MakeHuman

New site 2012!!!

2012-01-02T04:02:00.000-08:00

Hi guys,
happy new year!

An important update for our community: a new site, with more services, more transparency and better illustration of processes, code, policy, bugs...

Some parts are not completed yet, and there are some bugs here and there, but most of it already works and you can enjoy:

1) a better view on the hard work we have done, with a detailed todo list, updated very often.

2) Unify all documents in one unique place.

3) Now you can see the faces of the people that are donating their time to the makehuman community.

4) A clean and immediate way to communicate with the team, using the form here

5) Finally an official gallery, with selected images.

6) A clear and easy download interface.

7) Our dear old forum, resurrected on a much more powerful server.

8) A clear description of makehuman features.

We are still working on it, hoping to improve the services and offer more and more to our community.

Helper geometry for clothes

2011-12-20T20:44:00.001-08:00

Clothes and hair are morphed based on the targets for the underlying skin. This algorithm was originally intended for the creation of low-poly proxy meshes, for which is works well, but there are two problems for clothes:

Most clothes do not follow the body shape exactly, e.g. a coat has very little depression between a woman's breasts.

What to do if there is no underlying skin, as in the middle of a skirt?

To solve these problems, we have added some very basic clothes as part of the mesh, and are updating the targets for the new geometry. Currently the targets have been generated automatically, but the major ones needs manual tweaking, as we can see in the figure. Once targets for the helper geometry is in place, we can make clothes that adapt to that rather than to the body.

The helper geometry does not normally show up in MH, because it is assigned UV coordinates in a region with alpha = 0. It is removed on mhx import unless the Helper Geometry option (formerly known as Diamonds) is checked.

Texture projection

2011-11-20T18:53:00.000-08:00

This weekend I spent some time implementing a rough version of the texture projection for MakeHuman alpha7. The ultimate goal is to be able to create a texture from the different reference pictures used to create a model. Currently it only uses the current reference picture, even when you have several pictures assigned to different views. While the projection code from Saturday still had a lot a lot of seams in the rendering, the one from Sunday fixes this, as you can see in the rendering below.

(In case you are wondering what image I used to project, it's one of the wallpapers from the local burger chain: http://www.mos.co.jp/)

There are still a few points which can be improved. The most noticeable in the rendering below is the texture sampling. I currently use nearest neighbor instead of bi-linear sampling, so it looks a bit aliased in places where the texture surface is much lower than the object surface. If you use a higher resolution picture, this shouldn't be such a problem.

Another improvement would be speed. Since 99% of the projection is implemented in python, it is rather slow at the moment. However I plan to write an OpenGL version once I have some time to add FBO (framebuffer object) support to our render engine.

Besides these two technical problems, there is the GUI aspect. As I mentioned before, we will need to combine projections, for example front and side view, to obtain a more usable texture as currently polygons orthogonal to the projection plane will have very washed out texturing.

We will also need to add a way to mask area's in the source image to avoid that the entire texture gets projected. Right now you need to erase the unneeded regions in Gimp or Photoshop and save the image with an alpha channel.

I haven't tried the projection with a real photograph of a face yet, as I was more interested in coding the projection than actually using it. But I'm sure some of you will try it soon.

MHX export to separate directories

2011-11-08T06:28:00.001-08:00

Some weeks ago I made a change to mhx export that I forgot to mention. By default every exported mhx file is now located in a separate directory below the export directory, named after the character. Moreover, the relevant textures (skin, hair, clothes, etc) are copied to the textures subdirectory. There are three reasons for this change:

1. If you import the mhx file into Blender and then save the blend file in the character's directory, file paths are made local. The path of each image is changed from the global path to a local path starting with //textures (you may have to select File > External Data > Make All Paths Relative). This means that you can move the character directory to another computer where MakeHuman is at a different location, or not installed at all, without losing the textures.

2. Since every character now has his own texture, the texture can be modified in an image editor without affecting other characters.

3. Things are not broken if the textures in the MakeHuman directory are changed. This happened to me when I was working on a personal project. Suddenly my heroine had a lot of holes in her, because Manuel had changed the UV layout and the textures in svn.

However, if you don't want the separate directory, you can turn this feature off by setting SeparateFolder in mh_export.config to False.

SVN problem in linux

2011-11-04T09:19:00.001-07:00

If you are using the nightly deb for linux and get the following error message:

D targets/mouth/images/mouth-width-min-max.png
svn: Server sent unexpected return value (502 Bad Gateway) in response to PROPFIND request for '/svn/trunk/makehuman/data/targets/mouth/images'

Then execute the following:

sudo rm -rf /usr/share/makehuman/data/targets/mouth
sudo apt-get install -y --force-yes --reinstall makehuman-nightly

This should clean up your local svn checkout and allow you to get the latest targets.

New feature + Halloween present!!

2011-10-29T14:41:00.000-07:00

We are proud to introduce a long-awaited feature: the custom target loader. Now anyone can make and add custom targets in MH. Thanks to Eduardo Morais, the loader is still in our SVN repository.
To show how it works, we recreated a famous character, Frankenstein's monster. It can be downloaded from http://download.tuxfamily.org/makehuman/custom_targets/

To try it, you need the latest SVN (or the nightly build). These are the steps:

Start MakeHuman. A new folder will be created in your USER/makehuman/custom. In Windows, this is usually in mydocuments/makehuman/custom
Unzip the file frankenstein.target.zip into the "custom" folder.
The Frankenstein creature is modeled upon the male character. So, first of all, you need to move the gender slider to 100% male (fig. 1).
Now, go in modeling->custom. Press the "Rescan folder" button, in order to refresh the target list. A new slider will appear on the left (fig. 2). Now you can mix Frankenstein's monster with your male character.

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Topology selector!!!

2011-10-27T08:25:00.000-07:00

This is a very important feature.
Now you can select your preferred topology, in order to match your needs: games, zbrush-friendly, optimized, etc..
Makehuman: making real innovation.

A censor plugin..

2011-10-22T13:59:00.000-07:00

A plugin to cover nudity. It's to test some new 2D drawing functions, that will be used for GUI improvements, like radial graph and measurement arrows.

Clothes in MH

2011-10-10T00:18:00.001-07:00

Update 2011.10.17:
Dressers' guide
Tailors' guide (updated)

Click to dress and undress

Masking problem:

Documentation for tailors (subject to change without notice):
http://sites.google.com/site/makehumandocs/blender-export-and-mhx/making-clothes

Update 2011.10.12: Suggested solution of the masking problem in Blender.
Left: Character in MH. Overlapping clothes ordered randomly.
Middle: Directly when imported into Blender.
Right: Sweater hidden and sweater mask disabled in the skin and bikini materials.

The emperor's new clothes

2011-10-05T08:46:00.001-07:00

The clothing system has some new features, and some new clothes.

When you import an MHX file into Blender with the default settings, the character is dressed with a green sweater and blue trousers. So far it's the same as before, although the topology of the clothes is better. Whereas the previous garment was rather crappy (i.e. modelled from scratch by myself), the new clothes were made by modifying Ascottk's proxy mesh, and thus inherit the nice topology of this mesh. There are some other clothes that can be turned on in mh_export.config.

One rather cool feature the the ability to turn garment visibility on and off. This is useful if she is wearing different clothes in different scenes, or perhaps nothing at all. When you select the rig, the panel MHX Visibility to the right (toggle with N-key) has an entry for each mesh. Set HideSweater to 1, and our heroine is nude from the waist up. The hide sliders are object properties of the rig, and thus work with file linking. You can therefore keep a character with many different clothes in an asset file, link it into many shot files, and let her wear different clothes in different scenes without touching the asset file.

However, there is a problem. Clothing is close to the character's body, and sometimes the skin may peek through. This is not a big problem if your character is wearing the same clothes in all scenes. Simply delete vertices beneath the clothes, or assign them to the Invisio material of the joint diamonds. But there is another alternative. Select the mesh, choose the Skin material, and open the textures. The first few textures are masks; enable the masks for the visible pieces of clothing and leave the others unchecked. This produces much nicer renders.

The checkboxes to the right of the mask textures are purple. This means that they are driven, and it should really be impossible to change their states by clicking on them. The idea is that changing the Hide property should automatically modify mask visibility. Unfortunately, this does not happen, and I suspect that this is a bug, or omission, in Blender. Unfortunately, this means that masking does not work with file linking. If you want to turn on a mask in a shot file, you must do it in the asset file, thus messing up all other shot files using the same asset.

The software treats polygon hair as another piece of clothing (without a mask, though), and hence it can be turned off as well. Is this useful? Well, our heroine might decide to go scuba-diving, and then her hair will not be visible. More mundanely, turning off hair and clothes will probably speed up test renders. Or include a proxy mesh and turn off the main mesh.

Update: The clothes now come with some textures.

Aarushi

2011-09-24T16:57:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-21T21:59:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-19T04:27:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-17T02:38:00.001-07:00

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

2011-09-09T13:52:00.000-07:00

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).

Important changes to nightly DEBs

2011-08-31T06:57:00.000-07:00

Starting tomorrow, the nightly build DEB files will use a new approach for managing the large set of data files required by MakeHuman.

Up until now, the data has been included inside the DEB file, which has resulted in larger and larger files until we ran into the quota roof at TuxFamily. At last check, the DEB files were around 80 mb.

From now on, the data will instead be downloaded automatically as a part of the DEB postinst configuration step. This shrinks the DEB file to 9 mb.

The data will be downloaded using subversion, and this will only happen the first time the package is installed. When in the future upgrading to a new build, the data dir will instead be upgraded using "svn update" so that only changes are downloaded.

The nightly deb files have gained three new dependencies to manage the above: subversion, wget and dos2unix.

In addition to this, the large "skins" bitmaps will be downloaded using wget and placed in the appropriate central directory.

