How to Quickly Export Cloth Animation from Marvelous Designer to Blender

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The original Marvelous Designer tutorial:
• How to Quickly Create ...
IMPORTANT: If you encounter wiggling animation error in Marvelous, check the second part of the tutorial, where at the beginning I explain how to fix it: • How to Quickly Texture...
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Find Project Files for this tutorial at
drive.google.com/open?id=1I4y...
and
drive.google.com/open?id=1W6O...
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Hello friends, Martin here, and this time we’ll have a look at a much requested feature of Marvelous Designer - the ability to animate the clothing and then export this animation, in our case, to Blender.
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UV PROBLEM SOLUTION:
If you encounter a problem where the Mesh Sequencer Modifier is overwriting the UVs of your model, what I would suggest is: 1) export your Mesh from MD as FBX, Single object, Scale in meters. 2) Import the FBX into blender and adjust your UVs on this model 3) Export your Animation from MD as MDD (Standard) format, again, Scale in Meters) 4) Select your Mesh in Blender, and import MDD cache. Your clothing should now animate, and the UVs should stay the same.
If you can not export/import MDD in Blender, make sure you activate NewTek MDD plugin in Preferences - Addons.
I will try to figure out how to make this work with allembic format, but using MDD should be fine, though you will probably have to rotate your mesh.
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CHAPTERS:
0:30 Exporting the Animation (updated Mixamo workflow)
02:43 Reusing the Garment
03:54 Cloth Simulation
04:21 Pinning the Cloth
05:25 Cloth Animation
05:48 Exporting the Cloth animation to Blender
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LINKS:
www.cgboost.com
www.heroesofbronze.com
www.marvelousdesigner.com
The Witness Breakdown: • LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS | ...
#b3d #marvelousdesigner #animation

[@MartinKlekner]

CHAPTERS: 0:30 Exporting the Animation (updated Mixamo workflow) 02:43 Reusing the Garment 03:54 Cloth Simulation 04:21 Pinning the Cloth 05:25 Cloth Animation 05:48 Exporting the Cloth animation to Blender

[@akshatmishra9234]

how to export texture along with the animation from CLO to blender. Please help.

[@RaffaelSilvado]

@Cayson Tadeo no one cares

[@sakattodesign9927]

@@akshatmishra9234 that's also the problem, how to put the texture stay

[@Rivershield]

Bro, can this be used in games?

[@icresoftgames]

this is a lot more practical than calculating cloth physics inside Blender

[@ptt619]

it really is, blender cloth is still so fidgety

[@windowsxpeu]

I have tried this and it blew my mind! It's so awesome and satisfying to watch your simulations happen. Best 360 frames of my life. Thanks for the tutorial :)

[@henninganimationvfx7560]

Not sure if anyone mentioned it here, but when you export to Blender you can choose "Meters (M)" in the Alembic export dialogue box instead of leaving it at the default mm. Then it should already come into Blender scaled correctly.

[@Gester143]

You are a savior

[@tosalance]

You really a live saver with this tutorial man, I have been looking in ages to find this gem....

[@MTHALO.]

You see blender everywhere nowadays oh Blender all grown up!!

[@theanimelibarian7881]

Yup it’s crazy

[@TheZahnputz]

THANK YOU SOO MUCH! this tutorial came just in time. i have to teach this stuff to myself at the moment and this workflow just made my life a lot easier!

[@12345ches]

OH MY GOD THANK YOU, YOU DON'T KNOW HOW HELPFUL THIS IS FOR ME!!! :DDDD

[@danielasincojimenez1920]

Amazing video! So practical and now I'm a blender lover

[@A.Shek_]

loving ur channel. Quality Content. Good Luck Man!

[@nategreyson6014]

Martin, you are the man. I wish you get all the great things in the world you so much deserve. Cheers mate.

[@MartinKlekner]

Thank you so much, Nate! :-)

[@Masha_B]

Cool tutorial, thanks Martin 😁

[@cpsstudios]

Incredible video!! Instant fan.

