Cloth NeXt for Blender

Cloth Simulation. Reimagined.

GPU-accelerated cloth with detailed contact and reliable self-collision, solved in an external simulation engine and driven entirely from Blender. Artist-friendly controls on top, physically grounded parameters underneath.

Get Cloth NeXt Explore Features

Blender 5.0 to 5.2
Windows and Linux
GPL-3.0-or-later

Close-up render of a lace veil draped over a face, simulated with Cloth NeXt — Lace veil, simulated with Cloth NeXt

Features

Built for garments that behave.

Layered clothing, tight contact and animated characters are where cloth tools usually break down. Cloth NeXt is designed around exactly those cases.

01 · Solver

GPU-accelerated cloth simulation

Simulation runs in the PPF Contact Solver, an external solver developed by ST Tech / ZOZO. GAIA, the preferred solver for new installations, runs on NVIDIA GPUs through CUDA or on the CPU.

CUDA acceleration on supported NVIDIA GPUs
CPU backend for machines without a supported GPU
AMD GPU support through ROCm is in development

Layered dress in motion

02 · Contact

Advanced collisions and self-collision

Detailed cloth contact, reliable self-collision and complex garment interaction. Hoods, cuffs and stacked layers keep their shape instead of passing through each other.

Self-collision for folds and layered garments
Static and animated colliders
Cloth, Rod/Cable and Soft Body roles in one scene

Character wearing a hooded cropped jacket over a quilted top, showing hood, sleeve folds and layered fabric — Layered garments with self-collision

03 · Materials

Material presets and material zones

Start from a categorized library of fabric presets, including starting points derived from the MIT Fabric Properties Dataset. Every parameter has an artist-friendly name and maps to a specific solver parameter, so what you set is what the solver gets.

Categorized fabric preset library
Material Zones: exact per-triangle overrides on face selections
Stretch, bend, damping and permanent deformation controls

Cloth NeXt panel in Blender showing frame range, material preset, solver model and cloth material settings

04 · Workflow

Blender-native from setup to playback

Scene setup, materials, collision handling, validation, baking, diagnostics and cache playback all happen inside Blender. No command line, no manual file handling.

Installs through Blender's extension system
Stable and beta update channels
Gravity, wind and air forces driven by keyframeable empties

Soft Body role

05 · Pinning

Pinning and attachments

Pin with a single vertex group. Static mode holds positions from the bake start; Follow Animation tracks the animated mesh across the whole bake range, so garments stay attached to moving characters.

06 · Reliability

Solver diagnostics and reliable baking

Scene Health checks, persistent error codes and support reports. CPU, RAM and VRAM monitoring with per-frame performance history during a bake. Caches are written transactionally with versioned metadata and SHA-256 integrity checks.

07 · Fluids

GAIA Hydrodynamics

Cloth that responds to simulated water. An experimental capability of the GAIA 3.0 solver, not part of the current release.

Read the preview → Experimental

In Development

GAIA 3.0 Preview

Cloth, moved by water.

GAIA 3.0 is being extended with hydrodynamic forces, so cloth can react to fluid simulations created with the FLIP Fluids add-on for Blender. This work is in development and is not available in any current release. Scope and behaviour may change before it ships.

FLIP Fluids inputFluid simulations from the FLIP Fluids add-on drive the cloth interaction.
Field samplingWet areas and fluid velocity are sampled where the fluid meets the cloth.
Native force calculationHydrodynamic forces are computed natively inside the solver.
CUDA accelerationThe force computation runs on the GPU alongside the cloth solve.

Planned for the preview

One-way coupling: the fluid moves the cloth

Not part of this preview

Two-way interaction (cloth affecting the fluid)
Hydrostatic pressure and buoyancy
Water absorption

Coming Soon

Cloud Bakes

A future PolyWorks service for running bakes on remote GPUs instead of your own workstation. Cloud Bakes is not available yet, and nothing below can be used today.

Submit a job

Send a prepared simulation from Blender to the cloud.

Remote GPU power

The bake runs on dedicated GPU hardware while your machine stays free.

Track progress

Follow the simulation state from your PolyWorks account.

Retrieve caches

Download the finished cache and play it back in Blender.

Licensing

Choose your license.

Cloth NeXt is sold through Superhive, formerly Blender Market. Checkout, payment and downloads are handled there.

Personal

$19.99per user

For one individual user
Personal and non-commercial use
Commercial work up to $1,000 revenue per year
Additional seats available at checkout

Buy on Superhive

Commercial

$99per user

For one individual professional user
Unlimited commercial use
One license per user
Seats cannot be shared or transferred within a team

Buy on Superhive

Prices and terms as listed on Superhive on 16 October 2026. The prices shown at Superhive checkout and Superhive's license terms are authoritative.

Open source

Free software, built in the open.

Cloth NeXt is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or later. The source is public, and your purchase supports its development.

Add-on license: GPL-3.0-or-later
Solver: PPF Contact Solver by ST Tech / ZOZO, Apache License 2.0. Installed separately and verified for compatibility by Cloth NeXt.
Source code: github.com/polyworks-art/Cloth_neXT
Made by: PolyWorks

Documentation and support

Everything you need to get started.

DocumentationThe complete Cloth NeXt manual Installation guideAdd-on, solver and first bake System requirementsBlender, OS and hardware FAQAnswers to common questions SupportHow to reach PolyWorks

Ready to bake better cloth?

Get Cloth NeXt on Superhive and start simulating inside Blender today.

Get Cloth NeXt Read the docs