UE5 Cloth Simulation for stiff materials (leather)

Development Asset Creation
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1

Hey ! I’m having a problem I can’t manage to solve in UE5.

I want to simulate a leather cape on an animated character, and after hours of tweaking and testing, I can’t manage to get a cape that looks stiff like leather would. It always end up looking kinda like silk.
I tried with and without thickness in the mesh, changing every value in the cloth properties, tweaking the cloth painting with lower values, etc.
Surely I’m missing something but I just can’t find what it is.

Here is a screenshot (left is the animated character with cloth sim / right is the static character with the cape looking as it should)

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Capture1634×1220 177 KB

Thanks in advance !

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I do have the same problem :frowning: Have you found the solution yet?

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Sadly, I didn’t find any solution for the moment. I’m gonna go with a rig :confused:

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I know it’s a bit late, but for me in your case the best solution would be to use proxy mesh with lower res poly density.

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Following on from @Sanek94cool’s comment, this tutorial is pretty good for explaining how to set up cloth physics with a proxy mesh - Hair Physics LOD in Unreal Engine 4 - YouTube

The example is for hair but it can be applied to anything

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It seems like you’re having trouble simulating a stiff leather cape on your animated character in UE5. Despite numerous attempts, the cape still appears silk-like rather than stiff. You’ve tried various adjustments, including mesh thickness, cloth properties, and cloth painting, but haven’t achieved the desired result.

To address this issue, you may want to focus on adjusting the cloth simulation properties further, such as increasing stiffness, damping, and collision settings. Additionally, ensure that the cape’s material properties (e.g., roughness and specular) match those of leather.

Remember to keep experimenting and fine-tuning the settings until you achieve the desired stiff leather appearance. Good luck!

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it is obviously an AI-generated response, and it’s totally meaningless.

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Yes, it’s possible in Unreal Engine. In Unreal Engine 5.2, select your cloth asset and under Config->Cloth Configs->ChaosClothConfig, if you hover over ‘EdgeStiffness’ or ‘AreaStiffness’ or ‘BendingStiffness’, the pop-up prompt says: increase iteration count for stiffer materials. Iteration count you can find under 'Config->Cloth Configs->ChaosClothSharedSimConfig. Also, you can affect stiffness with additional vertex masks. Add a new mask under masks and set target to Bending Stiffness or Area Stiffness. I added one for my mesh and set vertex weights to 100 for this mask (maximum stiffness). Then I increased the iteration count to about 10, and the cloth became much stiffer, so this works 100%.
Bear in mind, the promp also says that higher iteration count costs more performance. So it seems like you will have to pay with performance for stiffer clothing, although I am not sure why it works in this way.