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.
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
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 :)
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!
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 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/
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"
@@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.
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!
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.
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!
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?
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!
@@camilocarreno8672 hey ! it doesnt work for me, the texture is just showing as slightly transperent and grey... any other setiings to twick ? thanks !
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
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?
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!
I don't know why but when ever I am importing alembic file in marvellous my avatar appears rotated ( lying on the floor rather than standing🙄) I have also rotated it in the blender just like the tutorial.
Hey, do you know why we can't export the animated clothes as FBX? That format is supposed to be a mix of mesh and animations, and yet, no matter what settings I use, my clothes are always fixed in Blender. Alembic's animation works, but I hate the fact that it has no color and material. EDIT : For Blender, I've found a solution. The Better FBX Exporter plugin supports FBX format way better than the built-in one. It's paid officially, but you can find it for free on the internet. *You export the clothes as FBX from MD, and import it with Better FBX, you get both colors and animation in Blender. The materials don't look great though.* Now I actually intended to use clothes in Unreal Engine, I have no solution for the time being...
Its much easier to make better materials in blender tho. You just need to have that material seperation because its impossible to assign new materials to the mesh
@@orraviv1536 Blender is better for fur and other types of fabric, but MD has great tools to make complex textures. You can even import images and "paste them" on the fabric wherever you want, so you can really make anything. The biggest issue is the export feature of those textures and the "cross-support" between 3D software. I mean, my clothes look great in MD, but when I export them in Blender I have to tweak stuff to make it look as good as in MD. Same for Unreal Engine : even after a perfect export, I still need to tweak stuff to get the proper look. We really need a more harmonious 3D industry, lol. So yeah, Blender is better for materials.
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!
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).
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
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).
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
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 ^_^
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!
I think i mess up somewhere because my animation in MD doesn't show up. Nervermind, i'm stupid, but now the cloth won't stay on my model while the animation is running
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.
I guess this dosen't work well for multiple cloths in the scene. When I export it in .abc, my garments get merged and when I open them in blender, 2 diffrent garments are merged instead of existing separetly.
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
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.
That was so helpful. But the problem I am facing now is that I cannot edit my cloth mesh in edit mode at a particular pose bcoz it returns to its default position in edit mode. I can't even sculpt. I think it's because of the mesh cache sequencer. Can you help me here? Thanks a lot. Btw, I would also love to watch a whole series on MD just like your SP Launchpad. I absolutely loved it.
Hello! It seems 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.
@@MartinKlekner thanks for replying. I tried what u suggested. But now I have a new problem. The animation of my cloth mesh has now flipped, i.e, the animation from left side has shifted to right side and vice versa.
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
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!
@@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?
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.
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?
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
the model in blender is a alembic file, with animation but without textures. how can i get the textures and animation, because fbx only gives the textures and alembic only gives animation
I ran into some issues with my UV islands after using the Alembic file. So, when the animated cloth mesh is imported to Blender, the islands are on top of each other. This is easily fixed by packing the islands in the UV editor, however once I exit edit mode, the UV's are messed up again. I've noticed that in the modifier panel it says that it's getting the data from an object path. This path packs the UV's, vertices, faces and color. These settings can be turned on or off. That being said, it made no difference to my UV islands. They're still messed up and I wonder if you ran into this issue as well?
Have a look into the Object Data Properties tab into the UV Maps folder, whether you have only one set of UV Maps. This happened to me several times. Maybe it helps!
@@MartinKlekner Thanks for you reply. Unfortunately it only shows one UV map and that one is supposed to have the correct UV islands, except they don't show.
@@TinemOfficial Oh yes, I was figuring out what is going on and I discovered it is a weakness in my own pipeline, basically the Mesh Sequencer Modifier is overriting the UVs of your model and it seems there is nothing you can do. What I would therefore 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. And me, I need to figure out how to make this work with Allembic files :-)
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?
I dont understand how your applying "rotation". when i go to the apply option I only have the options of : apply pose as rest pose, apply selected as rest pose, or apply visual transform as pose. dont know how your getting that menu.
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
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
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?
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.
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!
Thanks for this great tutorial! I have a problem though, and I was wondering if that was something that other people might have encountered since I can't find any useful resources or tips. I'm using a daz3d character I've rigged from Mixamo, and when I play the animation in MD after having simulated it, the cloth goes through the avatar at some places. Like it somehow works when you don't want to have any visible 3D character in Blender but just the clothes, but it seems "off" - even right after simulating. Any clues on how to fix this?
