Aarushi

Well, Blender has Suzanne, Renderman has the teapot, others have the Stanford's happy Buddha...
We have Aarushi [*].

Modeled by me upon the makehuman standard female mesh, she will be used for all our rendering experiments.

[*] Aarushi is an indian name. It means: "first rays [of sun]". A perfect name for a subject of raytracing rendering. Thanks to Abhishek Gupta to suggest me the name.

Official thread: http://www.makehuman.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1891&p=7598

New MHX importer features

Tested with Blender 2.59.3 r40432, downloaded from graphicall.org yesterday, and with svn version of MakeHuman Sept. 22.

When you import the MakeHuman character, you will notice that the sliders around the face representation are gone. Instead, arm and leg IK are controlled by properties in the MHX drivers panel in the User interface, which is made visible with N-key.


But there are actually quite a few more settings than just the simple FK/IK switches.

GazeFollowsHead

The character looks at the Gaze bone, which can move with the head or remain fixed in space.

SpineIk

Move the spine by just using the Shoulders bone, located on the hidden IK Spine layer. Still buggy.

SpineInvert

Start the spine from the shoulders rather than from the hips. Should be good for a character walking on his hands or for Spiderman swinging between buildings. The inverted spine bones are located on the Inv FK Spine layer.

Spine Stretch

Stretchiness of the lower back bones when using spine IK.

Then follow a number of settings that are duplicated for the left and right sides.

ArmHinge

If on, the arms do not rotate when the shoulders do.

ArmIk

This is the old switch between FK and IK arms. The arm is controlled by the Wrist bone and the ElbowPT pole target, located on the hidden Arm IK layer.

ArmStretch

Arm stretchiness when using Arm IK. A small stretchness is useful to make the hand really stay still. For a large stretchiness, think Elasta girl.

ElbowPlant

The elbow remains fixed, e.g. when a character sits at a table with elbows on it. The elbow location is at the Elbow bone, current on the hidden Tweak layer. The forearm is controlled with FK or IK depending on the ArmIk setting. Currently buggy.

FingerControl

Whether each finger is controlled by the single bone on the Fingers layer, or the individual bones must be posed separately.

HandFollowsWrist

Whether the hand copies the rotation of the IK Wrist bone, or is posed idenpendently.

LegIk

This is the old switch between FK and IK leg. The leg is controlled by the LegIK bone and the KneePT pole target, located on the hidden Leg IK layer.

LegStretch

Leg stretchiness when using Leg IK.


You will also notice that three more panels have appeared: MHX Lipsync, MHX Expressions and MHX Layers. The pose tool has been built into the MHX importer and will now automatically appear when an MHX rig is active.

Lipsync and expressions will of course only work if face shapes and expressions are exported from MakeHuman, and the Face shapes option is enabled on import.

The Blink/Unblink and pin buttons have some update issues which are currently under investigation. When you press on of these buttons nothing happens in the viewport until the next time a bone or a property slider is moved. The problems can be evaded by e.g. hitting the Blink/Unblink button again, but that is not how it should be.

Everything works with file linking, because the sliders are object properties of the rig.

MHX rig: Shoulders

In this thread Rhynedahll complained about problems with shoulder deformation. That shoulders lead to problems is not surprising, since it is generally considered as the part of the body that is hardest to rig. I was somewhat reluctant to look into the shoulder rig, because it had become a morass which I only partly understood. But eventually I decided to redo the shoulder rigging from scratch.

The purpose with this post is threefold:
1. To document the rig.
2. To describe a shoulder rigging technique which may be of interest to others.
3. To get feedback from more experienced riggers.

The main idea is to use two kinds of deformation bones: the bone bones, which correspond to actual bones in the skeleton, and muscle bones which mimic deformation from muscles moving under the skin. Without muscles deformation tends to be very poor. This idea was suggested to me by someone on this forum, and the idea was used in the previous shoulder rig, too, but the location of the muscles was not anatomically correct and the end result not so good. This time I actually bothered to look up references, and I think the result is quite believable.


The new shoulder rig is controlled by four bones. The main control bones are the upper arm and the clavicle, which is incorrectly called Shoulder. This was a natural name where the bone was displayed as a box at its end. It should change eventually, but since a new name would affect the mocap tool I will postpone it a little. There are also two new bones: the arm location and the deltoid control. More about that later.


The basic deformation is carried out by the bone bones: the spine continuing into the neck, the clavicle, and the upper arm. To facilitate weight painting, there is also a rib bone at the front of the chest. Finally, the scapula gives some extra movement to the back.


At the front of the chest we have the pectoralis muscle. It is represented by two bones to mimic its triangular shape. The bone location is not quite correct and will probably be improved later, but it already gives quite descent deformation. We also see the deltoid muscle.


The back has two bones for the trapezeus and one bone for latissimus dorsi.


The purpose of the deltoid bone is to maintain the volume of the deltoid. This is quite tricky, because the bone must move when the arm bends up, but not when it bends down. Some rigging magic makes this happen, but the movement is not perfect. You can fine-tune the deltoid shape with the C-shaped control bone, although some improvements of the weighting is necessary to make this work well.


Finally, the location where the arm begins can be adjusted with the box-shaped bone. This is of course cheating, but it can really improve a pose.

I believe that the basic idea is fundamentally right. If the bones are placed in the same place as the major muscles, deformation should look good, because the muscle bones obey the same laws.

proxy.cfg has changed name to mh_export.config

The original purpose of this file was to control which proxy meshes were included in MHX export. However, eventually it has become a general configuration file for MakeHuman export, which has made me increasingly dissatisfied with the name. Now it has been changed to something that better describes its current use.

proxy.cfg has changed name to mh_export.config. The content and location are the same as before.

This probably means that some build paths has to be modified, to make the nightly builds and the releases work properly. I know that there is a proper place to document this, but I have forgotten where.

The documentation will be updated, but not right now.

Makehuman on the cover of Linux Magazine Italy

Linux Magazine Italy of September contains a guide for makeHuman. The cover states: "Corpi umani creati al computer. La guida per usare MakeHuman e disegnare subito corpi perfetti in 3D"  (CG human bodies. Makehuman guide to create perfect 3D bodies in few seconds).