Hairs feature development

The development of particle hairs in MH will be suspended, and replaced by polygonal hairs.

There are several reasons:

1) Particle hairs are hard to export, because there is no standard format for them. So a good hairstyle for MH can be a bad hairstyle for another software that uses, for example, a different type of interpolation.
2) Particle hairs are more complex to handle, talking about gravity, collision, etc..
3) Particle hairs take long to render, and each engine renders them in a different way.
4) Particle hairs are hard to save as a professional, optimized and well textured game oriented hairstyle.


So, we are looking for some good and professional low poly hairs models.
If anyone wants help us, you are welcome.

In the meantime, this is the longhair template which we are working on:

Thread here:

http://www.makehuman.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1707

Linux alpha 6 up

Linux versions of the alpha 6 release are now up on google code.

EDIT: There's a minor glitch in the amd64 deb. On the gnome start menu it'll call itself "alpha 5", but when you start it you'll see that it is indeed alpha 6. Since this won't affect functionality, I'll let this be rather than do a new build.

MakeHuman 1.0 alpha 6

Today we announce the release of MakeHuman 1.0 alpha 6.

Download:
https://sites.google.com/site/makehumandocs/download

Linux version coming soon.
Unfortunately we can't provide OSX version for this release, due to a lack of osx maintainers.

New/improved features

• NEW: Texture chooser
• ETHNIC MODE: partially restored
• ETHNIC MODE: Save/load of skin texture, modified ethnics to use correct texture at load.
• NEW: Expressions plugin
• NEW: Randomize plugin
• MEASURE MODE: sliders hide/show clicking on human zones
• GUI: better design
• GUI: Small font text, Sharp fonts (on default size)NEW: Background tools.
• VARIOUS: Fourier tool.
• MHX: mhx importer v 1.0.4. New way to assign vertex groups.
• MHX: Mhx rig redesign: FK and IK bones removed.
• COLLADA: Simplified Collada export. The skeleton does not look so good in Blender, but is more correct.
• MEASURE MODE: save measurement
• GUI: Show angle when sliding
• GUI: Wire button
• OBJ: Better obj export, without diamonds option
• OBJ: Custom obj exporter which makes better UVs than the standard one.
• GUI: New fileselector (WIP)
• GUI: Camera key navigation
• GUI: Added export eyebrows option, layout cleanup
• MHX: Introduced spline ik for the spine as an option.
• MHX: Removed hooks for spine spline IK because it caused cyclical errors. Euler angles and better weight painting for legs.
• GUI: nicer color control
• GUI: speeds up camera movement when holding shift.
• MHX: Pose tool: Toggle button for properties, layer visibility panel, lipsync autokey-button aware.
• Using separate bone layers for left and right sides. MHX importer: filter file extensions. MHX export even if proxy.cfg is missing.
• GENERAL: Persistent settings
• NEW: Catmull Clark subdivision (to use as preview and export option, not realtime)
• GUI: Better opengl lighting
• GUI: Adds a statistics box in measurement
• NEW: skeleton visualizer
• EXPERIMENTAL: pose2 for experimenting deforming without shapekeys
• EXPERIMENTAL: bvh player (to test bvh loading)

Bugfix

• Repaired some modelling bugs
• MODELLING: makesymm now work fine
• MHX: Custom shapes: unused removed, simplified. Fix for Blender ChildOf bug was gone. Restored. MHX: Limits for hip bone
• MHX: Modication of game rigs.
• MHX: Fixed bug with proxy parenting.
• GENERAL: Fixes unicode bug reported here http://www.makehuman.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1544&sid=28d6345523f1d14ecd76a5806c6ceeb6
• GENERAL: Unicode problems
• MHX: Export of mesh-deform cage works again.
• OBJ: Fix texture export for obj
• GENERAL: Fixes the first click not working problem
• GENERAL: Huge API cleanup, removes a lot of unnecessary or unused methods
• GENERAL: Rewrote callback mechanism for SDL events to python
• GENERAL:  Delayed/asynchronous method calling
• GENERAL:-Reworked startup procedure to be less blocking and to show the progress more accurately
• MODELLING: bugfix in a young male teeth
• COLLADA: Two degenerate quads were combined into a single one at Collada export. The fix was needed for subdiv in Mudbox according to illincrux
• MHX: Fixed non-moving mesh bug reported by mcc
• STL: fixed stl (stereolithography) export, added subdivide option
• MD5. Fixed md5 export to use quads as source
• API: Removes the need to pass texture size, texture cache uses Texture objects instead of texture id's now. mh.loadTexture will be obsoleted.