Getting it all together

[Ricardo2020]

I am a newbie on this thread, but I am a veteran computer guy. And so I have a story to tell...

My main workstation used to run MakeHuman v1.2.0 on Linux Mint Una LTE. After some years working with that, the SSD containing the OS and hot files lost the superblock which told my box what it was and what it held. Poof. Gone. The strange thing is, the BIOS could not see the drive after this, but Linux Mint could. However, the drive was unmountable and I could not find a fix. So, I took it offline.

This meant I needed a new operating system so I could run the recent Community software. So, I put Linux Mint Virginia on a new and bigger SSD. After making myself at home (secure the 'net, get productivity going, etc.), I put Blender 4.2 and MPFB2 on, along with all those ZIP file with the assets waiting for later installation. With a bare blending environment, I opened it up and looked at the plugin.

I am now ready to roll up my sleeves and learn how to make a human, Blender style. It looks to be very similar in function, but the workflow is vastly different when it comes to paths and methods. Aleady I can see that it is a much more powerful code set. I hope it will not be too hard to maintain, with a user life long enough for me to get some work done, even though my work is actually play.

When it stops being fun, I will stop doing it.

So far, it has been an interesting ride, indeed. I shall keep the good folks who made this up to date on my progress within this thread so that future newbies can dive in easy. After all, it really is not that hard since the instructions given on this site are very clear. The plugin is practically self explanatory.

Much fun.

[Ricardo2020]

After getting it all together, it was time to take the setup for a test run.
I set the controls for new human from scratch and clicked create human.
This is what happened:

Error while creating new human from scratch

To make a long story short, it failed with the error you see above.
My question is why. My next question is how to fix it.

[joepal]

What has happened here is that you've opened a very old version of MPFB in blender 4+. It complains that the wavefront obj addon isn't available, which is true since it was replaced in blender 4.

This issue should be resolved if you download the beta 1 release or a nightly build of MPFB and use that instead.

You might also want to take a look at https://static.makehumancommunity.org/m ... rsion.html

[joepal]

As reports about this appear now and then, I've added a FAQ here: https://static.makehumancommunity.org/m ... crash.html

[Ricardo2020]

I followed your advice, both here and on the page you linked to. I went for the latest nightly file and installed it.

Lo and behold, it works! You are a scholar and a gentleman, my Good Sir.

Now all I have to do is learn how to work it (snarf)...

Many thanks, Joe.

[Ricardo2020]

This is a screenshot depicting my first model made in Blender with MPFB2.

Female 001 in Blender with MPFB2

She is a big beautiful woman with long hair, who was generated from scratch and saved as a preset named female_001.

Having never used the software setup before, it took about an hour to get this far. I am reckoning that future efforts will be much quicker once I become more adept.

My first impression with this environment is that the controls are much more sensitive than those found in MakeHuman, but they work the same way with the added benefit of being able to enter the exact values with the keyboard. I also had to learn to put the mouse on the thing I was working on. I had to look for that yellow outline signal...

When I began the experiment, there was no need to mess with the default settings. I just jumped in and started modelling. Once I got comfortable with how Blender reacts to user input, it was easy peasy.

My work will be much slower but more controlled using this setup. I highly recommend it for those who really want to dig deep into making a model and placing it into a scene, and then rendering it with incredible detail. Also, options such as animation are in there, so I still have a lot to learn.

So far, it is much fun and I am highly grateful for the assistance Joe gave me so quickly. I am also grateful to the many fine folks who made all this possible, both the Community team and the Blender nation.

[Ricardo2020]

I have finally figured out how to do a basic render of a model generated in MPFB2 on Blender 4.2 running on Linux Mint Virginia using Xeon and nVidia gear. It works like a charm, but it was no small feat as I learned how all those controls work. I had made three models before I actually understood how to get things right spot on. I was like a cat on a hot tin roof with rollerskates. It was a very steep roof and the ground was far below...

It also made my workstation grunt a little bit. Yep, Spanky got to flex his muscles a wee tad on that third model, the one you shall see in this post.

But I digress.

Below is an image which I told Blender to render. Once saved, it was opened in the GIMP so it could be cropped to the content with just enough space around the model to give a nice head and shoulders portrait. Yes, she was standing there nude when the shutter opened on that nice fast lens. Very pretty lady, indeed, she is.

female_003 Blender render

The model was imaged using one soft white light off to the side and pushed way back. The barn door was wide open on the light. The camera was dollied in close to get at the beautiful features of her lovely round face.

The model is saved in Blender as a preset named female_003. There is also a blend file of the same name. These files live in a folder named the same as well, along with any other data pertaining to the model. File management 101...

The image was not processed in any way other than to remove any compression and crop to content. The GIMP lets one get a very high quality finish.

Assets used in the creation of this model were installed using ZIP files which were downloaded from the asset packs available on the MakeHuman Community website at

https://static.makehumancommunity.org/assets/assetpacks.html

I am really looking forward to the day when I can do expressions and import my vast collection of target files. I wanna see the thumbs for them in the asset browser within MPFB2 or later. I am also champing at the bit to get the animation nation going.

A person could spend a lot of time doing this, but it is a ton o' fun.