I have an output request.

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I have an output request.

Postby Dragonshair » Tue Sep 17, 2019 8:08 pm

G'day folks.
First of all, I would like to say thank you for makehuman. I love what you have done and appreciate the work that has gone into it.

I have a request.
For my needs, Makehuman is more than adequate in terms of creating rough characters to use for a story board/comic strip. Which is basically all I am looking for.
I am a writer and I want to take a crack at writing graphic novels and I just need something that I can show to an artist and have them do the actual drawing as I can't do more than stick figures and I don't really have any interest in spending too much time on the art itself.
What all this means is that I am looking for something that I can do quickly and easily without having to learn an entirely new skillset.
Make human is perfect for my needs, to an extent.

Creating the character is very easy in MH, but then it gets too complicated with trying to install MHX2 (which just doesn't want to happen for me) and learning Blender, etc, etc. I am now at the point where I have to decide if MH does suit my needs if it requires this much work and takes me so far from my writing that it defeats the purpose.

What I need is to be able to create the character, put it into roughly the pose that I want and then export it as a 2D image that I can crop and paste into MS Word or Power Point as they are the simplest options for creating a comic strip.
If the image could be exported as a simple JPG, that would be ideal.
What would be needed is for the image to come across as the character on a clear background so that if it is overlayed on other images (such as backgrounds), the clear would not hide anything.

I have tried screen grabs, but the resolution is too low and I have to spend too much time in prost processing to get rid of the background crap.

I know that all of the serious graphic artists out there are now screaming at my evil request, but I am a writer, not a visual artist.

I know this is a reasonably big request, but it is make it or break it time for me with MH. I do love the simplicity of the program and it does meet my needs in every other way.

If my request could be considered, it would be greatly appreciated.


Thank you.
Col.
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Re: I have an output request.

Postby loki1950 » Tue Sep 17, 2019 8:36 pm

You want the render tab the output will be .png not jpeg you can control the image size it's plan OpenGL but as you said what you want/need for story boarding you are not alone in using MH for this task if you have more questions just post them you may have noticed we are fairly troll free :lol: You may find that using more that one character in a frame to be problematic so you may need some post processing to combine images in PhotoShop or it's free open source work alike's Gimp or Krita both are available for Windows BTW. The next limitation is posing which can not be done within MH but if you need a new pose just ask someone with the skills can create that for you just post a request in the assets sub-forum background images are already supported.

Enjoy the Choice :)
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Re: I have an output request.

Postby Aranuvir » Tue Sep 17, 2019 11:06 pm

You want the render tab the output will be .png not jpeg

My version of MH saves jpg files very well...
Screen grabs are only png.
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Re: I have an output request.

Postby Dragonshair » Fri Sep 20, 2019 4:07 am

Thank you Loki. It took a bit to work out, but I worked out how to get it to render and output as png. This is perfect for what I am after.
Agreed, I am likely to want a few different poses over time and probably different clothing options, hair, etc. But I can work on those requests once I have worked out what I am doing with what I have so far...baby steps.


Aranuvir, I can also save it as jpg, but when I looked at the image after, the background was black and I would have had to cut/paste in Ps every image. Whereas, png gave me the model on a clear background that I am able to overlay against other images without obscuring them. This means I can import to either MS powerpoint or publisher and treat them like any other graphic overlays.

Thanks for your help, folks. Greatly appreciated.

Col...
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Re: I have an output request.

Postby Dragonshair » Fri Sep 20, 2019 7:51 am

OK. Just a quick muck around this arvo.

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AlHocTXv2_dcgP4nvVE ... g?e=d7Nohr
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Re: I have an output request.

Postby Aranuvir » Fri Sep 20, 2019 9:30 pm

If the image could be exported as a simple JPG, that would be ideal.

Just an answer to your request. :D AFAIK JPG doesn't support alpha channels...
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Re: I have an output request.

Postby Dragonshair » Fri Sep 20, 2019 10:00 pm

[/quote]
Just an answer to your request. :D AFAIK JPG doesn't support alpha channels...[/quote]


Ummmm, I have no idea what that means. But it is ok, the .png is perfect for my needs.
Hopefully, the link I shared has worked and you can see that the .png is working for me. Let me know if the link isn't working and I will take another crack.


One of the problems for me is that these kinds of graphics are an entire language that I don't know and can't understand. Once upon a time, I could strip and reassemble my car. Since then, the tech has changed so much that I can't even find the spark plugs in my car any more. Computers are like that as well. I used to be able to program a bit in DOS, but now, if it ain't on windows, it ain't gonna happen.
I do appreciate the information though, even though I don't understand it. Thank you.
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Re: I have an output request.

Postby loki1950 » Sat Sep 21, 2019 3:17 am

Alpha channel is just geek speak for transparency :geek:

Enjoy the Choice :)
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Re: I have an output request.

Postby Dragonshair » Sat Sep 21, 2019 6:02 am

Thanks for that. I haven't done geek speak since around 1994 when I stopped working at the university.
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Re: I have an output request.

Postby RobBaer » Mon Sep 23, 2019 7:24 pm

FWIW, colors are specified as the proportion of red, green and blue color to mix (1 byte each), and a fourth byte (alpha channel) that varies between 0 (transparent) and 255 (decimal, opaque) that specifies what to do when writing over an existing background.

.jpg images only have the red, green, and blue bytes, but no alpha byte. The background is often assumed to be black or white. .png images specify all 4 bytes and so can have transparent backgrounds. .gif images also support transparent backgrounds usable by browsers, but are an older format with limited color space and using a different method to supply a transparent color.
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