How to Create Amazing Cloth Simulations with Chaos Cloth in Unreal Engine 5 PART 01 // UE5 Tutorial

[@Goblination-UE5]

Here we are, dealing with some cool simulation of Cloth on our Elf character Erika :) please let me know if you have any questions, appreciate you all!

[@IamVRan]

NICE! Can't wait trying this! 💚

[@marcusk9483]

Just subscribed. Thanks for the excellent tutorial

[@Goblination-UE5]

Thank you 🙏 my friend I really appreciate that! I’m glad you’ve found this helpful. More to come 😊

[@Dante02d12]

THANK YOUUUUU! I kept seeing this Cloth tab on every videos yet no one explained that this was a _new_ Chaos Cloth Plugin. (What a dumb idea to call it the exact same way too....). Do you think this can work for customizable characters? Like, in a game, can we use that to change the outfit of the character? For the record, now this plugin comes with a built-in blueprint. No need to start from scratch ; but your video is still very useful as you show nodes that they didn't! For now I'm having weight painting issues (part of the skirt I'm giving my character stays put). But I'll keep pushing, following your video! Btw, my test character is also called Erika, lol.

[@annveligurskaya7015]

Thank you very much, this tutorial is excellent! Could you clarify one thing please: is it possible to set cloth thickness in UE? Or we should make second layer when modeling to achieve such effect on edges? Thank you!

[@MushoFutbol]

Hey, this is great. Thank you very much. Can you do it with a skirt? There is the problem with the legs when it moves.

[@Goblination-UE5]

Thank you my friend, I’ll check it with a skirt tomorrow and see what it gives us, will let you know

[@MushoFutbol]

@@Goblination-UE5 Great to know, let's see if you can do it like it looks a realistic physics when it walk. Thank you very much. I will be waiting for it :)

[@Goblination-UE5]

I have something to I’m testing now, I’ll record a video, what result do you get with a skirt simulation that doesn’t work for you?

[@MushoFutbol]

@@Goblination-UE5 Hi friend. Well, when you move, or jump, the legs go throw the skirt, so it does not look realistic the skirt physics. It has to look good the skirt physics but i don't know why i fail with that. I will appreciate your video.

[@fishtankstudiosUEFN]

Awesome dude thank you :)

[@Goblination-UE5]

You’re more than welcome 🙏

[@wgarvin]

Nice tutorial! What is the primary advantage to this method over using cloth paint in the skeletal mesh?

[@Goblination-UE5]

It is another method, I’m sure there are both advantages and disadvantages to both methods when comparing the two. There’s another video coming out that I show the layer method with kinematic collider that I’m not sure it could work with the skeletal mesh option 🤔

[@starcityinc4388]

Thankyou for making this tutorial, Please also make the Tutorial on Metahuman - Tears, Sweat, mud/dirt spreading on body, Hair Simulation.

[@Goblination-UE5]

Interesting suggestion for sure 👌👍🏼👌thank you, I’ll definitely look into doing so my friend

[@imvisuals215]

@@Goblination-UE5 especially the hair sim please.

[@frellinghazmot4443]

I get the preview of the mesh under the transferskinweights node but when I get to @13:06 I don't see the cloth in the preview window on the right.

[@Goblination-UE5]

Keep adding the nodes, it will appear after the last node was created (the terminal node) 😊

[@MrAlexramos8485]

Thank you so much for this wonderful tutorial, such an amazing tool. I have encountered an issue i need support with. my character and clothing are not oriented in the same direction. any tips on how to fix this?

[@Goblination-UE5]

Cheers! 🥂 if your clothes object is rotated to let’s say the opposite direction (180 on Y), if you don’t use 3D software and can re export with the proper rotation, I’d add another node between the ImportStaticMesh node and the TransferSkinWeights node, add a node called - TransformPositions and in that node, Transform Position- 3D and also in Transform Positions- Render in Render rotation change the Y rotation from 0 to 180. This should simulate your object according to your subject mesh

[@michaelvaughan2986]

Can you transfer the simulation from a low poly mesh to one with thickness?

[@kckamara]

Nice work!. How do I make 2 cloth items collide with each other?