This is a significant change and it might take some time to stomp out the bugs with it. If you run into trouble, please comment in this thread:

http://www.makehuman.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1845

Note that the above info is ONLY applicable to the nightly deb files for linux. The alphas are not changed, nor are the distribution packages for other platforms, nor the tarballs.

makeHuman included in Dream Studio 11.04

2011-08-27T11:22:00.000-07:00

DickMacInnis.com is proud to announce the official release of Dream Studio 11.04. This exciting new version of Dream Studio (http://dream.dickmacinnis.com) has all the features that have made past releases one of the most successful multimedia software packages out there, including: multi-user, pulseaudio-integrated realtime audio via JACK, for use with programs like Ardour; the renowned Cinelerra video editor, a full graphic and web design suite; photography tools; and hundreds of assorted audio and video effects, fonts, and utilities for everything from multimedia file conversion to simple office work and web browsing. Not only that, but this latest version of Dream Studio also included hundreds of bug fixes and the following new features:

-Blender has been upgraded to the new version 2.59, with the oceansim patch applied

-Several new programs have been added, including MakeHuman (http://makehuman.org), Sonic Visualiser(http://www.sonicvisualiser.org/), and Smasher(http://smasher.sourceforge.net/)

-A lowlatency kernel is installed by default, with automatic installation of the lowlatency-pae kernel for systems that have more than 3GB of RAM

-Separate meta-packages have been created for graphic design and photography, as well as for software instruments and audio effects, for easy selection/removal of software you don't need

-Dream Studio software sources automatically re-enable and update to newest distribution release on upgrade, to smooth transitions for less technically advanced users

-All software has begun being moved from a personal repository to PPAs (personal package archives), to allow easier porting to different architectures and faster upgrades to new releases. This move will also enable easy backporting of newer software, so that users of LTS (long term support) releases will no longer need to upgrade to unstable releases to get the newest features of the software they use

-KXStudio Team PPAs have been added by default, allowing users to easily install hundreds of additional multimedia applications

-The unity desktop is now default (for users whose computers support 3d compositing). We realize, however, that many users find functionality missing in this controversial desktop, and as such have added useful packages to our repository for a smooth transition, such as a weather indicator (to replace the functionality lost in the new system clock), and a workspace indicator (for users who miss one-click workspace switching)

-An all new look (screenshots)

As always, Dream Studio is based on Ubuntu, and as such is 100% compatible with ubuntu software, PPAs, and support forums and documents.

*Special Notes

-Although Dream Studio is fully compatible with virtualisation software like VirtualBox and VMWare, it is not intended to be used in this way. Due to the high availability needs of video and audio editing, hardware access is the only way to get the full Dream Studio experience. If you wish to test Dream Studio for evaluation or reviews, the recommended method is a full installation to and boot from a USB flash drive (which can be done via the aforementioned virtualisation software if you have no DVD drive - but will suffer from a loss of boot and application startup speed compared to a full Dream Studio installation), or by simply booting from the installation DVD (this method uses a compressed filesystem, however, and as such, boot and application startup times will be even slower than booting from USB)

-Users who need to continue working on Cinepaint projects should remain on Dream Studio version 10.10 or earlier, as it has been functionally replaced with the Gimp Animation Package.

New mocap tool

2011-08-16T02:15:00.001-07:00

Recently I have been working on a new mocap tool for Blender. The old one had grown to large to keep in a single file, so I had to split up the code into separate files to keep it manageable.

Perhaps the main new feature is the possibility to edit motions. The animation below was created from CMU 49/08, which consists of a single flip. Using the tools in the Mocap:Adjust panel, the motion was displaced to make feet and hands rest on the ground (more or less well, I was using FK), and then the F-curves between active markers were looped and repeated. The point is that the repeated flips fit together seamlessly, something that I was unable to do before.

The new mocap tool is the entire folder importers/mhx/mh_mocap_tool, which must be copied to Blender's addons folder (blender/2.58/scripts/addons) before start-up. Under Linux you can alternatively keep it somewhere else and put a link to it in the addons folder, but this does not work under Windows (Blender does not recognize Windows shortcuts). The mocap tool must then be enabled user preferences; it is found in the Animation category.

The main entry is the Load, retarget, simplify button in the Mocap:Old retarget panel. There is also a New retarget panel, which uses code that I have stolen from Blender's Pepper branch. However, it does not really work, or rather it works too well. In particular, the pelvis bone is rotated into the same global direction as in the bvh file. If the pelvises' rest poses differ (e.g. Accad down, Mhx up), some really ugly hip deformation result.

Preliminary documentation is available at https://sites.google.com/site/makehumandocs/blender-export-and-mhx/new-mocap-tool. Since this is work in progress, things may change without notice.

Expression Analysis for Makehuman

2011-08-14T09:54:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone! This is my first blog for Makehuman, so I'll try to give you the 'big picture' of why I began to post three years ago on the forum.

I believe--and I'm quite sure Looxis does also-- that Makehuman has the potential to be a revolutionary mobile app; for example, the first open-source mocap avatar, or free 'talking head'.

But, with any mobile app there have to be design constraints, especially in terms of CPU footprint and screen resolution. So, I've re-created my Ellie model to function as a mocap avatar. UV texture mapping, sub-surface scattering and subtle lighting had to go. Next a simple 'thumbs-only' interface would need to be designed that could lip-sync at the end of a phrase, and add facial expressions. If no one else has coined the term, I'll call them 'expressicons'.

And here, we run into a major design constraint: which emotions, and who decides which ones? I'll answer quite simply: "We used the same system that the Forture 500 companies have settled upon, namely Paul Ekman's Facial Action Coding System, or FACS." So, it seemed like an easy task to match the FACS to the Makehuman expression interface.

Unfortunately, not so.

As of nightly build 2701, there are 56 separate expressions in Blender 2.58a export, each with at least three, to a maximum of six sliders.

We will assume a binary expression value, that is, an expression is either zero or one.

If we assume that each slider has only a binary full of 0 or 1, and we conservatively estimate that only four sliders will be used (central tendency theory applied here), then a permutation value of
P(56,4) = 56! / (56 - 4)! = 8814960

That's over 800,000 possible combinations, with severe limits on the settings. Clearly, for a real-world application such as I am suggesting, there will need to be some design constraints.

The goal of this discussion is to see how to manage scenarios of Makehuman characters interacting with real people, using motion capture. And here we can apply the core of Ekman's findings: there is no single simple human emotion in any verbal exchange, it is always of sequence of combinations of expressions.

I'm going to use artistic license to decider what combinations of emotions to use; however, to keep things simple, I'll use only three at a time. The sequence will be: intial emotional expression, opposing emotional expression, resolving emotional expression.

I'll use the same sentence in different contexts to indicate the power of Makehuman. For this blog, I'll do the lip sync first, then the emotional expression sequence.

(1) You (assumed male protagonist) are at a party, do your best to impress a young female (the Makehuman reactor) that you just met. You tell an outlandish story of an adventure you've just had, and as she waits for the punch line, you finish with: "Oh, it never really happened. I was just trying to impress you."

Her response is: "But, I really wanted to believe you." The espeak parameters are --ven+f4 -k10 -s 200.
For purposes of matching the Makehuman mocap avatar to the FACS, I'll use exaggerated positive expression.
The emotional expression sequence is:
Ekamn surprise = Makehuman Surprised 1.00 + Excited .25 at frame 20;
Ekman fearful = Makehuman Scared .75 + .25 Puzzled at frame 60;
Ekman true Smile = Makehuman Smile 1.00 + .5 Laughing.

The video link is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkGD33-S1M4

(2) You (assumed male protagonist) are on a first date with the Makehuman female character, and you park at the edge of a very large lot. Out in Western Canada, the example we always use is the West Edmonton Mall. When you leave the Mall, you can't find your car, although you assured her when you went in that you had an unerring sense of navigation. Frustrated, she replies with: "But, I really wanted to believe you." The espeak parameters are --ven+f5 -k20 -s 150.
Now that we've got an Ekman-to-Makehuman baseline, let's just go with Makehuman settings.
The emotional expression sequence is:
Makehuman skeptical 1.00 at frame 20;
Makehuman upset 1.00 at frame 60;
Makehuman grumpy 1.00 at frame 80.

The video link is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysB_HUOsAwo

And finally,

(3) You (assumed male protagonist) have just been accused of cheating on your girlfriend (Makehuman reactor) by her best girlfriend. You plead innocence, but she cuts you off with: "But, I really wanted to believe you."
The espeak parameters are: --ven+f5 -k30 -s 100. Note how I'm raising pitch and slowing down the statement.
The emotional expression sequence is:
Makehumna distress 1.00 at frame 20;
Makehuman disappointment 1.00 at frame 60;
Makehuman sadness 1.00 at frame 80.

The video link is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myn_gjQSKsg&NR=1

Why did we need to call upon Paul Ekman's work? His research has demonstrated that negative emotions are more difficult to read than positive ones, and therefore more easily misunderstood. To communicate through avatars/talking heads we would need to agree on which emotional expressions mean what, and that requires a mapping of Ekman's Facial Action Coding System and the Makehuman expression interface.

Testing MH mesh with Luxrender.

2011-07-17T14:31:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Pablo, (http://www.luxrender.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=5323&start=70#p63266 ) we are testing the new skin shader of Luxrender.
A first result:

Call for Thesis Announcement

2011-07-17T14:03:00.000-07:00

This is a call for thesis announcement for university researchers and students. There are several open developing tasks that requires quite a bit of R&D and we thought it would be nice to have the R&D part to be available as open topics for thesis of interested students who want to develop with us. There is only one catch to this, the resulting work will end up as a GNU-GPL project. Even if the student just develops an algorithm and not the code, the algorithm will be read by the public masses. We in makehuman believe in open source and open access, so we hope that there will be equally minded people who want to pursue research and development with this ideology. Of course it is understood that the intellectual property of the algorithm or the code will belong to the creator of it. The following are some of the suggested topics (just to name a few) that we would be very interested in:

Test and develop different skinning algorithms for human poses and skeletal articulation
Test and develop different isometric deformation algorithms for human posing and skeletal articulation
Test and develop different hair interpolation algorithms.

We have partially developed and worked on all these topics and we have cultivated our own scientific and practical experience. But we lack the resource and time to fully develop them as much as we want. Therefore this call for thesis will be ideal for makehuman developers, makehuman community and the students who will get the full credit in developing these ideas. We will be willing to share all our experience that we have thus far gained and we hope that in this way we can create a warm and friendly collaborative work.

For more information please communicate with me:

Thank you!

The Makehuman Developer Team.

PS: For further open discussion you can also see the sticky in the forum here.

New expression system: development and testing.

2011-07-05T16:26:00.000-07:00

The full gallery (and updates): http://www.makehuman.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1801
The new expression system will be more flexible and realistic, based on universal face actions.

Rigify

2011-06-28T22:09:00.000-07:00

Update 2011.07.06:

The rigification process has now been integrated with the MHX importer. It is now down to a two-step process:
1. Export from MH as mhx with Rigify checked.
2. Import into Blender with Rigify checked.
Details can still be found here.

Deformation has been improved by adding extra deformation bones. It is definitely not perfect, but the most awkward defects are gone.

Original post:

One of the more popular Blender rigs, or rather rigging systems, is Nathan Vegdahl's Rigify. MakeHuman can now export a character with a Rigify-prepared rig.

To get a rigified MakeHuman character into Blender, follow the steps described here.