Hey, I don’t know if this helps but if the fabric clips through the avatar during simulation you can usually pull it out during. If that doesn’t help you could maybe look at the Add'l Thickness Collision(higher number makes the fabric sit further from the avatar’s skin) or the Particle Distance(5 should be low enough) setting in the property editor? Setting the Layer option of the garment closest to the skin to 1 could also help, don’t forget to assign a layer to any other garments if you’ve more then 1.
@@caitlynnschijff9238 Thanks a lot for taking the time to reply to me! That's so useful - I'll go through all these points next times it happens. What's weird is that when it happens it seems kind of.. random? Sometimes reducing the particle distance works, sometimes not, etc etc. I guess that might just be because Marvelous Designer works with magic? haha.
@@joanahuguenin9596 My pleasure, happy to help. I agree, never a dull moment with MD. Hahaha yes, maybe the magic is what facilitates the Marvelous part?
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
how to export texture along with the animation from CLO to blender. Please help.
@Cayson Tadeo no one cares
@@akshatmishra9234 that's also the problem, how to put the texture stay
Bro, can this be used in games?
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.
You are a savior
this is a lot more practical than calculating cloth physics inside Blender
it really is, blender cloth is still so fidgety
I use always Marvelous Designer for the cloth sims and the clothing jobs! Its very useful software.
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
You see blender everywhere nowadays oh Blender all grown up!!
Yup it’s crazy
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 :)
You really a live saver with this tutorial man, I have been looking in ages to find this gem....
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!
Yup but cpu simulations seem to give better result. Tested with Ryzen 9 5950x VS Saphire Radeon 6800XT
@@FyresGames Cool, I did not knew that, haven't messed with MD for years now.
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
:D Damn, it never occured to me :) Srry for misinformation ;)
@@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/
That's a nice link. Coola animation
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"
i already did this but somehow its still in 90 degrees
@@sevenfoldismDrummer1 same, have you found a solution about it ?
@@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.
Martin, you are the man. I wish you get all the great things in the world you so much deserve. Cheers mate.
Thank you so much, Nate! :-)
OH MY GOD THANK YOU, YOU DON'T KNOW HOW HELPFUL THIS IS FOR ME!!! :DDDD
i think that trick of recalculating the normals just saved my life. i couldnt figure out why the geometry kept looking jagged and weird
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!
loving ur channel. Quality Content. Good Luck Man!
Will you be making a tutorial that includes export the texture with the animation?
I don't see this process is so incredible usefull, because what can you use it for without textures?
the clothing and the avatar are one solid piece when i export to blender
Amazing video! So practical and now I'm a blender lover
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.
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!
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?
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!
Did you figure it out? Looks like the creator of this vid is too busy or doesn’t care lol.
Select the clothes and go to the modifiers, in the part of "read data" deactivate "UV"
@@camilocarreno8672 hey ! it doesnt work for me, the texture is just showing as slightly transperent and grey... any other setiings to twick ? thanks !
@@louiseb9504 I don't know why, have you already tried to delete that texture and create another one?
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
Yeah for the me I can kinda get the animation right but have no idea how to get the md textures on it
Incredible video!! Instant fan.
your tut solved my problems perfectly! thank you!
Cool tutorial, thanks Martin 😁
Actually Blender was used in the Witness, Concept Artist Vaughan Ling aka HeavyPoly built the levels and much more for the episode!
Awesome! Just what I needed!
How do I export the alembic file from marvelous with separate meshes, so I can assign different materials to them? Please help!
Solved, just export as a MDD Cache
@@LuizFelipe-nh6ow Thank u for this!!! how did you manage to import mdd to blender?
@@audreyv.u.c.a I made a quick video showing the process: th-cam.com/video/Lja6QwCVRkA/w-d-xo.html
@@LuizFelipe-nh6ow THANK U !!!!!
my clothing and avatar are walking in deferent directions what does that mean?
thanks man! loved your short film too :)
Quick and easy, thank you!
Amazing. Subscribed. Thank you for this MD info man.
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?
did you found a way to do it? please help
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?
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!
It is because of the Mesh Sequence Cache modifier, did you find a solution yet?
