MHX and Blender import: Documentation and FAQ

Documentation about Blender import using the MHX format can be found here and in the documents below it.

Answers to some frequently asked questions can be found here

Don't hesitate to ask questions - your feedback improves the program and the documentation. But please check the FAQ first; the answer may already be there. Also keep in mind that MakeHuman is evolving; some documentation does not apply to the alpha 4 release, but to the version presently in svn. The FAQ explains how to update you program.

There are two hurdles that may prevent you from getting started:

The import script does not exist
By mistake, the mhx files where located in a subfolder of a utility directory, which was not included in the alpha 4 release. The files have now been moved to the importers/mhx/blender249 directory, which will be included in the next release. In the meantime, download the most recent files from svn trunk as described in the FAQ.

The character does not render on Linux, but only results in a blank blue screen
This appears to be a Blender bug on Linux, at least in some distributions. Apparently Blender can not read tif files (at least not the MH textures) under Linux. MakeHuman, Gimp and Linux' image editor all understand these files, as does Blender under Windows.

Workaround:
1. Convert the textures in makehuman/data/textures from .tif to .png.
2. Copy the PNG versions of the three textures (texture.png, texture-ref.png, texture-opacity,png) to the default MakeHuman export directory (~/makehuman/exports in the current version, makehuman/data/textures in alpha4). The mxh import script will look for PNG files first and TIF files later, and thus the PNG textures will be loaded.

Alternatively, you can load the textures in Blender after the character has been loaded.