There are still a number of severe problems. Some can be improved by better weight painting, others probably require extra bones or corrective shape keys.

Update 2011.06.30: Weighting improved. I finally managed to get automatic weighting to work with the MH mesh. This was not so trivial, because auto-skinning in Blender does not find solutions for the MH mesh, even with the simplest of armatures. The problem has something to do with either the mouth, eyes, brows or diamonds. When I deleted those, the remaining mesh could be auto-skinned, and the weights could then be transferred to the full mesh.

Three problems remain: 1. Bad shoulder and hip deformation, which problably requires extra bones. 2. IK fingers bending in the wrong direction. Finger joints need to be moved slightly, to tell the IK solver which way to bend. 3. Arm and leg twisting causing a candy-wrap effect. In the MHX rig that was solved with B-bones.

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter

2011-06-27T04:57:00.000-07:00

Now you can follow us on Twitter and Facebook, where all updates will come to you with link as "tweets" and as "wall posts".
You just have to click the buttons on the right and add us to your Twitter favorites ("Follow" button) or be a fan of our Facebook page ("Like" button).

Follow @MakeHuman

Rendering test (Aqsis + new models + new texture)

2011-06-26T16:19:00.000-07:00

Testing new MakeHuman models and texture, with the default Aqsis skin shader.

Ethnic tool: afro templates.

2011-06-23T03:57:00.000-07:00

The base (caucasian, asian and afro) ethnic tool is now complete.

Hair as clothes

2011-06-22T00:25:00.000-07:00

Recently I have worked on fitting polygon hair to the character. This is done in the same way as with clothes: move each hair vertex like the closest triangle on the base mesh.

Treating hair as clothes leads to a nice side effect: hair can be included in mhx export. By default the character is exported with curly hair, but this setting can be changed in the configuration file proxy.cfg, located (at least on Windows and Linux) in the MakeHuman program folder. The right picture was rendered in Blender, with no tweaking except for a subsurf modifier on the hair.

For serious posing with a long-haired character in Blender it is probably necessary to add extra bones and reweight the hair.

Ethnic tool: the female asian head.

2011-06-06T15:02:00.000-07:00

A very accurate modelling, using multiple detailed references.

New standard male M-02

2011-06-04T07:49:00.000-07:00

A preview of new standard male model M-02 (it will be in alpha 7), in comparison with the old one M-01.

MH present, new female model F-02

2011-05-30T01:41:00.000-07:00

A preview of new standard female model F-02 (it will be in alpha 7), in comparison with the old one F-01.

Improving textures and modelling.

2011-05-24T15:52:00.000-07:00

We are working to perfect the photorealistic quality of our MH models.

We are revamping the modeling, using a composite of 3D body laser scans of several real people.

In the image on the left, we see the alpha6 version. Note the problem with the proportions, especially the strange effect around the eyes, nose, and lips. On the right, we find the new version , done using an average of real young males.

Hat tip: rendering of these images performed with Aqsis.

Hairs feature development

2011-04-04T06:04:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-02T12:46:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-01T07:09:00.000-07:00

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.

Announcement: MakeHuman nightly build for OS X will be suspended

2011-03-29T00:03:00.000-07:00

Since I need to use my private mac mini for job reason I have to suspend the Nightly Build for a not foreseeable time up from now.

In addition I announce my retirement from working for the Team in the near future. The reason for this is simply the lack of time. I cannot support the MH Team for the OS X maintenance as the Project deserves. I say this with a heavy heart.

So probably we'll find anybody else is able to take over these parts?

Is there any Mac User who is willing to take over this job?

- Peter -

Rough Makehuman Posing coming in Alpha 6

2011-03-27T13:33:00.000-07:00

Heres a preview from the latest nightly build:

More to come soon (we are trying to implement skinning).

Joint-bending reloaded

2011-03-10T23:00:00.000-08:00

Update 2011.04.24:
Joint-bending has now been disabled. In view of the previous update, it does not serve any purpose anymore, and it causes some problems. The option is still available in the mhx importer, but it does not do anything for newly exported mhx files.

Update 2011.03.19:
In case anybody has worried about the joint-bending, you can now forget about it. I fixed the problem by moving the knee joint instead.

Let me explain the problem and the solution. For most targets, the knee joint is located in front of the line between the hip and the ankle. When we turn on IK and move the foot up, the leg bends forward as is should.

However, the leg in the MakeHuman mesh is quite straight, i.e. the knee diamond is located very close to the hip-ankle line. If the knee diamond happens to be at the other side of the line, the leg will bend in the wrong direction. Note that this problem only occurs with IK; the FK leg still bends correctly.

Even if I have not encountered any character which behaves as badly as in the figure above, the diamond is translated in the X direction for some targets, which makes the knee bend inwards or outwards, like the child below. Joint-bending addressed this problem, but I think that the new solution is both simpler and better. Now the knee joint is not placed exactly in the diamond, but rather 1 cm in front of the hip-ankle line. The difference is neglible in the cases I have checked, but the IK legs now always bend in the right way.

Original post:
Some time ago I wrote about changing the rest pose for better IK. In Blender, it is best if the character is modelled with knees and elbows slightly bent, to tell the IK solver about the preferred bending axes. However, the improvement is minor for the default adult character that I'm doing most of my testing with. The bending option has therefore remained unused for quite a while, while the code deteriorated.

Recently scottfredeman pointed out a problem with toe twisting, which appears for short characters. When examining the child (default settings except for the age slider), I realized that his knees were bending around the wrong axis. Here we see the same pose (Root bone moved down) for the child, imported without and with the Bend joints option checked, respectively. Even if the pose to the right is not perfect, it is a considerable improvement compared to the left one.

To use Bend Joints, the mhx importer must be updated, due to an API change. The updated importer is in MH svn and tomorrow's nightly build. It is also in Blender svn, and will hence appear automatically in future Blender builds.

In some comments to the above-mentioned post, which I missed at the time, Illin points out that bending joints is not necessary in Maya, because the preferred bending axis can be specified anyway. That's great for the Maya folks, but I am not aware of anything similar for Blender. If there is, I would like to know.

Testing MakeHuman + Sculptris + Aqsis

2011-03-08T13:25:00.000-08:00

This will be the default rendering level of MH beta1.

Displacement maps will be realized using Sculptris, and rendered with Aqsis.
XNormal will be used to generate displacement maps.

Fig.1 - A screenshot from Sculptris, with details on MH old head model.

Fig. 2 - A quick rendering test

Mocap tool for custom armatures

2011-03-04T09:05:00.000-08:00

For some time the mocap tool has worked with the game rig and Rorkimaru's proxy, and not just with the native MHX rig. The natural next step is to create a tool which works with general, user-defined rigs.

In this example, I was using Sintel Lite. The mocap tool is the file space_view3d_mhx_mocap.py, which comes with the MakeHuman nightly builds, and can also downloaded from svn. Load the file into a text window and run it. Two new panels appear in the User Interface window (N-key): the mocap tool itself (labelled Bvh to Mhx), and the Custom Armature panel. In the latter, press the single button labelled Initialize character.

A list of bone associations appear in the panel. The figure below shows how I filled it in for Sintel Lite. Since the legs are controlled by IK by default, and the mocap tool does not yet work with IK for this rig (not quite sure why), the legs must be switched to FK. The switch controls are bone properties of foot_ik.L and foot_ik.R. Once this is done, we load an animation as usual by pressing the Load, retarget, simplify button and navigating to the relevant bvh file.

And after a while the animation is loaded. This example shows the cartwheel animation which is the first in the scene in the movie.

Update 2011.03.06. Mocap now works with IK. The problem was that the IK bone in the Sintel rig did not use local locations. There are now also slots for the elbow and knee pole targets, which need be filled in if applicable.

New manual

2011-02-26T01:23:00.000-08:00

Since there have been many complaints about the old manual being outdated, I wrote a new one to address this. It was written in roughly a day, but will be continuously updated together with the software. You can download it here for now: MakeHuman: A manual.

Catmull-Clark subdivision

2011-02-13T23:34:00.000-08:00

One of the new features this week is a new subdivision algorithm. Before we had loop subdivision because we worked with triangles internally. Since this year I moved all the code to quads because it takes less data, less processing and our model is mostly quads anyway.
In previous alphas of makehuman 1.0 the subdivision was only used when rendering, although you could see the subdivided mesh with the undocumented alt-s keystroke.
In the svn version and the next alpha, the scope of subdivision has been considerably extended. The wavefront object and stereolithography exporters have an option to export the subdivided mesh instead of the default resolution mesh. People with enough computing power can work with the new smooth view, which allows you to see the subdivision mesh during most of the workflow. Currently updating the subdivision mesh still takes too much time to use it during real-time modifications, so while moving sliders, the mesh temporarily switches to the default resolution and switches back to high resolution once the slider is released. We hope to remove this limitation in the future.
If you are a person in need of a smooth high resolution mesh for rendering and you are adventurous you can try a nightly build or build yourself from svn, but remember that these are not guaranteed to work or even launch since the trunk is under continuous development.

Nightly builds down over weekend

2011-02-11T07:18:00.000-08:00

This is just a quick announcement that nightly builds for windows and linux will be down over the weekend while I migrate the build machines to the new virtualization server. With some luck the builds will start to update properly again on monday at the latest.

EDIT: Nightlies work on my side now, but we seem to have run into the quota roof on tuxfamily. I'm not sure how to proceed with this.

Makehuman Development Calendar

2011-02-11T03:42:00.000-08:00

I just made our google calendar public. Currently I'm the only one writing my tasks there, but this is editable by our major developers:

Edit: I could not embed the calendar in the blog.. blogger has some issues with sizes. So I'll just show the link

The link to the calendar is here.

New hair grouping tutorial and a note on Blender's .obj importer

2011-02-10T19:08:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately we just found a bad behaviour in Blender's .obj importer for nurb (curves). Either that or I have not figured out Blender's .obj importer/exporter correctly. Here is the difference:

So what's going on? Well makehuman saves and loads hairs Wavefront .obj file as cubic curves. But Blender's importer adds one order to the original curve's order in the .obj file. So if I defined my .obj file as a cubic curve it loads and displays it as a quadric curve and if I have a quadratic curve it displays it as a cubic curve. And apparently the exporter saves the hair correctly (it saves a cubic curve displayed in blender as cubic). But then when you import the saved hair (from Blender) you get a curve of a higher order than the original one saved in Blender.

Ok... that was crazy. So, as a fast workaround, I had to write a script for exporting the hair as a lower degree (because I already knew how to write an exporter, but for importing I still need to learn a bit more). I also changed the makehuman .obj curve exporter to save it as quadratic curve so that contributors can still work in Blender while we find a real fix for this (I need to contact the developers of Blender's .obj exporter/importer).