[@Goblination-UE5]

Thank you 🙏 Are they the same Static Mesh object? You can use the layer method in Chaos or paint their weight accordingly :)

[@kckamara]

@@Goblination-UE5 Thanks, they're separate. I have a full body cloth and a coat but somehow the coat is penetrating the full body cloth. I'll give it a try, thanks again.

[@michaelvaughan2986]

Is it possible to paint with symmetry in unreal on a symmetrical mesh?

[@RMC_]

great! any tips for making the clothing less floppy? it's flopping around like crazy for me haha

[@Goblination-UE5]

It’s playing with the properties of the cloth, I’d also use Damping, the default is 0.01, raise it to 0.04 perhaps, I show it here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/aJ7apGCjbNZpq7Msi=Wqx8YYJ0QqRpYuZM

[@Tenchinu]

do you think this would work for different skins and clothes for game characters? this system looks so good... but I'm not sure if it would work to implement different clothing to my character in game, and give the opportunity for players to change skins this way. You think you would still have to go and cut the base mesh, dress the character with the specific piece of clothing, then import that individual mesh to implement just as you did with the hood?

[@Goblination-UE5]

What I would do for what you are asking, is, I would try to chaos cloth the skeletal mesh of your desired character and just paint the faces of the cloth you want to simulate. Make sure you create a proper collision object for it. I’m not too sure what you mean by implementing different clothing? You mean different skeletal meshes? On top of what you have?

[@Tenchinu]

@@Goblination-UE5 like, changing the clothes on the same character. As in, different outfit parts (gloves, boots, chest, pants, things like that)

[@Goblination-UE5]

@@Tenchinu I see, so you would need to separate these anyway and make those switches and changes

[@Josh_Alfaro]

Would anyone happen to know why the physics asset would not move during animations?

[@Goblination-UE5]

That’s odd, try using the kinematic collider with the transfer weights instead. (kzbin.info/www/bejne/j2HHq2qpms6nZ9Usi=9g8t5u3k3aHkMzXq )

[@Josh_Alfaro]

@@Goblination-UE5 got it! I’ll watch the tutorial instead. Should I always set the cloth physics asset to that of my character mesh? And are capsules sufficient? Or should we use Convex hulls?

[@Goblination-UE5]

With the kinematic Collider it’s no more capsules and getting weird shapes as collision. It’s 👌👌

[@SuperMontana2008]

Which version of Unreal are you using. 5.3 or 5.4 preview?

[@Goblination-UE5]

For this specific project I’m using UE5.32

[@SuperMontana2008]

@@Goblination-UE5 can you do more tutorials on chaos clothing?

[@Goblination-UE5]

@@SuperMontana2008 I will probably do that my friend :)

[@robertomachado7581]

Thanks for the awesome tutorial! I'm having an issue with the Chaos Cloth Asset plugin. I've installed it in several different projects and in all of them after restart the plugin seems to be installed (it appears in the engine content) but it doesn't show under the Physics assets. There's no way to access it. It doesn't appear under a search. I just can't find the ClothAsset file with the little t-shirt icon that appears at 4:26 in your tutorial. I've been trying to figure out where the problem comes from for several hours now. I'm on a Macbook Pro M2, UE 5.4.2. I wonder if by any chance you would know if this might be a Mac issue. Again, a million thanks!

[@Goblination-UE5]

Interesting, one question that might seem silly but what do you have checked under plugins when you search for cloth?

[@robertomachado7581]

@@Goblination-UE5 Thank you so much for your reply! Under plugins the "Chaos Cloth Asset" and "Chaos Cloth Generator" appear correctly checked across all my projects. However, I can't find these plugins, or the plugin with the t-shirt icon, under "Physics" when I right-click in the Content Browser. Searching for "cloth" that way also yields no results. In other words, the plugin is unaccessible. Truly beats me. Maybe I'll have to reinstall the engine. Or maybe it's a Mac issue. Unreal is not really good for Mac. Thanks a million!

[@Goblination-UE5]

@@robertomachado7581 Do you also have - Chaos Cloth plugin as well on the list? it would be a hand written blue icon and it is version 1.0, this is the actual module of Chaos Cloth

[@HighlightRiel]

Is this for UE 5.4?

[@Goblination-UE5]

UE5.4 has some different updates to Chaos Cloth so it’ll be a tad different, I’m going to create a video about that for sure 👍🏼

[@HighlightRiel]

@@Goblination-UE5 thank you so much!

