Cloth Simulation
Physics & SimulationChaos Cloth simulation: cloth painting, collision bodies, wind interaction, constraint tuning, capes, skirts, curtains, and flags.
/skill cloth-simulation What This Skill Does
Cloth Simulation helps you create realistic fabric behavior on characters and environmental objects using UE5's Chaos Cloth system. Whether you need a hero's cape billowing in the wind, a flowing skirt that responds to character movement, curtains swaying in a breeze, or a flag fluttering on a pole, this skill guides you through creating cloth assets, painting simulation weights, configuring stiffness and damping properties, setting up collision bodies to prevent clipping, and tuning wind interaction for natural-looking fabric motion.
Covers
- Cloth asset creation from skeletal mesh sections
- Cloth painting: defining which vertices simulate and which stay fixed
- Simulation properties: mass, stiffness, damping, and gravity scale
- Collision bodies: capsules and spheres that prevent cloth from passing through the character
- Wind interaction: drag, lift, and velocity scaling for fabric in wind
- Cloth LOD and performance management for gameplay scenarios
- Cloth in Sequencer for cinematic use
- Common cloth patterns: capes, skirts, curtains, flags, and hair cards
Does Not Cover
- Strand-based hair (Groom component) → MetaHuman Setup
- Physics constraints between rigid bodies → Physics Fundamentals
- Material authoring for cloth appearance → Material Basics
- Fluid and soft-body simulation → Niagara Fluids
How to Use
Invoke this skill in Claude Code:
/skill cloth-simulationThis skill is also auto-detected when your prompt mentions cloth, clothing, fabric, cape, flag, banner, drape, curtain, or wind-on-fabric. AgentUX will automatically activate Cloth Simulation when it recognizes relevant context in your request.
Key Unreal Engine Concepts
| Concept | Description |
|---|---|
UClothingAssetBase | The base cloth asset type created from a skeletal mesh section, holding simulation configuration and collision references. |
UChaosClothConfig | Configuration class for Chaos Cloth simulation parameters including mass, stiffness, damping, friction, and solver iterations. |
Cloth Painting | The process of assigning per-vertex simulation weights: 0.0 (fixed to skeleton) through 1.0 (fully simulated): to control which parts of the mesh move. |
Self-Collision | Prevents cloth from passing through itself, useful for wide robes and layered skirts but expensive due to per-particle checks. |
WindDirectionalSource | A level actor that provides directional wind affecting cloth drag, lift, and velocity for realistic fabric movement in wind. |
AnimDriveStiffness | Controls the blend between animation-driven and physics-driven cloth behavior: 0.0 for full physics, 1.0 for full animation. |
Related Skills
metahuman-setup
MetaHuman character setup including strand-based hair and groom components
physics-fundamentals
Chaos physics engine: rigid bodies, forces, constraints, and ragdoll
animation-playback
Animation playback, montages, and Animation Blueprint fundamentals
material-basics
Material creation and configuration for visual appearance
What You'll Learn
- How to create cloth assets from skeletal mesh sections
- How to paint cloth weights for natural-looking fixed-to-simulated transitions
- How to tune simulation properties for different fabric types: silk, cotton, leather, and more
- How to set up collision bodies that prevent cloth from clipping through the character
- How to configure wind interaction for capes, flags, and environmental fabric
- How to manage cloth performance with LOD transitions and solver optimization