[@MyDressPatterns]

Quick and easy, thank you!

[@knucklesbyname]

Amazing. Subscribed. Thank you for this MD info man.

[@FishcatZombie]

i'VE WATCHED THIS LIKE 17 TIMES because I kept forgetting to adjust that thickness related to how close it is to the avatar :') Well detailed video, I'm just having a slow day :'D

[@mathiasriedel6228]

Awesome! Just what I needed!

[@cezanneali]

thanks man! loved your short film too :)

[@Fancy.languages1]

your tut solved my problems perfectly! thank you!

[@blackout5145]

you are really awesome man thank you so much for the tut

[@reiimouse]

Thanks for this !

[@RedninjaMultimediaProductions]

A Great tutorial!!! thankyou!!

[@yasiin_miim3278]

thank you for this great video! :)

[@mastanarts]

amazing tutorial

[@BoboTheImp]

They actually did use blender in The Witness lol. They did the environment in it. I think it's also rendered in blender, but they did a specular pass in Arnold

[@MartinKlekner]

:D Damn, it never occured to me :) Srry for misinformation ;)

[@BoboTheImp]

@@MartinKlekner No worries, there is a nice article about it here: www.blendernation.com/2019/11/18/interview-with-vaughan-ling-of-love-death-robots-the-witness/

[@RomboutVersluijs]

That's a nice link. Coola animation

[@lexxrelaxx2016]

I was thinking about marvelous like its so complicated. Looks big deal to me. I was always keep for later to start. And yea, i see its not that what i was thinking like. I need to try it. Thanks. Perfect workflow and tutorial kinda video.

[@kendarr]

Just tried this and had a few bugs on the way in and out of marvelous, but for the most part is pretty seamless, this is amazing. Also, people with good GPU, you can simulate marvelous on GPU!

[@Fyres11]

Yup but cpu simulations seem to give better result. Tested with Ryzen 9 5950x VS Saphire Radeon 6800XT

[@kendarr]

@@Fyres11 Cool, I did not knew that, haven't messed with MD for years now.

[@Kheltonheadley]

I love you for this 🥰

[@leoli5343]

ty this is very helpful

[@grapho13]

great tutorial men very usefull 👌👌

[@CircleKing]

Nice video. 👍❤️

[@Vertexvoyager]

the clothing and the avatar are one solid piece when i export to blender

[@tresnamuhammad7305]

for you guys who stuck when you'r imported to the marvelous designer with alembic format but the avatar is rotated to 90 degrees. the things you need to do is, don't foget to apply the rotation when in blender. "coz it's important"

[@sevenfoldismDrummer1]

i already did this but somehow its still in 90 degrees

[@technobridge7136]

@@sevenfoldismDrummer1 same, have you found a solution about it ?

[@tannermilne6654]

@@technobridge7136 Don't forget to apply rotation to the armature as well. Might have to move the avatar back to center and set the origin but that fixed the rotation issue for me.

[@scottlee38]

MDD cache works will with Blender too. Depends on how much space you have to work with on your hard drive! You can actually used marvelous designer to work with clothed characters from Daz Studio!

[@sam_division4620]

Thank you its was really helpfull

[@zhangcolor3767]

Thank you ，very helpful！！

[@ArtemYoN]

Excelent! THX it's work

[@Xationch]

Make more video ! You go to the essential ! I love it

[@MartinKlekner]

Thank you! Will do!

[@eknight2904]

Thank you for that - I was researching the formats and played with point cash - but this approach with alembic from blender into MV and back is pretty nice as the character is native in blender and you can refine garment simulation back and forth. As you have some experience with MV and blender workflow, how do you handle details from MV to Blender, e.g. stitches? I tried normal baking, not really succeeding and resorted to repaint in substance instead. Also, how to handle MV export into Blender with simulation and a good UV handling for solidify of the garment would be interesting (as working with the remesh/quad UVs from MV is quite easy, but getting suitable texturing on garment thickness without changing UVs is tricky - or my skill level is too low).

