, I will need to make fat morphs separately for all the shirts, all the pants, etc… But since this seems like a ton of work, I am wondering if there is an easier way, before commiting to it.
But even if the setup was modular like on the video you showcased, I would still have to make separate meshes for fat, skinny, muscular types, or again make all the morphs separately for all the clothing meshes.
So the type of setup in this case doesn’t really matter.
OK so no there is not a node that would conform clothing to the body shape and yes you will need to make the clothing morph targets to fit the body style. Making run time custom changes to a player model is far to complex as to dealing with all the moving parts to make it work and is far mode simple to do at the content or asset level.
The good news is there is a tool that would make the task at least more fun and not so much a bore as to making tones of individual morph necessary to fit the body style.
The tool is called Daz Studio which you can use a parametric character, actor, called Genesis 9 which can be used to transfer morphing data with out even having to learn to model targets.
The bad news is of course is the steep learning curve but most complex solution are figured out via discovery anyway but since a lot of the base requirements are free you can source some working assets and jump over the editing requirements. There is of course MetaHuman but I’ve used DS and Genesis to test theory for years and since changes can be made using a slider and create the needed clothing morphs and body style at the same time.
This is next gen stuff for actor development of creating stuff in a fun manner over coffee and donuts. The resut though is you can develop the required assets at the asset level and import into UE5 and wire up the parts and avoid the complexity of a procedure solution.
If any questions as the the use of DS as a development tool I’ll be happy to try to answer but I can assure you once to get a handle on it you could create tones of conforming clothing on the same identical skeletal in a single day that could take months to make via an app like Blender. You could even make tons of unique NPC actors like Assassins Creed.
Hope this is of help as there really no “easy” way of doing it.
