The Chaos Dataflow Cloth Editor in 5.8 is Production-Ready and is now the default cloth editor for the engine.
The 5.8 release features many Dataflow improvements including updated weight map painting, graph improvements, extended rendering support and editor stability. We’ve also added new Chaos Cloth USD updates, various node updates including new nodes for vertex and texture map import, extended cloth blueprint support and added an update to the physics Tapered capsule cloth collision primitive.
https://dev.epicgames.com/community/learning/tutorials/Wb2V/unreal-engine-chaos-cloth-updates-5-8
Hello! Thank you for the great Chaos Cloth tool, it has become much more convenient to set up cloth physics. Still, I have some suggestions on how to improve this tool.
1. Mesh loops visibility during weight painting
It would be great to see the mesh loops/wireframe on the geometry while editing and painting weights. Right now it’s just a solid black fill, and sometimes it’s hard to tell exactly where a loop runs. This would be visually helpful when setting up weights, especially when adjusting values near borders/edges.
2. Ability to select and isolate mesh sections for painting
I’d also like the ability to select parts of the mesh and isolate them, so I can then paint weights specifically on those parts. This is especially useful with multi-layer clothing, when you want to paint weights on the layer underneath the outer garment. Previously this could be handled through “Show Patterns,” but that function no longer seems to be available. It would be more convenient to be able to select the mesh itself and isolate or hide it.
3. Flood button for weight painting/relax
Weight editing is also missing a “Flood” button. For example, if I’ve painted 100% weights in several different spots and now want to create a smooth transition everywhere, I’d like to select Relax and hit Flood so smoothing is applied everywhere I’ve painted at once. Right now I have to manually go over every hard transition with the brush to smooth it, which isn’t very convenient.
4. Multiple Physics Assets per Dataflow for different cloth layers
And lastly — something I really miss — the ability to assign several different Physics Assets to different parts of the cloth within a single Dataflow. For example, I have a multi-layer skirt and want to set up one Physics Asset for the outer layer and another for the inner layer, all within the same Cloth Asset. Currently I have to create multiple separate Chaos Cloth Assets and add multiple Chaos Cloth components in the Blueprint. This adds extra draw calls and reduces performance — not by a huge amount, but still noticeably.
Thank you!
Hi
Thank you for the feedback
I’m glad you found the improvement useful as well 
Here’s some answer regarding your questions
1. Mesh loops while painting
In 5.8 you can already actually toggle mesh edges from the view mode menu ( ALT + 9 shortcut )
2. Select and isolate mesh
That is something that we already have on our to do list
3. flood painting
the rush mode effectively does not have a flood button, but you can achieve the same using the Mesh mode , selecting some vertices, pressing Flood and then setting some values on the selection
2. Select and isolate mesh
Dataflow does not effectively support that at the moment
Ced
I wanted to add something else on the multi-physics asset:
It is possible to add and remove physics assets at runtime from Blueprint
the Cloth Component has several function to do so:
- AddCollisionSource
- RemoveCollisionSource
- ResetCollisionSources
But they will apply to the entire cloth asset and will not give you control per layer
They are useful when you want to switch or add extra collision based on the state of your character for example
Ced