The other news is ... there is a new tutorial on how hairs are grouped to have a decent render of hairs in makehuman. By the way, I want to extend my thanks to workinprogress for contributing the hair in my tutorial (I also commited it in the svn). Since a lot of people are asking me how the hair rendering and hair interpolating works, I wrote a short explanation of it in the tutorial as well. The tutorial is available here.

PS: we use Blender 2.49b to import. As far as I know Blender's 2.5x has no importer for Wavefront .obj files yet... even if they did I would guess that importing .obj curves is not yet implemented.

PPS: If I want to briefly summarize: At the moment for things to work.. in Blender we export .obj curves using our own script and import using Blender's importer.

MHX changes

2011-01-27T21:07:00.000-08:00

Version 1.1.0 of the MHX format has been released. It is in MH svn and hopefully in today's nightly build. I will defer committing it to Blender itself until the bugs have been sorted out.
You will notice several changes when a character is imported into Blender:

The character is called by his proper name, not just the generic "Human". Spaces in the name is replaced by underscores.
The rig, mesh, clothes etc. belong to a group, named after the character. This is useful for file linking.
The FK/IK and finger control switches don't work. Instead, switching is controlled by custom properties, which can be accessed in the object context when the rig is active.

The properties may be called differently in the nightly build. I changed the names to something more readable, but am unsure if the commit was made before the nightly was built.

There are quite a few problems with the current release:

Changing a property, e.g. an FK/IK switch, does not update the rig immediately. The change only takes place when we move a bone.
There are properties for reparenting the root and gaze bones. Currently they do nothing, because the child-of constraints have been replaced by proper parenting due to a bug in Blender.
It is not possible to do smooth interpolation between FK and IK, because enums are enums. Controlling the switch with a float property is probably better.
Properties do not seem to work with file linking and rig proxifying. I think this is a major misfeature in Blender, bordering on a bug.

So this is still at a very experimental stage.

Old mhx files can still be imported with the new importer, but the result is not so good. Joint diamonds are not deleted, and a big box sticks out of the characters behind. This is normally a sign that something went wrong, but here it is just the custom shapes that are visible. Hide layer 20 and everything should still work.

Problems with nightly builds

2011-01-25T02:19:00.000-08:00

At the moment, a raid card is misbehaving on my virtualization server. This causes frequent problems with hangs and disruptions, and is generally annoying.

For nightly builds this means they may be updated somewhat erratically. They should update most of the time, but there's no guarrantee.

I have ordered new hardware and hope to fix this soonish. Until then, please be aware that the nightly you download might not be the latest svn version. This is especially important to note when/if you report bugs.

I'll post an update once I have the new server up.

MakeHuman and Povray's Subsurface Scattering

2011-01-20T18:15:00.000-08:00

Greetings! Manuel asked me to find some imaging conditions that work well with the new SubSurface Scattering (SSS) effects possible with version 3.7 of the Persistence of Vision Raytracer. MakeHuman will contain a povray exporter. The purposes of these posts-- works in progress-- will be to demonstrate development on MakeHuman and to make a call for the best povray materials for realistic human skin. It has been noted that the subsurface scattering implementation in povray 3.7 is experimental and may change, but I decided to give it a whirl.

First, I imported the SSS parameters for conditions for "Skin1", "Skin2", and "Chicken" from Jensen, et al's paper, A Practical Model for Subsurface Light Transport. These are compared against my accidental choice of parameters and a simple view without SSS. First of all, I was surprised that the "Chicken1" parameters led to such dark meat! Secondly, I note that under these set of conditions, there were both an unseemly highlighting of mesh edges and "blue fingers". This merited further experimentation with the mm_per_unit parameter in the povray code.

In this set, I tried a range of values for mm_per_unit. As one can clearly see, there is no happy medium between highlighting of vertices (prominent in the center of pectoral muscle) and a lack of color in the fingers. There were only values of this parameter where both occurred. Some users may recognize the tile pattern from Christoph Lipka's subsurface.pov file, which comes with povray 3.7.

Here are the latest results. After further experimentation with the mm_per_unit value, I have settled on a value of around 8 and my version of diffuse + SSS. The image below unfortunately took 100 minutes to render. At this time I suppose it could be due to the fact that three models have SSS. I will continue experimentation to search for quality similar to this one with faster render time.

This is my code so far:
material {
texture {
pigment { color rgb 3*< 200/256,134/256,116/256 >}
finish {ambient 0 diffuse 0 specular 0.7882353/2
roughness 0.00286312
subsurface { 3* < 200/256,134/256,116/256>, < 0.013,>}
}
}
interior { ior 1.3 }
}

If you'd like to contribute your own material for fast, realistic skin, please chime in!

Expressions test

2011-01-11T03:27:00.000-08:00

Just to show you how expression plugin works.
We are testing it in svn.

Documentation

2011-01-04T22:37:00.000-08:00

I have been writing some documentation:
https://sites.google.com/site/makehumandocs/blender-export-and-mhx

Most of the text was copied from my tutorial and only slightly edited, but some parts are new.

Export from MakeHuman
Describes how to design a character in MakeHuman and how to export her as an OBJ, MHX or DAE file. https://sites.google.com/site/makehumandocs/blender-export-and-mhx/export-from-makehuman

Configuration of clothes and proxy export
Apart from the high-poly mesh itself, MakeHuman can export several other things: low-poly versions of the character, clothes, or a cage intended for the meshdeform modifier. This page describes how to configure your export to include only the objects you want.
https://sites.google.com/site/makehumandocs/blender-export-and-mhx/proxy-configu

MHX import into Blender 2.49
The Blender 2.4 series is becoming obsolete and development has stopped. This page describes how to import the mhx file into Blender 2.49 and earlier.
http://sites.google.com/site/makehumandocs/blender-export-and-mhx/blender-export-and-mhx-249.

MHX import into Blender 2.5x
Describes how to import an MHX file into Blender 2.5x. https://sites.google.com/site/makehumandocs/blender-export-and-mhx/mhx-import-in-blender-2-5

Posing with the MHX rig
Describes the rig in the MHX files and how to use it. https://sites.google.com/site/makehumandocs/blender-export-and-mhx/the-mhx-rig

Collada export and import
Describes the rigged characters exported in the DAE format, and how to import them into Blender
https://sites.google.com/site/makehumandocs/blender-export-and-mhx/collada-import

Hair (particles)
Describes how to import particle hair into Blender. https://sites.google.com/site/makehumandocs/blender-export-and-mhx/hair

Mocap tool
Describes how to use the mocap tool to load BVH animations onto the MHX or DAE rigs. https://sites.google.com/site/makehumandocs/blender-export-and-mhx/mocap-tool

Lipsync tool
Describes how to use the lipsync tool to make an MHX character speak. https://sites.google.com/site/makehumandocs/blender-export-and-mhx/lipsync-tool

Making clothes
If you are bored with the clothes that come with MakeHuman and want to design your own, this is the page for you. https://sites.google.com/site/makehumandocs/blender-export-and-mhx/making-clothes

Collada export with low-poly meshes and clothes

2010-12-25T02:58:00.000-08:00

Collada export was always very rudimentary, so I spent some time bringing in some things available for mhx: low-poly proxy meshes and clothes. Apart from the default high-poly mesh, you can now choose between the three low-poly versions, ordered from left to right in poly-count order. You can also dress the character with some basic clothes.

The choice of mesh and clothes is made in the file proxy.cfg, located in the same directory as the MH program. The instructions in the file are hopefully sufficient.

I have tested to import the dae files into Blender 2.55 without problems. It does not work with Blend 2.49b due to some encoding problem, but this should not be a big deal since you can save a blend file in 2.55 and open it in 2.49b. The dae files have not been tested with other software, and I would like to know if there are any problems. In particular, there is an extra, small bone at the end of each chain. This was necessary to make things look good in Blender, but may cause problems elsewhere.

MakeHuman 1.0 alpha 5.1a: bugfix for non ASCII folders on Windows system.

2010-12-21T08:06:00.000-08:00

Since there were several problems reported when using non ascii folders on windows systems, we have created a new build and a new installer for windows, 5.1a. As far as we know there are no problems on linux and Mac-OSX systems, so there won't be a package for these operating systems. We hope this build will fix most of the issues people had with the windows version.

Download: makehuman1-0-0_alpha5.1a for Windows

Youtube channels

2010-12-20T08:45:00.001-08:00

Curious about what happens in Make Human but too lazy to read the forums? On youtube there are a few channels where you sometimes can see new animations demoing MH features. Examples include MHMaker, where the official alpha video was published, ThomasL58 where Thomas for example put up his "Babe" video, and joepal1976 where I put up my own feeble bug test videos.

There are of course many more MH-related videos on youtube too. Search there and you shall find. :)

EDIT: Adding ZincChameleon to the above list. Anyone else got interesting channels?

MakeHuman 1.0 alpha 5.1

2010-11-30T08:19:00.000-08:00

Today we announce the release of MakeHuman 1.0 alpha 5.1. This is an intermediate release which fixes many of the bugs which are still present in the 5.0 release but which have been fixed for a long time in the Nightly. This release is identical to a recent nightly build, and is primaraly done in order to reduce the amount of time spent on giving support for already fixed bugs. Some elements will therefore have rough edges and some will be under construction, but it is a big improvement compared to alpha 5

Download: http://sites.google.com/site/makehumandocs/download
ChangeLog: http://sites.google.com/site/makehumandocs/changelog

Literature section on tuxfamily

2010-11-26T01:22:00.000-08:00

I've made a directory for hosting books and articles about makehuman on tuxfamily. The first book hosted there is Thomas's book on how to make a video in two weeks.

Making a short movie with MakeHuman and Blender 2.5 in two weeks.

2010-11-23T22:13:00.000-08:00

It might not be entirely obvious what the book is about. Just about everything that I have been doing in MakeHuman,

MHX export from MakeHuman
MHX import into Blender
Mocap tool
Lipsync tool

are tools for facilitating the use of MakeHuman characters in film-making with Blender. Some documentation is available in the Documents section, but it is not entirely up-to-date, and the mocap tool is not documented at all. The present text describes the tools above in the context of making a short movie. It does not just describe what each button does, but why it is there and how it is intended to be used. To make the text self-contained, there is also a discussion of some parts of Blender, like file linking and video sequencing, that are not so well known but absolutely essential for film-making.

Hence this text contains the most up-to-date documentation of the features listed above.

