Problem importing apex cloth

Hi everyone!

I’m having some weird problem importing apex cloth from maya (2016) into the engine after the switch to physx 3.4, I updated my plug-in and reskinned the cloth mesh to make sure no vertices had more than 4 influencing bones then I painted the cloth, ran the simulation and exported the cloth same as always without any errors, butthis time when I bring the cloth into UE4 the “apex details” panel doesen’t show any details and I cannot apply the cloth to the proper material.

I also exported the whole mesh again just to be sure bit still having the same issue

here’s a screenshot if the panel I mentioned

119809-2016-12-23+22_12_22-.png

the thing is I had already done this without any problem right when 1.14 came out

Hi Mordragos,

APEX Details is only a panel that shows details, but doesn’t let you edit them. Physics Properties are all of the things you can change.

To apply cloth to a material, you must go into the LOD section to change the cloth.

Hey !
Thanks for your response, though my problem is the cloth doesn’t seem to be importing properly, because I can’t apply it to any material in the LOD section, the thing is the engine doesn’t show any errors and neither does Maya when I validate the scene =/

I’m starting to think It may have something to do with the cloth mesh’s skinning and the new cloth skinning changes in 4.14 but I don’t really know.

Can you do me a favor and rename your .apx file to something other than just “cloth”? I’m thinking we might have a naming exception for that.

I’m noticing that the Clothing options only ever appear after you add an APEX file, so it seems that it isn’t recognizing “cloth.apx”.

If that doesn’t work, can you migrate your content to a standalone project and send it to me? You can PM me a download link on the forums.

I tried changing the name but I still get the same issue, =/

I sent you the project files in a pm, thanks for taking the time to look into this!

Hey Mordragos,

I think something is probably wrong with your apx files. I took your fbx and recreated all the PhysX Cloth in Maya, then exported the mesh and apx. When I brought it into UE4, the second I added the Clothing File, the Clothing options appeared.

I would suggest recreating the clothing files and particularly making different material ID’s for each cloth (i.e. separate material IDs for the cape, kilt, etc).

Try this out to see if there is anything that you missed: Basic Unreal Engine 4 Apex Cloth - YouTube

Thanks, I’ll try separating and remaking the cloth files.
would you mind telling me which version of maya and the physx plug in are you using though? just to be sure I’m not using a wrong version

Hey Mordragos,

I’m in Maya 2016 Extension 1 + SP6 and the plugin is PhysX SDK Version 3.3.4 and Apex SDK Version 1.3.4(Overall plugin version is 3.4.11121.04262).

Hey !

thanks for the info, I think I got it fixed, after downgrading to the plug in overall version 10202.23462 then going back to 11121.04262 and telling it not to reset the settings, so I guess it was a plug in thing!

Though now I have a new issue, after importing the cloth asset some parts of the cloth seem to be flipping , kin of as if they were simulating in in different axis

withouth cloth

with cloth

Can you show me your cloth painting weights in Maya? That’s usually the issue when I see this type of thing.

Sure thing, here they are.

Hey Mordragos,

I’ve been experimenting more since yesterday and see a drastic difference between the cloth results in 4.13 and 4.14 with the same file (I exported the cape by itself for testing). I’ve contacted one of our engineers for some guidance on this, but I suspect it may be related to the physx 3.4 update present in 4.14.

Hey Mordragos,

We did some talking and I realized that I was being a little thick when searching the plugins. I got 3.3.4 thinking it was the latest on accident. You SHOULD be using the plugin you had originally(3.4), but the issue you had noticed (where the Clothing setting wouldn’t appear after importing the apx) is truly a bug. Since we are using 3.4 in UE4, files created with 3.3.4 won’t work correctly.

This was a mixup on my end and I’ve entered UE-40614.

Great! I will upgrade to the 3.4 plug in and wait for the fix, this really takes a weight off my back.

Again, thank you for your time and looking into this whole thing!

Well, new developments! So the reason it wasn’t importing correctly is because the 3.4 plugin exports no simulated verts if you leave a percentage of your verts at a cloth weight of 0. We only found this out after we flooded the meshes with a value of 120 (it exported and imported successfully…looked like crap with 120 everywhere, but it worked). We then worked our way backward. I’d suggest simply flooding your mesh with a value of 0.001 before painting for the time being. We’re going to poke Nvidia about this, but it wouldn’t hurt for you to do the same.

I’m also having this problem because I was using 3.3.4 version of the PhysX plugin but when I upgraded it suddenly doesn’t give me any options to add apex clothing inside the engine

As said the best way to fix it right now is to use the latest (3.4) apex plug in and to flood your cloth mesh with 0.001 weight before painting to ensure all your vertex are exported in the apx file (so UE4 can actually read it).

I’m currently testing it and it seem to work though I admit its quiet a hassle specially the old collision ragdoll now pushes the .001 vertices =/, hopefully nvidia will change the way the plug-in exports the apx on a future release.

you need to flood the cloth “max distance” weight with .001 instead of the skin =P

I’m trying it right now. :frowning: PhysX was working fine until the update of the new one.

I tried painting my skinweights with a value of 0.001 and when I exported the apex file and the mesh it did not work for me :frowning: