Is it posible to do Cloth without Apex

Development Character & Animation
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1

will it be possible to use any form of cloth asset without the use of Nvidia’s Apex

the reason i ask is that afaik Nvidia only has Apex plug-ins for Autodesk products, which then excludes all other 3d programs which in turn will reduce your user base

2

There is solution for you problem (;.
I recently learned it on NVIDIA forums. There is external app you can use to paint cloth on your meshes. You must download APEX SDK from Support Center ( http://supportcenteronline.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=1949 )
Build 1.2.3 Physx3.2.3 Works with UE4.
After you unpack it Browser to /bin/vc10win32-PhysX_3.2 folder and you will find here ClothingToolCHECKED and ClothingToolPROFILE. They seems to be the same thing, although CHECKED seems to work more stable on my PC. There are also help files in docs folder.

I wonder why this tool is not more widely distributed on NVIDIA page and/or included with Unreal.

EDIT:
Keep in mind that this tool assume Y up. So if you happen to have you skeletal mesh in Z up and convert it to Y up for tool, you cloth with be completly messed up, as APEX will have no idea what have you done with axes. But don’t worry about it. This problem is also present in max/maya /any other software that using APEX and convert up axis.

3

thanks for the link Lukasz, it looks interesting, first blender mesh fail but i’ll work on it most likely my fault, this could be what we’re looking for.

4

well the mesh imports fine but i can’t get any wind movement, guess it’s still not working, just downloading an old version to test with udk

5

Aside from axis issue, it works fine for me. Including wind (at least in Persona).

6

i must be missing something , loaded the nvidia stuff still no movement at all
the docs don’t help either

7

ok found one of my assets (nvidia) does work so there must be a problem with my other assets but its progress

8

You could co it as an animation, I have done this in the past by doing a cloth simulated mesh in max, and then binding verts of another mesh to it with bones. This way you can export it as a skeletal mesh.

9

thanks for the tip, but i was hoping for a little bit more, would be strange if flags blow one way and the clothes another.