I also wanted to show that it is possible to use MHX export and the mocap tool to make an animated short very quickly. Despite the flaws in the animation and the shadows, I think that this point has been proved.

The book:
Download from RapidShare
Download from Hotfile
Download from MakeHuman

The movie:

The slithering python

2010-11-22T08:23:00.001-08:00

Today we've done some structured work in trying to stomp out the "bag magic number" issue people have been running into when using windows. More in detail we have tried to replace all existing pre-compiled python modules with versions compiled with exactly 2.6.4, which is also the python version used to compile the windows nightly build.

I have now manually uploaded an extra "nightly" build, so these changes are online now.

If you have had problems with "bad magic number", please do the following:

Remove all traces of prior versions of makehuman on your system
For testing reasons, please uninstall all existing python versions (you can reinstall them later)
Make really super mega sure you don't have a file called "python26.dll" or "python25.dll" anywhere on your system, including the windows folder
Download and unzip the latest nightly build

As this is the version most up to date don't click the "update.bat" or download the .7z archive yet. You can follow the "smart update procedure" later on if the nightly build works for you now.

Working MHX importer in Blender 2.55 beta

2010-10-27T10:19:00.000-07:00

Version 1.0 of the MHX importer is included in the upcoming beta release of Blender (2.55). Hopefully the days of copying the mhx import script to Blender's add-ons folder are gone now. To import mhx files, do the following:
1. File > User preferences
2. On the Add-Ons tab, Import/Export section, enable Import MakeHuman (.mhx).
3. File > Import > MakeHuman (.mhx)

Will this continue to work? Actually, when I tested today there was an error due to another api change. It could be easily fixed on the export side, so it will work with tomorrow's nightly build. Hopefully the days of api changes are over soon.

Corrective shape keys

2010-09-27T06:06:00.001-07:00

A common problem in rigging is that mesh deformation is ugly close to joints, especially in the shoulder, groin, elbow and knee areas. A popular solution is to use shape keys to correct the deformation. This idea was implemented in the MHX rig a long time ago, cf. http://sites.google.com/site/makehumandocs/blender-export-and-mhx/blender-export-and-mhx-249/body-shape-keys. However, I have been quite unhappy about the corrective shape keys for a long time, and recently came around to give them a complete overhaul.

To get good deformation is extra tricky for the MHX rig, because it needs to work not only for a single character, but for all characters that can be generated by MakeHuman. Eventually it should be possible to "bake" corrective shapes from pose engine data, but for the time being there is just one set of shapes, defined for the default character. To adapt the shapes to other characters, I now simply scale them with the size of the relevant limb. Here are some examples of bone deformation for different characters, without (red) and with (blue) corrective shape keys. We see that there are still some artefacts, especially for the toddler, but in my opinion deformation is better with than without the correction.

Blender has other means the deform a mesh. J P Bouza, of Blenrig fame, recommends using mesh deform rather than pure bone deformation. It does not seem practical to implement this for the MHX rig, since it requires a custom cage for each character. But if you are doing your own rigging, mesh deform is definitely something to look into.

Presently the corrective shape keys only work for the FK rig, due to a bug, or misfeature, in Blender 2.5. Namely, the rotational value of a bone is not updated when the bone moves due to constraints, so it can not drive the shape key. Thus, if we move an IK hand, the upper and lower arms move in the viewport, but their rotations are not updated and the corrective shape keys never kick in.

Anaglyph 3D mode in makeHuman.

2010-09-22T03:04:00.000-07:00

MH modelling now can be even more cool, using the new 3D Anaglyph Mode.
To activate it (using latest svn). Just press the "3d glasses" icon showed in the image below.

The first click will activate the "Toe-in" mode, the second mode the "Off Axis" mode. These are tho common projections used in 3d view. The second should be more comfortable, but you have just try them to see which one is better for you. A third click will deactivate the 3D Anaglyph Mode.

Well, have fun!

MakeHuman, Blender and the Mocap tool

2010-09-19T04:30:00.000-07:00

My first video tutorial.

Poll: Where to save files

2010-09-08T23:44:00.000-07:00

Something about Hairs

2010-09-08T12:20:00.001-07:00

Here are some announcements regarding hairs (only for nightly build users):

We did a little improvement with hair interpolation algorithm (mostly improvements you can see with the aqsis renderer within makehuman).

I created two new hairstyles (afro and peaky hair). Both amateurish but acceptable. So they are now in the library. Afro shows a thumbnail and is much improved than before. Long hair aqsis renders has been fine-tuned. I will then fine-tune the other hairs (peaky, curly and short) for a better aqsis render.

Another great announcements is regarding donations of new hairstyles by other users (see my tutorial in a previous post). We have several amazing new hairs (all male hairs) and after I have fine-tuned them for adapting in makehuman you will be seeing them in the Libraries. So stay tuned for that. To the users (among them some really professional artists) who donated these new hairs, thank you very very much and keep it coming. And for those who haven't donated and who plan to create some new hairstyle, maybe you could consider donating us some of your hairstyles :)

If I get a little time I will then post a tutorial on two things:

How to fine-tune blender-created hair for makehuman (esp. for the aqsis renderer)
How to make better curly hair strands with blender particles (e.g. the one similar with afro but maybe a bit better).

The year is not yet over, so to our users, fans and testers: Please stay tuned!

First test of mocap tool

2010-09-07T08:00:00.000-07:00

The last few weeks I have been working on a tool to transfer mocap data to the mhx rig. Here is the first test.

This is obviously far from perfect. The back bends back and the feet skid when she is turning, because the bone angles in the loaded bvh rig are not quite the same as in the mhx rig. Even more seriously, the character does not move on the floor, which was compensated by tilting the camera. Motion retargeting is still very primitive, and will be improved in the future. Doing motion retargeting is in general a very difficult problem, but less so between similar characters. Therefore the mhx rig has been redesigned to look similar to the mocap files from www.accad.osu.edu/research/mocap/mocap_data.htm. It is probably not possible to use the tool with bvh files from elsewhere.

The mocap tool can be found in svn in the same directory as the mhx importer (importers/mhx/blender25x), and works with some recent Blenders. But Blender's API is still changing rapidly, so it might soon be broken again.

Retiring mh.jwp.se

2010-08-28T05:59:00.001-07:00

After having moved the last of the automated stuff (the APIs) to tuxfamily, I have decided to retire the http://mh.jwp.se site, since it serves no real function anymore. The last few documentation items remaining on the site will be migrated to the main wiki in the nearest future.

Problems with the MHX importer.

2010-08-22T23:42:00.000-07:00

The names of python calls in Blender 2.5x are currently changing rapidly. This is fundamentally a good thing, because the idea is to make all changes now, so the API can become stable after the 2.54 beta release. However, it also means that existing scripts, including the MHX importer, break on a daily basis. The situation for MHX is especially tricky, because not only does the import script itself depend on the API, but so do the exported MHX files. The current version works with Blender rev 31508, which I compiled from svn on Sunday morning, August 22, but not with revisions that differ significantly from that. The importer will not work with MHX files that have been exported from older versions of MakeHuman.

Another problem has to do with registration of the MHX importer. An old version (0.9) ships as an add-on with Blender, and its existence somehow makes it impossible to reregister a new one. I have partially resolved this problem by including code which attempts to unregister the importer prior to registering the new version (0.15). This works under Linux (more precisely, on my Ubuntu box at home where Blender is compiled from svn), but under Windows the MHX alternative does not show up in the import menu (at least not on my Windows box at work with a recent graphicall build by Cog). It seems like there are a few glitches in the registration process in Blender.

Hence it unfortunately seems like MHX import will remain broken for some time.

Update 2010.08.25

Now I think that MHX is working under Windows, too. It is still impossible to load the import script into Blender's text editor and execute it from there, because Blender complains that some subclass is already registered. But I found a workaround that works, at least for me. Tested with Blender 2.53.1 rev 31550.

1. Copy the file Makehuman/importers/mhx/blender25x/import_scene_mhx.py to Blender/2.53/scripts/addons.
2. Delete or rename the file io_import_scene_mhx.py which is already there. It must not be a Python file.
3. If there is a .pyc file, delete that too.
4. Start Blender.
5. It should now be possible to enable the new MHX import from File > User preferences > Addon. Make sure that you have version 0.15 or later. The version that shipped with Blender is version 0.9
6. Import the mhx file from the File > Import menu.

These steps should work on Linux as well, but it might also be possible to execute from the editor.

Update your nightly build the smart way

2010-08-14T03:01:00.000-07:00

I will first show how to update your nightly builds in a different way. Then I will write a small analysis on why I think this way is better than updating manually by downloading the nightly build everytime.

These are the steps to get this version of makehuman and use the update script for the first time:

Install a command-line SVN client :

For windows users: SlikSVN

For linux users, use your package manager to install:
1. subversion
2. libglew1.5
3. p7zip (this is just for the compression format I use)
Unfortunately this is not supported for Mac users!

Copy this compressed makehuman version and extract in a desired location
Click on the update script:
- For windows users: click on update.bat
- For linux users with 64bit system: click on update-linux64.sh
- For linux users with 32bit system: click on update-linux32.sh

Now, anytime you believe there is a change in the development, just click on the respective update script again and you will have the latest nightly build (makehuman should not be running when you do this)! This updating method will take you at most 5seconds!

Now I will list the pros and cons of this sort of updating makehuman

Pros:

If there was a new feature developed in makehuman at this very moment, you will see this feature tomorrow if you use the usual nightly build downloads. But with this method you can update anytime to the current build!
You will need minimal bandwidth, most update need in average 200-1000kb of data exchange. Thus, if you live or work in a place with slow bandwidth you will have the latest makehuman without downloading a full 50Mb of zipped nightly build everytime you want the latest makehuman build.
You will also need less time to have your updates (a second?). And you dont need a new install.
You will do us and tuxfamily (our server that provides the makehuman download) a favor, by reducing the traffic there.
You will have a portable updatable version of makehuman (bring it in a usb stick .. wherever you are, its an updated version!.. if you want a new update just stick your usb stick in a pc where subversion is installed and click on the update script).

Cons:

There will be an extra hidden folder called .svn sitting in every subfolder and root directory of makehuman (this was not the case if you used a nightly build download). But this is not really a big deal, is it?
You needed an extra installation (SVN command client), whereas in the nightly build download you didnt need that.
You will have an unstable build (unless the build was done during a makehuman stable release date). But this is also the case if you used a nightly build. In exchange, you do have the most recent features and bugfixes.

