Uploading MH Characters To Mixamo?

[Tanny]

Hi all,

I've been experimenting with uploading MakeHuman characters to Mixamo.

I can't get Mixamo to accept the textures. I've tried uploading just the FBX file, FBX file and textures, and a zip containing both. End result is always the same, I get only the white character and no textures. The white character does animate nicely.

When I export from MH I check the FBX box. The textures do download to my desktop.

Am I doing something wrong? How do I get the MH textures to upload to Mixamo?

Many thanks!

[RobBaer]

I don't know much about mixamo, but I do know that FBX has 2 possible ways of dealing with textures. One is to refer to external textures, This is the way MakeHuman does it. The other is to "pack" the texture files in with the rest of the binary FBX. Perhaps Mixamo uses the latter approach. If so, maybe finding a program that lets you pack the textures would help you succeed at passing textures through Mixamo.

If anyone knows of a program that packs FBX textures, perhaps you could suggest it to Tanny.

[Tanny]

Hi Rob, thanks for your reply.

I don't know much about mixamo,

As best as I can tell Mixamo may be the easiest way to animate a MH character. You upload your character, apply one of a collection of preset animations, and then output the results.

After testing the process again, I see now that while Mixamo doesn't show the textures in it's display (giving the impression they haven't uploaded) the textures do seem to make it through the process and are included in the downloaded file.

I discovered this by importing the Mixamo output file in to Cheetah (Mac 3d app) where the textures did appear. And the animation seemed to work as well, but it was hard to tell exactly because the character was bent up like a pretzel, thus rendering the whole process a waste of time.

It seems the bottom line problem is that there are not yet any reliable data transfer standards for the 3D realm, thus every other transaction transaction seems to involve some kind of glitch which needs to be diagnosed and repaired etc.

It would be great if someone could prove me wrong on this. What I'm hoping to accomplish is to replicate the simplicity and reliability of MakeHuman through the entire process of creating, animating and rendering a character.

MakeHuman => Mixamo => ???

What's the simplest tool for rendering an animated MakeHuman character? Mac or web is preferred, but I can fire up Windows if that's the only way.

I think we'd see more interest in MakeHuman if novice users such as myself could be presented with an easy reliable way to turn a MH character in to a rendered animation.

Thanks again Rob, much appreciated.

[loki1950]

The simplest and cheapest is blender it is free applying an animation to the character with makewalk our blender add-on most of the renders here on the forum are done with blender and there are thousands of youtube blender tutorials if you get lost in the process.

Enjoy the Choice

[Tanny]

Thanks but...

As I said above, I'm looking for render software that's as simple and obvious as MakeHuman and Mixamo.

Does it interest you that MakeHuman become more popular? If yes, the key to that is to establish work flows that avoid arcane complexity.

Blender is great for power users who enjoy arcane complexity. I get that urge, for example, I once coded my own forum software just for the fun of such a challenge. But most people don't want to code their own forum software, nor do they want to wrestle with Blender. Most people most of the time want the kind of experience that MakeHuman was designed to deliver, simple, straightforward, point and click, minimum brain strain.

If we can establish a MakeHuman style work flow which takes users through the entire process from character creation to animation to video there's the potential to help make MakeHuman, and this forum, considerably more popular.

I know Blender is sort of a religion on the forum, but for the purposes of this one thread could we please set Blender discussion aside, and focus instead on render solutions which are as easy to use as MakeHuman? Thank you!

[Tanny]

Downloading this now, we'll see how easy it is....

https://www.keyshot.com/

Oops! My bad. $2000.

[Tanny]

This looks promising...

https://sketchfab.com

It took me about 15 minutes to get from signup to this.

https://sketchfab.com/models/908f83c46a ... c752bbc37e

MakeHuman => Mixamo => Sketchfab

[Tanny]

So far I don't see a way to export a Sketchfab animation to a video file. I'm probably missing something obvious. But of course there's always screen recording. So one could try this...

1) Create your model in MakeHuman.

2) Animate model in Mixamo.

3) Display animation in Sketchfab.

4) Turn on your screen recorder, and take the Sketchfab animation full screen.

5) Use your mouse to manipulate the animated character while recording. Zoom in, zoom out, twist and shout etc.

All of the above should be within the reach of any novice user. A reasonably intelligent person who knows nothing about any of the above could probably learn the entire process from start to finish in a day, perhaps less.

To take it farther past the first time novice level....

6) Use any basic video editor to keep the good parts of your recording and dump the not so good parts. Rearrange parts in whatever manner is pleasing. Hitfilm is free and would do the job. One more day, maybe a couple, for the novice user to learn this.

7) Make your character talk using some program I won't mention, and layer the talking head on top of the original head in Hitfilm. Depending on the user, a week or two, maybe more to learn this to a basic level.

[radin7n]

Downloading this now, ...

my friend - Blender is the simplest (globally) and easiest 3d program to learn. If u thing blender is "complex" ... u should try zbrush and Maya
+Keyshot is not very "Simple" too.
and Makehuman is on the edge of being the best but the developers can't do it by themselves (for whatever reason they have).

+Maximo is part of "fuse" now. It do exactly what makehuman do, till i remember....idk

have a nice day

[Tanny]

I hereby formally accept Blender as my personal savior. Amen.