[@victorgomezsa]

Great tutorial!!! ;-) It would also be great to texture the clothes in Blender! Could you continue with the tutorial and teach how to make the render in Blender? Thank you very much!

[@UpEnvision]

It is because of the Mesh Sequence Cache modifier, did you find a solution yet?

[@franksquare3d]

@@UpEnvision hey i have difficulty to texture my model in blender afterwards can you give me a tip please

[@xi_the_pooh]

Hi Martin, thanks so much for the awesome tutorial! Since you're referencing 'The Witness' and their terrific job with garment animation, could you maybe go into more detail about their advanced techniques, especially dressing/undressing animations? I have trouble figuring out, how to dynamically attach/detach clothing from a character during an animation.

[@pygmalion8952]

simple. you dont attach it to character. sew it to something. attaching something to skin doesn't make sense realistically.

[@audiocity1042]

Thanks Man

[@vladimir-ioanvararu1255]

Thanks man

[@michaelvaughan2986]

Hey Martin, great content. Quick question, did you cloth export with the materials from marvelous? If so How did you do this? Thanks

[@303round]

Actually Blender was used in the Witness, Concept Artist Vaughan Ling aka HeavyPoly built the levels and much more for the episode!

[@erickendoka2953]

yeah !!!!! thank you !

[@ouzer3d]

thankx bro for this tuto it's very usefull. but could do all this using only Blender

[@peppepeppeB]

Hi Martin, There is some chance you will make also a tutorial on the application of textures after an alembic export? For example, copying the mapping from the static mesh of an fbx export? Thank you very much

[@lucidparalysis2794]

Yeah for the me I can kinda get the animation right but have no idea how to get the md textures on it

[@aleksdrid4725]

omg thanks man a lot , problem solved 😁

[@masterbae3D]

Its very helpful !! But can I ask a question that how can i keep the texture of the model and the cloth in blender at last?

[@XINN1X]

Will you be making a tutorial that includes export the texture with the animation?

[@ravnOne65]

I don't see this process is so incredible usefull, because what can you use it for without textures?

[@Utsab_Giri]

Hey Martin, thanks for the tutorial. it's terrific! Is it possible to export parts of the clothing as separate items so that I can texture them separately in Blender?

[@hud_me]

did you found a way to do it? please help

[@SuperSebatube]

Great video!, i have a question for you > How can you do mesh retopology without losing the animation?

[@billysueiromayan5717]

Hey, thank you for the great tutorial! I have few questions, Is there a way to mix several animations? Can we export to blender keeping the colors outfit of marvelous? thank you very much

[@johnblackwood1433]

Спасибо большое за урок! Очень полезно!

[@solvvbiswas9852]

Thx

[@windowsxpeu]

Hey! Could you make a video about how to retopo the clothes in Blender while keeping the MD clothes simulation animated? I tried the MD retopo but it's so slow and lacking features, and now I am quite stuck at this stage.. just a suggestion ^_^

[@CenerCener]

7:28 since my model has this "Mesh sequence .." modifier, i cannot assign any material on my cloth. is there any possible way to keep my simulated - moving cloth to have material on top?

[@abidnabawi706]

Subscribed

[@YeseulKimsound]

Omg this helps alot! Thankyou T~T this is what I’m looking for! ❤️

[@T1mothyTee]

Hi Martin! Great video I have a question: How would I go about exporting my pieces of clothing from MD as Alembic so they are separate objects? (cant find documentation online) I have 3 items of clothing on a clothes line in my MD scene with wind, and would be better if they could be positioned individually in Blender. Also, how do you manage the size of the Alembic file? I've exported about 20 seconds and it is 5GB... need about 1.5 minutes ideally. Thanks for your help!

[@FishcatZombie]

Did you find a solution?

[@Fettman89]

Question, once importing into MD from blender is it absolutely necessary to reset 3d arrangements for this to work? I have multiple small parts, and the whole thing is a huge mess (my own fault) once reset. I imported my model without resetting the arrangements, and it it still fits right and looks ok. But is it something about resetting and resimulating that makes this work? or is it simply to make sure everything fits right?