Code snippets. Introduction to Python scripting for Blender 2.5x

2010-08-09T23:48:00.000-07:00

Update: The examples in the original document from August do not work anymore, due to changes in Blender's python API. A second edition, updated for Blender 2.54 and with many new examples, can be downloaded from

http://rapidshare.com/files/425538067/Code_snippets_updated_for_Blender_254_2010_10_17.zip

Major changes:
* The scripts work with Blender 2.54. More precisely, they have been tested with Blender 2.54.0 rev 32510, compiled from svn, on Ubuntu 10.04 64 bit.
* User interfaces (panels, buttons, properties, menus, polling).
* Simulations (cloth, softbodies, particle fire, smoke, rigid bodies, fluids).
Since the API is now supposed to have stabilized, there is a fair chance that most scripts will continue to work for the foreseeable future.

Original post: Time for some shameless self-promotion with only a slight connection to MakeHuman.

I have written a little cookbook on Python scripting in Blender 2.5x. The connection with MH is that I picked up some knowledge about the new Python API when I ported the MHX importer to Blender 2.5. After a while I realized that I had learnt something that was of interest to many people, but no coherent information about it was readily available. With 2,500 downloads in less than a week, I suppose that the cookbook turned out to be useful.

Announcement
Blenderartists thread
Pdf download

Notice to Developers/Commiters

2010-08-09T03:37:00.000-07:00

Please update your makehuman copies before commiting anything. mh_core and mh_plugins directory has been renamed accordingly and if you first commit before updating you might commit the mh_* directories to the repository again. In usual cases the repository should be able to determine renames and disregard the mh_* commits, but recently I made some mistake with my commits and commiting before updating may cause some problems.

In general, it is a good practice to follow this guideline.

1. Work with your code
2. Check if it compiles (if you changed anything in the core folder)
3. Check if the application runs
4. Update makehuman
5. Check if it still compiles/run
6. Commit your codes

Edit: I added the option of recursively including all subdirectories (except those coming from .svn) in python system path. This means that you can now try to organize your code in separate folder. For instance, I took the freedom of moving all the gui* codes into a gui folder. I will try not to touch the other codes and allow the responsible coder to categorize it within its new folder (either in app or in core).

APIs moving

2010-08-06T09:19:00.001-07:00

After Manuel notified me that there will be some minor changes regarding API documentation, I've decided to move it to to tuxfamily too. As it stands now, it is the only part still remaining on my private server.

Until I have finished this move and updated the build scripts, the old API docs may or may not be accessible in the old place depending on what I happen to mess with.

MHX version confusion

2010-07-19T00:48:00.000-07:00

Several bug reports have recently been concerned with strange errors when importing MHX files into Blender: missing bones, etc. The reason is that the exported file uses a version of MHX which is incompatible with the importer. MHX does not change as rapidly as it used to, but it is still not quite stable; new features may require new language constructs. One of the main advantages with a custom import language is that both the export and import side can be modified when the need arises. The price for this is that such modifications lead to inconsistencies unless the export and import sides use the same version.

Several versions of the MHX importer are currently available: in the nightly builds, in alpha 5, and in Blender distributions from www.graphicall.org. To make things worse, Blender 2.5x is still in alpha stage and the python API is changing, although less rapidly than during the spring. This causes a lot of confusion, and it is difficult for me to fix if the versions I use work flawlessly.

In order to synch the exported MHX files with the importer, version checking is now strictly enforced. Starting with MHX version 0.13, there is an error if the MHX file and the importer do not have the same version number. You can override this behavior by deselecting the Enforce version option during import, but you do so at your own risk.

Updates 2010.07.25:

MHX updated for Blender 2.5.3 beta.

The first official Blender 2.5 beta was released a few days ago, and can be fetched from www.blender.org. There were quite a few last minute name-changes that broke the MHX importer. These have now been fixed, but compatibility with earlier builds from graphicall.org is lost. On the other hand, I expect that this beta can be a stable platform for the MHX importer until the next beta is released.

Problems with hair import

The particle hair import also stopped working on the Blender beta. After a bugfix hair curves can now be imported, but the resulting hair is nonsense. The problem is in Blender. Hair strands in Blender used to be described in global coordinates, but not any more, and the flag which controls the coordinate system (ParticleSystem.global_hair) is read-only. If anyone knows how to specify global hair coordinates, I would like to know.

Blender Particles to Makehuman Hair

2010-07-10T22:51:00.000-07:00

I made the tutorial in my own blog:
See here

The advantage of having a hair produced for makehuman is great. Because once you produce the hair, you can adjust your figures age, height, etc. and the hair that you just produced will be modified according to the new body you composed. So if you want to do hair modelling in blender and keep it that way, you will be forced to always modify it whenever your base figure has a different age, height, etc. Take this into consideration, you may also want to contribute some hairs to the makehuman community (we lack sufficient hair models to distribute freely).

Henceforth (especially for serious blogs) I am going to publish my post in my wordpress blog. I will post a link here everytime there is a new entry regarding makehuman. My blog site is : http://jcapco.wordpress.com/

Windows nightly build up again

2010-06-04T07:22:00.000-07:00

Using arcane conjurations and summoning the ancient gods "Mingw" and "Msys" (I also sacrificed a salami sandwich to the dark powers), I have managed to make the windows build compile again with the glew dependency. It even runs, at least on my build machine.

As I've got reports of other strangenesses, I would appreciate testing of this and detailed bug reports on the forums. If nothing happens at all when you try to run the thing, please copy the contents of of "python_err.txt", "python_out.txt" and "stdout.txt" (all found in the makehuman directory) and include them with the bug report.

If you get a blue screen of death, please write down the error code and post it together with info on what version of windows you use, as well as what graphics card model and driver version you use.

Windows build still broken

2010-05-30T15:04:00.000-07:00

Seems I was a bit quick in declaring that the nightly builds are back online. It seems that while the linux builds work, there is still some problem with the windows build. At the moment it pukes on the new GLEW dependency, and I'm not altogether clear on what to do about it. If you feel like helping out, check the relevant post in the forums (bugs section).

Nightly builds temporarily failing

2010-05-28T01:33:00.000-07:00

Due to a new library dependency, the nightly builds are failing to compile. This means that currently, non-functional files are distributed to the tuxfamily host.

I will take a look at this issue during the weekend and update the build scripts, hopefully resolving the issue.

Proxy configuration and administration

2010-05-25T06:56:00.000-07:00

ascottk has contributed yet another proxy mesh. It is a nice quad mesh with the same uv layout as the original mesh. Hence you can use the same textures for both the high- and low-poly meshes.

With three low-poly meshes around, it becomes necessary to introduce some way to administrate them. Including all of them in every export both takes time and disk space, to no avail; I doubt that anybody wants more than one low-poly version of each character.

Which proxy meshes that will be included in the mhx file / exported as obj files is defined in the file proxy.cfg at the makehuman top level. The file simply lists the file paths to the proxy definitions to be included. Lines that start with a # are comments which are ignored. This is in svn now and hence in tomorrow's nightly build.

MakeHuman will also look for proxy.cfg in your home folder. Unlike what I thought, the home folder on Windows is not My Documents, but rather one level above it. As a second choice, MakeHuman also looks for this file at your computer's top level, i.e. C: on Windows.

I have started to write a description on how to create your own proxy definition file. So far the page differs little from the addendum to my previous blog post, but updated information will go there. Once the low-poly mesh is available, creating the proxy file is largely done by a script, but some manual tweaking is necessary for good results.

With so many low-poly meshes available, and others perhaps in the making, it is not clear to me whether all should be included by default in the MH distribution, or if we should set up some site where artists can share proxy files. Such a site could be used to share other resources as well.

Two new low-poly meshes

2010-05-18T21:31:00.000-07:00

One unexpected benefit of my poor proxy mesh was that it triggered contributions from others. Two talented artists have made low-poly meshes, far better than mine. They have now been brought into MH, and are exported, both in the mhx file and as separate obj files. For the moment, only one of the meshes can be imported into Blender 2.49.

The meshes have been named after the contributors' user names in the forum. The proxy meshes are quite different, and I imagine that both can be useful. My own low-poly mesh has also been removed, missed by nobody. Some characteristics of the two meshes:

Rorkimaru:
* Very low poly
* Quads
* Two fingers and a mit
* Disconnected body parts, originally, but I seem to have changed that when I brought the mesh in MH.
* UV coordinates

forsaken:
* Medium poly count
* Triangles
* Five fingers
* Follows high-poly mesh closely, including inside mouth.
* No UV coordinates, at least not yet.

Adding your own proxy mesh
Black Moderate asks how make a proxy mesh of your own. I will describe how to make it, but currently the only way make MakeHuman recognize it is to overwrite one of the existing proxy definitions. If you do that, make sure to back up your own file before you download MH again, because it will be overwritten.

The definition of the two current proxies are located in the files forsaken.proxy and Rorkimaru.proxy in the data/templates/ folder. The files consist of several sections:

Mesh without UVs:
1. Association of proxy verts with original verts.
2. Proxy faces, as in an obj file without UVs.

Mesh with UVs:
1. Association of proxy verts with original verts.
2. Proxy UV coordinates.
3. Proxy faces, as in an obj file with UVs.

A vertex in the proxy mesh simply inherits everything from its parent vert in the original mesh: morph targets, vertex weights, shapekeys, etc.

How to make a new proxy mesh:

1. Import the default mesh into Blender (a recent build of 2.5!) and rename it "Human"
2. Import your proxy mesh, or make one with the retopo tools. It must be called "Proxy".
3. Run the script utils/mhx/defineProxy.py. I just committed it to svn, so it will be there in tomorrow's nightly build. The variable path at the end of the script is your output file.
4. The script creates a proxy file without UVs.

To add UVs:

1. Export your proxy mesh as obj.
2. Delete the Faces section of the proxy file.
3. Copy the tex verts (lines that start with vt) and faces (lines that start with f) from the obj file into you proxy file.
4. Insert the line "TexVerts" before the first vt and "Faces" before the first f.
5. Delete all vt's and f's.
6. Compare with Rorkimuru's file to see how it should look.

How to improve vertex association

The algorithm works by associating a proxy vertex to its closest neighbor in the original mesh. Unfortunately, it becomes confused in areas where the original mesh has overlapping parts. The mouth area is especially nasty, but also the eyes and lips can cause problems. To assist the algorithm, you can assign vertex groups to both the proxy and the original mesh, e.g. to the upper/lower teeth, upper/lower gum, tounge and body. The program will then assign the closest vertex in the correct vertex group.

New hair shader for Aqsis

2010-05-14T16:06:00.000-07:00

WIP. I've to add shadow and eyes shaders. This will be the standard rendering in alpha6.

