I am working on a cape in Marvelous Designer. The cape has fur on the bottom of it. I want to create that fur with either alpha cards or XGen. Is there a way to have that geometry made outside of Marvelous to be simulated with the cape and have that animation exported to Unreal?
Or if there is a way to simulate the clothing and transfer that simulation outside of MD to the same cape mesh with the fur addition on it?
So TLDR - I want to have a full simulated cloth with fur in Unreal Engine from Marvelous, but I dont know how to get Marvelous designer simulation on geometry or XGen together with the cape Imade in MD. Thank you!
Hi Ante.
Let's see how we can make this work. Do you have this cape animated on a character? If that is correct, you will be able to create and simulate the cape in MD following the character's motion, or just static as part of the outfit. Taking into consideration the area that is going to carry the fur, I recommend keeping that area in a different pattern from the rest of the cape, to keep things simple when you have to draw the Xgen influence.
It is an animation, prepare a status pose first (T or A pose) so it will be easier to locate the Xgen later on. (Have in mind that the fur effect might have some more weight than the rest of the cape, so play around with fabrics and weights to achieve the necessary look)
Once you get the result you looking for, export it to Maya and keep the animation cache within the file.
In Maya locate the Xgen as you wish.
Once created the Xgen, you will have to run the animation (with the cape already animated) to aloud the Xgen mesh to integrate into the animation.
For this process, you might want to use Omniverse Connector to be able to check in Unreal Engine the results from this process in real-time while editing.
Once you got the cloth from MD and the fur from Maya, united them all at UE.
Let us know if this process works for you.
Hello there!
First of all, thank you so much for your reply. This suggestion and knowledge is of tremendous help to me and is deeply appreciated! Really!
Secondly, I would like to ask a couple of questions to get further clarification and establish a clear workflow for this. I am making a short movie and this step is crucial for it, but I have to fulfill some knowledge gaps to fulfill my ideas!
So the character is not yet animated, I am working on that currently. Default pose is A pose, it will be animated in Cascadeur software. This is for a cinematic so there wont be any run loops or similar things used in games, but a path followed animation.
The fur on the cape will be made with alpha cards after all, I think it will make things easier for my PC. But, I suppose that does not change your suggestion, I can transfer animation from mesh to mesh instead of from mesh to XGen, right?
I am attaching the concept and current WIP of my Marvelous. Explanation of current WIP in MD:
1. Red areas - I would like to have them skinned and not simulated
2. Yellow areas - I would like to have them simulated, but have Solidify on them so I get some sim on it, but dont loose the silhouette
3. Green areas - I would like to have full simulation on these
The belts and ties around his knees on the illustration/concept will also be added in Marvelous and I would like to have them as 2. Yellow areas from above description.
I will have to add fabric edge on the bottom of the pants with some small ties around those, will I be able to sync that geo with the simulation as well?
Lastly, my current viewing of this is that I have to animate my character with all the geo I dont want simulated. After that I add animated avatar with skinned cloth parts into Marvelous, play the animation and export the cloth with simulation. Then I transfer the simulation from Marvelous file on to animated mesh in Maya. And export that combined into Unreal Engine for preview / renders.
Is this correct or am I missing some steps? Also, can you give me a bit more info on what are those processes for transferring sim to mesh in Maya called so I can google more about them? When I am animating the character do I import full clothing with cape and stuff I want simulated or do I animate without those?
I am a newb in this area so I might ask silly questions, so thank you for the patience and this huge help once again!
You can export the FBX with the animation within, or you can export the Maya Cache. The first option goes with the animation in the file, and the other one transfers the information as a cache to the geometry in Maya.
Yes, you need your avatar ready with animation. With that animated character, you simulate the clothes on MD.
Those clothes, exported as FBX, can be imported to Maya and UE5. In Maya, you will add and create the fur as your preferred.
Remember that if you are going to use Xgen preparing your patterns and the areas that are going to contain the Fur will be much easier later, as you won't need to draw influence that much, just apply to the areas and be ready to go.
From Maya, you export the Fur animated. Then place all the components of the scene in UE5.
For those parts that are going to be tight to the avatar, you can use tack to avatar or shrinkage values to secure the motion you're looking for.
I see! Okay, I will be trying this out in the upcoming days as I finish the cloth and character.
This has given me a lot of clarity!
Thank you once again, I hope its okay to come back here and ask further questions if they arise :D
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