[@TraceMistDump]

Very nice tut man. I actually researched for this workflow last week. If you don't mind I have some question and I hope you can help me when you have time + When I import the alembic to Blender, it attach both character and cloth which is nice. But the animation quite heavy I hardly can drag the cursor to view the animation (even in solid mode). I don't know If I have the problem with the size of the mesh or my sequence cache. + How can I parent/attach another object to the animated mesh which is animated by sequence cache modifier? I realize that the animation work by sequence cache modifier that have no keyframe. When I attach object like shoes for example, It unchanged. I think I have to work on more on vertex group to link it with the mesh but I still haven't find out a proper way. + Cliche but I'm curious, what's magic in your hardware that make the MD simulation that smooth? I currently work on Razer Blade 15 i7-9th with 2080 Max-Q but I still have meet no close to your smoothness even with GPU simulation. Have a great day and keep it up, you're awesome and Blender community need you

[@eknight2904]

To the last one could be two answers, either GPU cloth simulation or speeding up the screen recording ;-) also, it was a very simple garment with particle distance of 20. For anything denser, e.g. distance of 5 or lower, or multiple layers, this would be a lot slower I assume.

[@curtisli4295]

Hi Martin thanks for the tutorial it's great help! Just wondering how do you apply textures to it after you imported it into Blender? When I imported it and tried to apply materials and textures to the mesh, it wouldn’t show. Only showing the applied materials in edit mode. Thanks!

[@sune6708]

Did you figure it out? Looks like the creator of this vid is too busy or doesn’t care lol.

[@camilocarreno8672]

Select the clothes and go to the modifiers, in the part of "read data" deactivate "UV"

[@louiseb9504]

@@camilocarreno8672 hey ! it doesnt work for me, the texture is just showing as slightly transperent and grey... any other setiings to twick ? thanks !

[@camilocarreno8672]

@@louiseb9504 I don't know why, have you already tried to delete that texture and create another one?

[@chukirango6013]

Hi teacher, this is usefull tutorial ), but i have one question, can i export my cloth with simulation and with my texture from marvelous to blender?

[@BOLUSMusic]

I have trouble where I'm assigning multiple materials in MD, and exporting as alembic into blender doesnt carry them over - it is so tedious having to part select each individual bit of the mesh and assign it's own material so that I can bring it back out of blender and texture in SP/Mixer for every animation. Do you know of an alternative? Thanks!

[@user-dt1mg9hd8z]

Спасибо автоматическим субтитрам. Иначе я бы никогда не узнал как это просто

[@markussfiedler8306]

thanks for the great tutorial martin! when i follow this it imports all the fabric as one mesh in blender ... so there are e.g. no vertex-groups which i could choose to use different materials on the fabric(s) ... same for when e.g. i do something in marvelous designer with buttons ... it all comes out as one mesh .... i ve seen exporting an obj from MD gives the option to include textures which then show up as different materials in blender, but the alembic files somehow dont have that option. you got any clue about this? any help would be so great!

[@alexbeattie4181]

Hello! I think I am trying to figure out something similar! Did you have any luck?

[@stianholm4723]

I'm not able to import the alembic file to Blender after exporting from CLO3D / Marvelous designer

[@user-tk8kd1mq4g]

Hello! Thanks for tutorial! Is there any chance to export avatar & garment with motion from Clo, not from Mixamo? I need animated avatar wirh clothes & fabric materials data to import in blender & apply textures made in substance designer

[@softwareboy]

is there any way to export texture to blender?i've made a graphic on a tee shirt and im figuring out how to do that,by the way brother you are the best

[@lucidparalysis2794]

Same here. Did you find a fix yet?

[@benjaminesqueda2100]

Thank you so much for this tutorial, @Martin. I have a question. When I import my final garment and model into Blender, how do I rotate my model without distorting the whole mesh?

