Broken Rendering Engine

[Ricardo2020]

There is a problem with the rendering engine in MakeHuman v1.3.0 running on Linux Mint installed on a workstation with a Xeon E1246v3 CPU and an nVidia GTX960 GPU. This box runs at 3.8GHz on eight threads, and it has 4GB of GPU RAM and 32GB of system RAM. The OS and hot files live on a 1TB Samsung EVO879 SSD. It has 6TB of mechanical HDD storage.

Model saves and screen grabs result in the black ghost effect wherein the model turns into a silhouette after saving or grabbing.

Model silhouette in MakeHuman vewport

Also, the scene selector in the Rendering tab no longer shows a preview of the lights in other scenes and stays unchanged from the default. It used to change when a different scene was selected.

Combined with the body cavity issue in basic rendering and the clothing showing through hair no matter what, the program is only useful as a model creator. I can take the model into Blender using the MPFB plugin, but functionality is limited if I import the model from MakeHuman rather than generate it inside the plugin which gives the full set of Blender options.

Blender is epic in what it does, but it is very complicated and rendering basic model images takes much longer and is somewhat difficult to set up whereas MakeHuman is quick and easy. It was flawless in v1.2.0 on the Focal fork of Mint, but Jammy is riddled with so many issues running v1.3.0 that it has stalled my work there.

Unless I learn how to do in Blender what I used to be able to do in MakeHuman when it comes to rendering the model, I am dead in the water going forward if I do my work in MakeHuman. I cannot roll back to the earlier version and I cannot figure out what is wrong with the new version.

The solution is to dive into Blender and bite the bullet of the learning curve. I had almost figured out everything in MakeHuman but I am a rank newbie in Blender.

Such is way of world...

What to do next?

[joepal]

I can't say what's wrong with MH apart from what I said earlier. But rendering in Blender need not take oceans of time.

My guess is that you are rendering with cycles. This does indeed take lots of time on most graphics cards.

However, if you switch to Eevee rendering, you should talk about a few seconds for rendering an image. This at least if you've chosen the proper skin materials.

Or, if you're really desperate for time, you should be able to do viewport rendering. This is almost immediate.

[Ricardo2020]

I am rendering using EVEE in Blender. I do have a lot of stuff turned on that enables a more realistic render and the machine has plenty of oomph. I can do a 1920x1080 image in around 90 seconds or so, which is OK and to be expected with all the settings I have enabled, which are mostly maxed out. It works rather well, and shall be the way I do things going forward to the point where I am ready to move up to the Cycles engine. I am going to need a newer, much larger GPU for that one...

[bojanakovacic]

Since MakeHuman v1.3.0 is giving you trouble, diving into Blender might be your best bet. It has a learning curve, but it's powerful and can handle what you're missing with MakeHuman. Start with some basic Blender tutorials to get up to speed.

[Ricardo2020]

I have actually begun the process of using Blender with MPFB and the results are epic. If you look in the gallery, there are some Blender renders of mine in there.

[tomcat]

If you look in the gallery, there are some Blender renders of mine in there.

I have strong suspicions that this is an AI-spam-bot. I'm waiting for him to post an ad link.