My script to turn Blender in a laboratory for 3d humans

[Manuel]

Hi guys,
this is my new script...
Download: http://www.manuelbastioni.com

[jcpalmer]

Nice. My impression is it is like having make human running inside inside of Blender. No need to support any exporting. Let Blender / others do that messy work. Cuts out steps for users too.

I like the 23 bone skeleton, without hands which I could delete. Am working on posing a basic skeleton from MH into a pose library, to make it easier to come up with a series of finger shapes using the Apply as Shape Key function. As you know, Apply as Shape Key remove the armature, hence building the pose library first to cut down on the # of steps.

Still not figured out how to get the shape keys into each of my characters, but would not having non-identical topologies make this impossible?

[Manuel]

Nice. My impression is it is like having make human running inside inside of Blender. No need to support any exporting. Let Blender / others do that messy work. Cuts out steps for users too.

There are many noticeable differences: http://www.manuelbastioni.com/guide_mai ... eHuman.php

Still not figured out how to get the shape keys into each of my characters, but would not having non-identical topologies make this impossible?

Perhaps in future Blender will have a shapekey transfer function between different topologies, but at the moment it is impossible as far as I know...

[jujube]

Quick test of the addon, asian male macro from the makehuman nightly on the left vs manuel's version on the right. On first inspection the eye topology seems nicer/more detailed in this new version, although it appears that you choose between a fixed list of body type and facial presets. Which is convenient but there also doesn't appear to be the sliders we know and love. Or at least, I haven't found them in my first 5 minutes of using the addon.

I wonder if there could be a "best of both worlds" approach somewhere... maybe Manuel could add his alternate topologies to the main makehuman program?

[Manuel]

Quick test of the addon, asian male macro from the makehuman nightly on the left vs manuel's version on the right. On first inspection the eye topology seems nicer/more detailed in this new version, although it appears that you choose between a fixed list of body type and facial presets. Which is convenient but there also doesn't appear to be the sliders we know and love.

here you go
http://www.manuelbastioni.com/guide_det ... meters.php

[Rhynedahll]

This looks interesting and I gave it a test drive.

What sort of time frame do you project for all functions (i.e. materials) to be implemented?

[jujube]

I got a chance to sit down and play with the addon for a while and wrote down what I noticed. These are my main concerns:

--saving characters. I read the page in the manual and to be honest it sounds like a pain in the ass. Or like you haven't figured out a good solution yet. I can't imagine having to manually reload the json file every single time I open up my .blend file. This also means you can't export your human with all the settings to an external program, so you can say goodbye to marvelous designer.

--Removing the race/gender/age sliders. Maybe most people wouldn't miss mixing the race/gender sliders but the total lack of an age slider is a big deal. Instead there's this awkward workaround to make a character older?? seen here

--The global weight/muscle sliders are moved to the generator tab, so the only way to globally change those parameters is to either randomly generate a new character, or go to the heavy/muscular/etc presets (and in the process lose whatever facial/etc fine tuning you just did.)

The first point is really the biggest problem, it's fun to play with "makehuman" inside blender but without a better way to save and export your model, it's not really seriously usable. I imagine there might be a future update with a better saving system in the future but the removal of the gender slider seems to be a deliberate choice, which is too bad. I really liked the new eye topology, and fatness model. (with the old eye topology it could sometimes feel too obvious that you're an amateur who has to rely on makehuman. Or at least, that's how I felt. Not sure if it has anything to do with others' experiences.)

I made a running commentary of my observations as I was playing with the addon, it might also be useful input. Stored in pastebin for length: http://pastebin.com/z936e6Js

[rampa]

This a neat looking system! Thanks!

Are the models at all inter-operable with Makehuman? Can they be sent to Makehuman once they are clothed?

Also, is there a way to easily create visemes?

[jujube]

Are the models at all inter-operable with Makehuman? Can they be sent to Makehuman once they are clothed?

According to the manual, the models are only usable inside blender.

[loki1950]

Can they be sent to Makehuman once they are clothed?

Why would you need to do that at all,you have much better rendering options within blender after all BR and cycles are not the only renders you can use,rendering is the only function I can see using as the base mesh is not the makehuman one so can not be morphed all as Manuel clearly states in the manual,and the clothes would no longer fit as Manlab does not use any helper geometry for clothes fitting he uses a completely new proxy system,some of this may migrate to makehuman but not for quite awhile as several modules would need complete redesign and rewrite of the code.All in all I think it is a very good initial release with Manuel most likely
looking for user feedback for continuing development.

Enjoy the Choice