[@MartinKlekner]

Try parenting the garment to the armature and then just rotate the armature? It may help ;)

[@benjaminesqueda2100]

@@MartinKlekner I think I managed by locking the armature. Thank you!

[@BobbyJ529]

anyone know why you have to add subd modifier for this to work? Without it, I just get the same fold pattern moving with the fabric.

[@_MGPz]

In my case a relatively simplee simulation creates a 100MB blend file. Is it normal it is that heavy? Is there a way to apply the scale once you have import it on blender? When I do it the mess just grows again to initial scale. Is there a way to apply deformation over keyframes once you import that animation to tweak the deformation?

[@rahulmalpure]

Hello Martin, My character and coth simulation does not match after I bring it back to Blender from Marvelous. Can you help?

[@xyztankman4190]

Is it possible to set the clothes animations to actions and export the clothes animations to Unity after importing the mesh cache? I was trying to bind it to actions but couldn't figure out a way to do that.

[@pixymiao]

hi! thank you for this tutorial. I have a problem.. I can't move "mixamoring_Hips" keyframe, What can I do? thanks!

[@gbengaodule4905]

Nice tutorial. When I tried importing it into M.D my model looks small and it's lying down on the floor even if I try rotating. And when also tried another method of using the cloth in blender, while simulating the clothes disconnect from the joining points to the ground. Please help

[@gbengaodule4905]

@@Zantonny Thanks I'll try it

[@fiftyent_]

great vid! I try to import my blender animation to MD and everything works fine but as soon as i drop in a garment from the store all my animation on the timeline disappears and i can't seem to get it back. Anyone know if there is a fix for this?

[@KADAMBACREATION]

When i export alembic to MD it alligns 90 degree flat on ground (sleeping position). I have tried all methods still I'm not getting pls help me bro.

[@Stenierfromwow]

How did you do so that marvelous designer is using quads on its simulations? My do look like some kind of dyntopo mess, and quadrangulate does not really do good job

[@skipdonker]

Hey great video! I was just wondering if this workflow is usable for game design? When i put my mesh with the cloth around it in unity does it function properly? Or do i have to add cloth simulations in blender and/or unity aswell? For a single animation this looks great i am just wondering if this is a good option for indie game design

[@gettsly7478]

i also want to know

[@lithmariel]

You ever find out? I wanted to use bones in the clothing.

[@Dante02d12]

Nobody answered you guys, so I will. There are two types of animations : real-time, and baked. Real-Time, as its name suggests... works in real-time. You can affect the moving object, because it will animate itself each frame depending on its 3D environment. Baked animations, however, are built beforehands. That means no matter what you try to do to it, it won't work. *It's the same difference as a Live video and a recorded one.* You can't change a recorded film no matter what ; but you can photobomb in front of a camera to affect the live video. This tutorial shows how to export a baked animation. It works for Blender, for Unity, for Unreal, *but in no way will you be able to affect this animation that was pre-recorded.* This is useful in games for background dynamics. For example, in fighting games like Smash Bros or Dead or Alive, sometimes there are characters in the background. The player can't interact at all with them, so you can bake their animations. On the contrary, if you want to apply clothes to a character you're playing as, you need to rig the clothes. Unreal Engine has built-in features for that, called Clothes Physics. It's fairly simple: you only need a character with clothes as a separate mesh. You just "paint" the parts of the clothes mesh that need to move. However, it's much lower quality. That's because it's made to work smoothly in real-time. You can also use some sort of dynamic bones with rigidbody constraints: you give the clothes its own bones that will animate the clothes, and the rigidbody prevents the clothes from clipping through the character. But this is much more complicated to learn, and not as satisfying as realistic clothes simulation. Long story short : Marvelous Designer provides very realistic and satisfying clothes motion, but that can't be affected in real time. In games, you can only use those animations for cutscenes and background items (things the player won't interact with).

[@blockschmidt]

How can I use texture from eg FaceGen that I used to create an DAZ character + then use the workflow with mixamo?