@@UpEnvision hey i have difficulty to texture my model in blender afterwards can you give me a tip please
1:58 How do you make the keyframes display? That part of the tutorial jumps :S
@Yusuf Musaoglu It works. Thanks!
I don't know why but when ever I am importing alembic file in marvellous my avatar appears rotated ( lying on the floor rather than standing🙄)
I have also rotated it in the blender just like the tutorial.
same, if u find an answer tell me pls bro, cheers
@@Nightmare42150 same
@@IhorMolodchenko same
Hey Martin, great content. Quick question, did you cloth export with the materials from marvelous? If so How did you do this? Thanks
Hey, do you know why we can't export the animated clothes as FBX? That format is supposed to be a mix of mesh and animations, and yet, no matter what settings I use, my clothes are always fixed in Blender.
Alembic's animation works, but I hate the fact that it has no color and material.
EDIT : For Blender, I've found a solution. The Better FBX Exporter plugin supports FBX format way better than the built-in one. It's paid officially, but you can find it for free on the internet.
*You export the clothes as FBX from MD, and import it with Better FBX, you get both colors and animation in Blender. The materials don't look great though.*
Now I actually intended to use clothes in Unreal Engine, I have no solution for the time being...
Its much easier to make better materials in blender tho. You just need to have that material seperation because its impossible to assign new materials to the mesh
@@orraviv1536 Blender is better for fur and other types of fabric, but MD has great tools to make complex textures. You can even import images and "paste them" on the fabric wherever you want, so you can really make anything.
The biggest issue is the export feature of those textures and the "cross-support" between 3D software. I mean, my clothes look great in MD, but when I export them in Blender I have to tweak stuff to make it look as good as in MD. Same for Unreal Engine : even after a perfect export, I still need to tweak stuff to get the proper look.
We really need a more harmonious 3D industry, lol.
So yeah, Blender is better for materials.
you are really awesome man thank you so much for the tut
I'm not able to import the alembic file to Blender after exporting from CLO3D / Marvelous designer
Not able to see keyframes after importing .Dae -- no idea why, so I just went with .Fbx for now
having the same issue...
thank you for this great video! :)
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!
Did you find a solution?
amazing tutorial
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).
Thanks for this !
3 years later still only 1 right guide to export things in blender from marvelous
if thats how they used it. how did they made the cloaths interact with the environment. like a cloath dragging on the ground.
Nice video. 👍❤️
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
i also want to know
You ever find out? I wanted to use bones in the clothing.
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).
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
@@Zantonny Thanks I'll try it
great tutorial men very usefull 👌👌
Make more video ! You go to the essential ! I love it
Thank you! Will do!
A Great tutorial!!! thankyou!!
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 ^_^
I love you for this 🥰
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!
Hello! I think I am trying to figure out something similar! Did you have any luck?
ty this is very helpful
Why my imported alembic so small on marvelous designer? How to fix that?
Can I still change the texture of my single fabrics in blender?
I think i mess up somewhere because my animation in MD doesn't show up. Nervermind, i'm stupid, but now the cloth won't stay on my model while the animation is running
Great video!, i have a question for you
> How can you do mesh retopology without losing the animation?
my clothing geometry always ends up mangled when exporting, does that happen to anyone else? if so, have you figured out a solution?
I was having this problem. Try to select the option "Keep Vert Order" in Geometry, when importing the abc file into blender! Works for me.
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.
I guess this dosen't work well for multiple cloths in the scene. When I export it in .abc, my garments get merged and when I open them in blender, 2 diffrent garments are merged instead of existing separetly.
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
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.
Thank you its was really helpfull
That was so helpful. But the problem I am facing now is that I cannot edit my cloth mesh in edit mode at a particular pose bcoz it returns to its default position in edit mode. I can't even sculpt. I think it's because of the mesh cache sequencer. Can you help me here? Thanks a lot.
Btw, I would also love to watch a whole series on MD just like your SP Launchpad. I absolutely loved it.
Hello! It seems 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.
@@MartinKlekner thanks for replying. I tried what u suggested. But now I have a new problem. The animation of my cloth mesh has now flipped, i.e, the animation from left side has shifted to right side and vice versa.
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
Same here. Did you find a fix yet?
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!
Thank you, How to freeze the avatar and just make garment to move?