Bending elbows and knees for better IK

2010-05-09T21:45:00.001-07:00

In Blender (and I think also in Maya), inverse kinematics works best if the character is modelled with slightly bent elbows and knees. This tells the IK solver the preferred direction to bend the joints. However, the MH mesh was not modelled in this way. Since I don't think that Manuel is interested in modifying the mesh, the import script was modified instead. Now the character comes in with bent joints, and my tests indicate that it is indeed easier to make the arms and legs to bend the way they should.

New skin shader test (with a lot of oil)

2010-05-09T16:24:00.000-07:00

A work in progress...

New Subsurface scattering method for Aqsis & C

2010-05-08T09:27:00.000-07:00

Well, alpha5 was out 2 days ago, but we are already working hard on alpha6.
There is a new sss method to improve the skin shader. It work fine with Aqsis (and with all engines renderman compliant).

The image below show a light test. Note the sss rendering was done in 5.54 sec!
Stay tuned for further updates.

Changes to nightly builds, linux alpha

2010-05-08T02:41:00.000-07:00

Since some time back I have been dissatisfied with how the build environment is looking for the nightly builds and have planned to rebuild it. The way it currently looks is based on ad-hoc solutions where I have set up build scripts on various machines on the university, wherever there was some space left.

Since we both have a new alpha release now, and Ubuntu 10.04 seem to completely have dropped support for python 2.5, I've decided it's time to do something about it.

Thus, as a head's up: The nightly builds might be a bit erratic and/or not update for the next days while I migrate and rewrite the build scripts. Once the build environments have stabilized I will also make and post linux versions of the latest alpha.

MakeHuman 1.0 alpha 5 ready!!!

2010-05-06T14:28:00.000-07:00

Changelog

GUI

New GUI, with theme support, and even more intuitive tabs.
Better sliders, text fields.Realtime preview for many changes.
Hair preview in 3d.
Global cam button: automatic zoom out to the body
Face cam button: automatic zoom in to the head
Background button: to enable/disable the background.

Export

Export hairs as a wavefront obj polygons (experimental)
Export hairs as a wavefront obj curves (experimental)
Export a full character from makehuman to Blender, using the mhx format, with armature and expression support.
Export a full character in obj format, with or without face groups and skeleton
Export a full character in collada dae format (experimental)
Export a full character as proxy lowpoly wavefront obj

Save

Files are saved in home folders now.

Modelling

Hair details: color and ribbons width.
Nose shape tool: to navigate the most commonly perceived noses.
Ears shape tool: to navigate the most commonly perceived ears.
Jaw shape tool: to navigate the most commonly perceived jaws.
Mouth shape tool: to navigate the most commonly perceived mouths.
Breast size tool: to set the female breast size.
Breast firmness size: to set the female breast firmness.
Head shape tool: to navigate the most important head types.
Head age tool: to change the age of the face.
Face angle tool: to change the side facial angle.
Pelvis tone tool: to increase or decrease the pelvis tone.
Stomach tool: to increase of decrease stomach volume.
Buttocks tool: To increase or decrease the buttocks volume.

Download
makehuman 1.0 alpha 5

The face is back

2010-04-21T21:26:00.000-07:00

Two missing pieces of rig functionality have been brought back into the MHX importer for Blender 2.5: dynamic FK/IK switching and driven shape keys.

The options for choosing between FK and IK during import are gone. Instead, the amount of IK blending is controlled by the four sliders on top of the face panel; they control arm/leg IK on the left/right side, as in the left picture.

The facial shapekeys are driven by the remaining control bones in the face panel. You may notice that the bones at the center of the mouth are gone. This is becaues pydrivers, aka scripted drivers, are not yet implemented in Blender 2.5, so it is not possible to use several bones to control a single shape. But that was probably not a good idea anyway.

With this functionality restored, there is little reason to import mhx files into Blender 2.49 anymore.

MHX import as a Blender 2.5 add-on

2010-04-19T01:23:00.000-07:00

Blender 2.5 has a new plugin system, which I believe has been developed by Brendon Murphy (Meta-Androcto). The MHX scripts have been modified to work with this system, and will hopefully and eventually be automatically included in future Blender releases.

1. Copy import_scene_mhx.py and import_hair_obj.py from Makehuman/importers/mhx/blender25x to Blender25/.blender/scripts/add-ons, where Makehuman and Blender25 are the directories where the corresponding programs are located. This step will hopefully be unnecessary in the future.

2. In Blender 2.5, open the File > User Preferences window and navigate to the Add-Ons tab.

3. Enable Import MakeHuman (.mhx). If you want to import hair, enable also Import MakeHuman hair (.obj).

4. MHX files can now be imported from the File > Import menu.

There is a third file in the Makehuman/importers/mhx/blender25x folder, which exports a Blender file to MHX. This has also been made into a plugin, but it is not really intended for public use.

Update: Meta-Androcto told me that the mhx importer should be automatically copied to the Blender distribution, but it does not seem to have happened. Until it does, you need to copy import_scene_mhx.py and import_hair_obj.py from Makehuman/importers/mhx/blender25x/ manually. There are three ways to do this.

1. Copy the files to Blender/.blender/scripts/addons/ (before starting Blender). Once there the add-ons can be enabled as described in the post.

2. Copy the files to Blender/.blender/scripts/io/. The import options are automatically enabled on startup.

3. Load the files into Blender's text editor and run the scripts from there. Once they have run once, the import alternatives are there.

Modular rigging

2010-04-18T01:15:00.000-07:00

After learning more about how the Gobo rig was implemented, I started to add some improvements to the classic rig. Eventually the two rigs started to share a sizable part of their codebase. Since I religiously dislike keeping redundant code, I decided to merge the two rigs, and change the import script so that one can choose between them during load-time instead.

One immediate benefit of this is file size. Keeping information about both rigs in the same file adds to the size of the mhx file, but only slightly. But we now only need to export a single mhx file, so the total file size and export time is almost halved (for Blender 2.5, there is still a separate 2.49 file). More significantly, it is now possible to pick rigs for different body parts independently.

The import interface now looks as in the picture, and as you see we can choose between the classic and Gobo rigs. Alternatively, we can choose between different rigs for separate body parts below, provided that the box "Use rig preset" is unchecked. You can build your own custom rig by combining different selections. The remaining checkboxes allow you to include various parts of the character.

The IK rig for fingers is a disaster. However, this is not really the rig's fault - Mancandy uses essentially the same rig, I think. The problem is that Blender's IK solvers work best if the mesh is modeled with knees, elbows and finger joints slightly bent. Remodeling MH's base mesh is of course not an option, but it is possible to bend the joints during import. The code is in the import script, but disabled due to a bug.

A long-standing problem has been that the display objects have been hanging around on layer 1, instead of being hidden on the invisible layer 20. This has now been fixed.

Developing in makehuman - 6 - The camera

2010-04-13T17:33:00.000-07:00

When your plugin allows editing a certain part of the model, it's often good to focus the camera on that region. There are two camera's used in makehuman, accessible from the application class as modelCamera and guiCamera. The camera which we are interested in is the modelCamera. The application class itself is accessible in every GUI control as app.
A camera has the following properties:

fovAngle: The field of view angle.
nearPlane: The near clipping plane.
farPlane: The far clipping plane.
projection: The projection type, 0 for orthogonal, 1 for perspective.
stereoMode: The stereo mode, 0 for no stereo, 1 for toe-in, 2 for off-axis.
eyeSeparation: The eye separation.
eyeX, eyeY, eyeZ: The position of the eye.
focusX, focusY, focusZ: The position of the focus.
upX, upY, upZ: The up vector.

The properties you'll use to position the camera are the eye and focus position. The Application class has a few methods for camera presets, like setFaceCamera to focus on the face. We'll look at what this method does to better understand how to position the camera.

First we get the currently selected human (yes, we do anticipate having more than one human in the scene).


human = self.scene3d.selectedHuman

Next we get the vertices which belong to the head by facegroup names.


headNames = [group.name for group in human.meshData.facesGroups if ("head" in group.name or "jaw" in group.name)]
self.headVertices, self.headFaces = human.meshData.getVerticesAndFacesForGroups(headNames)

We calculate the center of these vertices as this will become our focus point at which we will look at.


center = centroid([v.co for v in self.headVertices])

Now we are ready to set the eye and focus positions. We set the focus to the center position, and the eye a bit to the back.


self.modelCamera.eyeX = center[0]
self.modelCamera.eyeY = center[1]
self.modelCamera.eyeZ = 10
self.modelCamera.focusX = center[0]
self.modelCamera.focusY = center[1]
self.modelCamera.focusZ = 0

Finally we reset the human's position and rotation so that our calculations are as simple as the ones above.


human.setPosition([0.0, 0.0, 0.0])
human.setRotation([0.0, 0.0, 0.0])

If we would allow the human to be translated and rotated, we would need to take this transformation into account, as above we calculated the center of the untransformed mesh.

Some math for gravity effect of hairstrands

2010-04-11T14:18:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to Manuel who installed watchmath in our Blogger site so I could type in some math about hairs :)

In hair_properties.py, hairstrands are first created with a fixed length along normal of the head. We may denote the length as $l$. When gravity is applied the strand should fall, the shape of this fall looks like the graph of (for simplicity we consider our curves in 2 dimensions) \[y = -cx^4\]

where $c$ is a positive constant dependent on the gravity factor. It has the formula (I got this after working out some equations on Young's elasticity formula, considering hairstrand an elastic material)
\[
c=\frac{{2^{2g/3}}}{2^6}
\]

But this is only half of the complexity. We need to keep the hairlength as $l$, whatever our gravity factor is. We basically need to calculate $x$ and $y$'s for a given length $l$ and a given gravity factor g. Getting arc-lengths of $y=-cx^4$ is a brachistrochrone problem. Using the equation of the arc-length we want to know $x_0$ such that
\[
\int_0^{x_0} \sqrt{ 1 + 16c^2x^6}dx = l
\]

The above integral can be converted to an elliptic integral of the first kind. And the answer to our question is the "inverse" of the above integral, meaning we need Jacobi elliptic functions .. (more to come)

hairs and gravity

2010-04-10T11:46:00.000-07:00

Ok so this is what hairs look like after implementing gravity

I haven't implemented collision detection yet, but after collision detection hairs will flow over the body and the head instead of looking like rigid wires sticking out of the head.

For more realistic gravity I will use Young's modulus elasticity equation. To make the hair and gravity work well (given a fixed hairstrand length) I am faced with a problem called the brachistrochrone problem. The results I have will need elliptic integrals and special functions like Jacobi's elliptic functions. The great thing about this is that it totally generalizes trigonometric functions and has more applications (in function theory they are denoted as sn, cn, etc.). I think Manuel wanted to publish some "math" results from makehuman, maybe this will give him the chance :)

PS: unlike wordpress, blogger is really not a great place to show equation.. *sigh* why dont we use wordpress :P google isn't everything you know.