[@Sector-Seven]

Hi Martin, great stuff! A quick question - how do you know that Mixamo is going away this summer? Thanks

[@MartinKlekner]

Hello, not Mixamo, just Fuse ;)

[@Sector-Seven]

@@MartinKlekner Ah, ok thanks :) It's such a great resource, I didn't know it existed. Thanks for pointing it out. Do you know by any chance a place to get (hopefully for free) good character models?

[@piersie1]

Hi - i appreciate im very late here and i know very little of Blender. With regards to the process at 2.04. I can move and copy and duplicate all of the keyframes for the head but i cant seems to loop/duplicate that for the general walk. Am I missing something here. I dont think i can share a screen capture alas

[@WhitewashStudio]

Have you ever had the exported abc file come into blender with reduced frames. My files only partway come in usually 170 or so frames. Ever had this problem?

[@7_of_1]

Usually export frame rate mismatch

[@byronlewis7154]

Will you have to apply this same step with each and every animation?

[@LuizFelipe-nh6ow]

How do I export the alembic file from marvelous with separate meshes, so I can assign different materials to them? Please help!

[@LuizFelipe-nh6ow]

Solved, just export as a MDD Cache

[@audreyv.u.c.a]

@@LuizFelipe-nh6ow Thank u for this!!! how did you manage to import mdd to blender?

[@LuizFelipe-nh6ow]

@@audreyv.u.c.a I made a quick video showing the process: kzbin.info/www/bejne/gpvEZ4SteLuFoaM

[@audreyv.u.c.a]

@@LuizFelipe-nh6ow THANK U !!!!!

[@satrioadibtaufiqurrahman8297]

Why my imported alembic so small on marvelous designer? How to fix that?

[@Afaj-sh8vx]

Can I still change the texture of my single fabrics in blender?

[@mathieunozieres4476]

Hi Martin! Thank you for this tutorial. However when I import the alembic file my character is super small compared to the cloth. How can I fix this ? Thank you for the helping hand!

[@ecal202]

When you import your alembic file into Marvelous Designer, make sure the scale is set to "m". Do the same when you export from MD as well.

[@chrislensz167]

hi, I'm using MD8 on Mac but it doesn't seem to have Alembic import neither export... Any alternative?

[@artkiko4460]

great tut! when i go to animate leggings in MD, the fabric tears up (fragments) and get holes, mostly along the inner legs. i've tried using different fabrics, even ones with stretch. any idea what settings i can adjust to fix this? maybe it's a self-collision issue? thanks.

[@Fettman89]

Have you made sure all the normals are inverted where they need to be on the clothing, for instance if you have a shirt but dont flip the normal on the back of fabric your model with glitch through.

[@artkiko4460]

@@Fettman89 no, I haven't checked but thank you very much for the suggestion :)

[@crescenttv5918]

plz make a tutorial about how to attach or move clothes with rig but what i do which i have learned from others tutorials my cloth gets into character mesh help plz!!!!!!..... i am getting mad bcz of this problem you are the only hope i can give you my blend file to solve this problem if you are interested in making video about it

[@vain3d973]

Not able to see keyframes after importing .Dae -- no idea why, so I just went with .Fbx for now

[@kimsterany8168]

having the same issue...

[@davinsaputraartandgamedev9453]

is the abc UV okay? Can I export abc with thickness from MD?

[@Vertexvoyager]

my clothing and avatar are walking in deferent directions what does that mean?

[@akhileshvishwakarma4427]

I wanna make cone shape and want to stich it to waistline how should i doo tht?

[@blackswan6386]

Hi Sir, how to make the Alembic Loop ? If you mentioned we just have 100 Frames, but i need 2000 ? how to save the Cloth Alembic into Keyframes to have Action Strip ? I press Keyframe all but this dosent work ? Would be nice if you can help me out shortly. this really harsh.

[@mumpecydrone8788]

Interesting.. however, when I import my animated alembic model in marvelous designer, it's always rotated on its back, and when I try to rotate it back to it's basic state, it says the animation data will be lost. Please help