[@TheFrenchCizzle]

Is that Barry White?

[@meow-wv9yc]

biggest mistake i think ive made so far was not using a meta human

[@Goblination-UE5]

I hear you my friend, MH could be used to bring our projects to such higher level, it’s really ground breaking tech and accessibility for us creatives 💙👍🏼

[@markgabbidon5859]

Where is the amazing cloth simulation. It does not even look decent. I am worried that UE does not have production ready cloth simulation yet.

[@Goblination-UE5]

UE cloth simulation is great especially for games production, even for shows, is it VFX, Marvelous Designs level? Probably not yet, although I have seen great results with cloth and also chaos cloth in UE. It’s a matter of tweaking numbers in the properties to get it right, I’m sure it’ll improve though with the way Epic Games is developing the engine 🤞

[@IamVRan]

For realtime feedback like that? I’m not complaining at all! What production are you referring to? Marvel VFX feature? The Witcher game? I think this is growing rapidly fast, you get immediate responses from the engine with results that would suffice games, AA and AAA, not to mention indie and previz production for film. I think it’s sweet, I’d take it

[@markgabbidon5859]

Sorry to say, this is not ready for films, even indie films have a standard. From this video and others I don’t see this as production ready yet. We will have to try it ourselves in a few months. Also I think ue5.4 added improvements we will have to try that version out.

[@IamVRan]

@@markgabbidon5859 for sure, film is still meh, but tweaking can give you good results, this video is to show the tool, from here, like anything else, you should mess around with it. For film, marvelous designer is the way to go

[@Goblination-UE5]

@@markgabbidon5859 It is all tweakable and can give out nice results, is it to par with MD? probably not as of yet, at the end of the day, it is a realtime game engine, but, I totally have full faith that with the right patience and tweaks, results could surprise us all

[@sahinerdem5496]

I see advantage of this plugin. Advantage; i will not rig cloth parts with bones at DCC; this adds extra bones on basic hierarchy, so in different characters with the same base hierarchy bone hierarchies differs from each at leaf cloth parts, now i may use 1 single hierarchy for all characters then i may add clothes on to them. Concern and expectations; My characters have different heights, fat or skinny->does this transferskinweights "scale" every cloth mesh on to selected or changed different skeletal meshes? i mean use a cloth for all different Basic Character Skeletal meshes. Then if it's not so old way of cloth simulationg at UE with just "copy skin weights" in Maya will do the same without adding bones for cloth parts. And the most concern is will it kill performance? is it worth for the same result with the cost of loosing performance?

[@Goblination-UE5]

I know what you mean! This specific character had all these cloth elements as part of the whole body, what I did was, I simply separated them and exported them as one mesh to FBX, it’s not a skeletal mesh, simply a static mesh. I then went back to the original skeletal mesh of the character (with the cloth objects I’d separated and exported to use the chaos cloth in UE, basically the original file with everything attached and bound skin), I then selected the faces of these cloth objects that were exported and gave them a different shader which will be given a transparent material in UE, that’s the new skeletal mesh I then export into UE. I do not add bones/joints to the cloth objects. I’m sure performance could be influenced if you have an army marching towards the camera with simulated dynamics on all the soldiers 😳 I’d probably deal with it like LOD, if it’s right in my face, simulation would be active and if they are far, no simulation at all. I’d worked on some experiences for AR that the device was limited in how many bones we could use on the objects/characters, so I understand what you say about adding extra bones and painting weights. The thing with this, the cloth objects were already part of the character and in the right position, so for UE it was easy to use the same weight, it’s similar to Maya’s Wrap Deformer, really

[@sahinerdem5496]

@@Goblination-UE5 sometimew we have metals or buttons as seperate meshes on clothes not just bumped textures->here where i have to use bones for cloth. My experiences showed me that bone physics/animdynamics rigged on mid-low poly clothes works very performanced and accurate more than weightpainted clothes. Thank you for your tutorial, This tutorial is very helpfull all, i'm sure other ppl will watch this over months,years from now on. So clean understanable tutorial. And Of course we will be using this method for modular/procedural systems at games,movies. Regards.

[@Goblination-UE5]

@@sahinerdem5496 thank you sooo much! I’d hug you now! And I agree! I understand the whole buttons and accessories ordeal