I want just garment move in animation
I use CLO 3d
Hi Martin, great stuff! A quick question - how do you know that Mixamo is going away this summer? Thanks
Hello, not Mixamo, just Fuse ;)
@@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?
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.
simple. you dont attach it to character. sew it to something. attaching something to skin doesn't make sense realistically.
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?
Try parenting the garment to the armature and then just rotate the armature? It may help ;)
@@MartinKlekner I think I managed by locking the armature. Thank you!
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
the model in blender is a alembic file, with animation but without textures. how can i get the textures and animation, because fbx only gives the textures and alembic only gives animation
I know this is old but when i go to render the scene the alembic cloth is stuck and does not match the motion of the character.
I ran into some issues with my UV islands after using the Alembic file. So, when the animated cloth mesh is imported to Blender, the islands are on top of each other. This is easily fixed by packing the islands in the UV editor, however once I exit edit mode, the UV's are messed up again. I've noticed that in the modifier panel it says that it's getting the data from an object path. This path packs the UV's, vertices, faces and color. These settings can be turned on or off.
That being said, it made no difference to my UV islands. They're still messed up and I wonder if you ran into this issue as well?
Have a look into the Object Data Properties tab into the UV Maps folder, whether you have only one set of UV Maps. This happened to me several times. Maybe it helps!
@@MartinKlekner Thanks for you reply. Unfortunately it only shows one UV map and that one is supposed to have the correct UV islands, except they don't show.
@@TinemOfficial IF you want, you can send me your .blend file at martinklekner@heroesofbronze.com and I will have a look at it :-)
@@MartinKlekner I've sent a mail with the files. Thanks!
@@TinemOfficial Oh yes, I was figuring out what is going on and I discovered it is a weakness in my own pipeline, basically the Mesh Sequencer Modifier is overriting the UVs of your model and it seems there is nothing you can do. What I would therefore 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.
And me, I need to figure out how to make this work with Allembic files :-)
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?
omg thanks man a lot , problem solved 😁
Omg this helps alot! Thankyou T~T this is what I’m looking for! ❤️
hi! thank you for this tutorial. I have a problem.. I can't move "mixamoring_Hips" keyframe, What can I do? thanks!
I dont understand how your applying "rotation". when i go to the apply option I only have the options of : apply pose as rest pose, apply selected as rest pose, or apply visual transform as pose.
dont know how your getting that menu.
Oh, i now see you switched to object mode. nevermind
how may i export uv maps materials and textures with the alembic format? since it completly removes any material data and uv map data
6:38 just hide the mesh underneath
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
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
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?
what should I do if the model is rotated 90 degrees when importing ?
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?
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.
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!
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.
Thanks for this great tutorial! I have a problem though, and I was wondering if that was something that other people might have encountered since I can't find any useful resources or tips. I'm using a daz3d character I've rigged from Mixamo, and when I play the animation in MD after having simulated it, the cloth goes through the avatar at some places. Like it somehow works when you don't want to have any visible 3D character in Blender but just the clothes, but it seems "off" - even right after simulating. Any clues on how to fix this?
Hey,
I don’t know if this helps but if the fabric clips through the avatar during simulation you can usually pull it out during. If that doesn’t help you could maybe look at the Add'l Thickness Collision(higher number makes the fabric sit further from the avatar’s skin) or the Particle Distance(5 should be low enough) setting in the property editor?
Setting the Layer option of the garment closest to the skin to 1 could also help, don’t forget to assign a layer to any other garments if you’ve more then 1.
@@caitlynnschijff9238 Thanks a lot for taking the time to reply to me! That's so useful - I'll go through all these points next times it happens. What's weird is that when it happens it seems kind of.. random? Sometimes reducing the particle distance works, sometimes not, etc etc. I guess that might just be because Marvelous Designer works with magic? haha.
@@joanahuguenin9596 My pleasure, happy to help. I agree, never a dull moment with MD.
Hahaha yes, maybe the magic is what facilitates the Marvelous part?
Nice content :). But I don't understand why do u use Blender. Did you upload a video where you explain it?
Because Blender is Brilliant, Free and Open Source.
Google Blender and you'll find 1000 reasons why you should use it ;)
Will you have to apply this same step with each and every animation?
Thanks great help
what are the pros from blender's cloth sim ?
please where are you getting the software informations from?