Particle hair

2010-04-10T00:25:00.001-07:00

Import of particle hair into Blender 2.5 is finally here!

Create a character in MH as usual, give her some hair, and go to the export menu. Select ".mhx" from the Body menu and ".obj as curves" from the Hair section. The latter is very important. Now some mhx files are created in your makehuman exports folder, together with an obj file with the hair info. Since I created my character by turning the dwarf-giant slider to the extreme left, I call her dwarf, and the hair file is then called hair_dwarf.obj. And don't close MakeHuman quite yet.

There is a new import script in the importers/mhx/blender25x folder: import_hair_obj.py. Copy it to your Blender scripts/io folder, or load and execute it in the internal text editor. In the files/import menu there is now a new option: "MakeHuman hair (.obj)".
1. First import one of the mhx files, say dwarf-gobo-25.mhx.
2. Select the imported character in the viewport, to indicate that she will receive hair. This is easy to forget.
3. Import the corresponding hair file.
And now the character has hair.

One advantage of storing hair in separate obj files is that you can easily switch hairstyle in Blender. Back in MakeHuman (you didn't close it, right), we can now choose a different hairstyle and export it. I prefer to set the Body switch to obj, and to change the name of the character to reflect the hairdo: dwarf-curly, dwarf-ponytail, dwarf-long (better than test). In Blender, delete the current hair in the particle context, and import a new one using the procedure above.

Rendering has a tendency to crash Blender, but sometimes it does not. We evidently have some problems with eyebrows and eyelashes, but that is a different story.

Update: The import script now automatically connects the hair to the mesh. The procedure for making the connection manually is hence unnecessary and has been removed from the post.

The ponytail hairstyle has some problems; the tail itself does not move with the head.

Update:
1. The hair still does not seem to be edited after importation. To fix this, toggle into particle mode, select the mesh, and toggle back into object mode.

2. Hair can now also be applied to meshes that were imported as an obj file. Just make sure that -X90 is checked and that Group is unchecked before you import the mesh.

3. The locations of the strands are given in global coordinates. Therefore the character should not be moved before her hair is connected to the mesh.

4. A hair file can be imported onto any mesh, but there are problems if the skull is not were it should be. The characters below both use the same hairstyle, which was created for the taller one.

Update: Manuel noticed that the hairs were jagged. The behavior seems to improve if B-spline interpolation is turned off, so I did so.

makehuman picture of the day

2010-04-05T23:09:00.001-07:00

more to come :)

Developing in makehuman - 5 - Meshes

2010-04-04T23:21:00.000-07:00

When writing exporters, subdivision or polygon reducing algorithms it can be useful to know how the mesh is stored in Python (the C side has a different compact but less convenient representation).

An Object3D has three important lists: object.verts, object.faces and object.faceGroups. The first two lists contain instances of Vertex and Face. The facesGroups contain FaceGroup objects. A FaceGroup specifies the name of the group and the faces that make up the group.
A Face references 3 vertices in face.verts. A Vert or vertex holds its coordinates in vert.co and normal in vert.no. If we put all this together, we can write a simple Wavefront object exporter now:


f = open(filename, 'w')
for v in obj.verts:
f.write("v %f %f %f\n" %(v.co[0], v.co[1], v.co[2]))
for uv in obj.uvValues:
f.write("vt %f %f\n" %(uv[0], uv[1]))
for v in obj.verts:
f.write("vn %f %f %f\n" %(v.no[0], v.no[1], v.no[2]))
for g in obj.faceGroups:
f.write("g %s\n" %(g.name))
for fc in g.faces:
f.write("f")
for v in fc.verts:
  f.write(" %i/%i/%i " %(v.idx + 1, v.idx + 1, v.idx + 1))
f.close()

As you can see, we take the uv values from obj.uvValues. The uv values are referenced in two places, obj.uvValues holds all the uv values of each vertex by index. Face.uv is a list with the uv values of each vertex of the face. The reason is that while normals are per vertex, uv values are per face-vertex, because a vertex can have a different uv depending on which face is drawn.

Another hacker attack

2010-03-31T00:33:00.000-07:00

It seem Aruba (http://www.aruba.it) is under hacker attack again. Unfortunately makehuman.org is hosted on their servers, so an intrusive php code was injected in all index.php files, and makehuman.org is now blocked as malware site :-(

Report from google:

Of the 90420 site(s) we tested on this network over the past 90 days, 3245 site(s), including, for example, ilgiornaledelfriuli.net/, filmotore.com/, informarezzo.com/, served content that resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent.

We are working to clean it.

Proxy mesh

2010-03-29T00:30:00.001-07:00

Since it is that time of the year, I have hidden a little easter egg in the mhx files: a low-poly proxy mesh. Since the proxy weighs in at around 1,500 verts and the real MakeHuman mesh is ten times as heavy, the proxy can be used when speed is more important than quality, e.g. for animation in the viewport and quick test renders. It is probably not good enough for use in games though, at least not without modification.

The proxy mesh is built from a subset of the original verts, connected by a new set of faces. I tried both to make the mesh pure quad and to maintain edge loops, but at the end I didn't quite succeed with either. There are also too many verts on the torso and too few around the nose, and highly curved areas such as the fingers and teeth tend to shrink when the number of verts is reduced. Proxy verts inherit weights and shapekeys from its parent verts in the original mesh, so the proxy can be posed and use shapekeys just as the original mesh, although the result is not always what you expect.

There are three new options in the MHX import script: Mesh, Armature and Proxy. They determine what parts of the mhx file are loaded into Blender. The main reason for deselecting the mesh is performance: loading it consumes a lot of time and memory. Deselecting the armature also deselects vertex groups associated with bones, leaving only a few groups that have other purposes.

Loading the proxy mesh has some quirks. In Blender 2.49, the normals are not consistent. To fix that, recalculate all normals (select proxy, Tab, A, Ctrl-N, A, Tab) (Now fixed). In Blender 2.5, the first material is SSS_skinshader, which should be replaced by ProxySkin from the dropdown menu. This is probably a weird Blender bug.

Hopefully the proxy mesh can be useful for somebody. At least I had fun making it.

Update: A proxy obj file is now generated on obj export.

Topology converter

2010-03-23T15:28:00.000-07:00

I've almost finished the python software to convert morph targets from meshes with different topology. There are still some things to do, but the results are already good, as showed in the image below.

Developing in makehuman - 4 - Undo-redo

2010-03-22T22:10:00.000-07:00

When we started working on 1.0, one of the first features written was undo-redo. Having this from the start saves us a lot of time later as we add this functionality to each kind of model modification immediately. It is important that every modification is undo-able, since just one undo-able modification would leave the user without the possibility to undo anything. So it's crucial that if you write a plugin which modifies the model, you also make undo work.

The Application class has several methods to work with actions. An action is a class with two methods, do and undo. If the action itself does the modification you can use app.do to add it to the undo stack. If you did the modification yourself already during user interaction, you can add the action using app.did. The application won't call the do method of the action in that case. If you want to make your own undo-redo buttons, you can use app.undo and app.redo.

To illustrate, here is the action we use to change the hair color:


class Action:
  def __init__(self, human, before, after, postAction = None):
    self.name = "Change hair color"
    self.human = human
    self.before = before
    self.after = after
    self.postAction = postAction
    
  def do(self):
    self.human.hairColor = self.after
    if self.postAction:
      self.postAction()
    return True
    
  def undo(self):
    self.human.hairColor = self.before
    if self.postAction:
      self.postAction()
    return True

The postAction is a handy way to specify a method to keep your gui in sync with the changes. In this case we update the color control to show the correct color when the user choses to undo or redo the hair color change.

New MHX rig: Gobo

2010-03-15T23:42:00.000-07:00

Over the past months I have become increasingly unhappy about the rig created upon Blender export. The problem is partly that I am not an experienced rigger, but also that rigging from a python script poses special challenges. In particular, the Blender 2.49 API has some annoying omissions (e.g. no pole targets for IK constraints) and bugs (copy rotation constraints always evaluated in world space), which means that you cannot make the same rigs from python that you can do in the viewport.

The new Blender 2.5 has a completely new API, which should make it possible to do everything in python that you can do in the viewport, although there are still some things to be desired (Campbell Barton: a systematic way to add elements to collections without using operators, please). I have therefore looked for Blender 2.5 rigs that can be used for MakeHuman. My first attempt was to try use the Rigify auto-rigging system described at http://durian.blender.org/news/rigify-auto-rigging-system/ . However, I don't really understand how to use it, so this project has been postponed.

Instead, I have used the Gobo rig created by Tobus Lieven, see http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=172128 . The two characters in the picture share the same rig, more or less. Some modifications were necessary to adapt the Gobo rig to MakeHuman (Gobo only has two fingers), and I renamed all bones to be able to reuse the weight painting from the old rig. The Gobo rig is still somewhat incomplete, but I believe that it is fundamentally sound, and a solid foundation for future improvements.

As of today, MH characters with the Gobo rig can imported into Blender 2.5. When we export a character called "foo" from MakeHuman, three mhx files are created: foo-24.mhx (the "classic" MH rig for Blender 2.49), foo-classic-25.mhx (the classic rig for 2.5) and foo-gobo-25.mhx (the Gobo rig for 2.5). Run the importers/mhx/blender25x/import-scene-mhx.py script in Blender 2.5; it finishes very quickly. Now choose File > Import > Makehuman (mhx) from the main menu, select the right mhx file from the file selector, and wait. After a while (quite a while), the Gobo-rigged character should appear.

Developing in makehuman - 3 - Morph targets

2010-03-14T19:02:00.000-07:00

Whatever your plugin does, there's a big chance that it will modify the model. As many of you probably know, makehuman doesn't work mathematically or procedural, but artistically. This means that you don't just drag vertices when moving a part of the body, but you actually apply a morph made by an artist. There are different kind of morphs targets which are applied in different ways.

Macro targets, which are the most complex internally, are ironically the easiest to use: human.setGender, human.setAge, human.setWeight and human.setMuscle can be used to change the corresponding macro features. You will notice that height is not there. This is because you have to make the modifier yourself. We will look at that in a moment.

Another macro target, the ethnic, is set using human.setEthnic, passing the ethnic and how much of it is to be applied.
Detail and micro detail targets both come in pairs. For example one target to move a body part to the left, and another target to move the same body part to the right. Therefore you should never apply both targets at the same time. This means that when you apply one, and later you want to apply the other, you need to remove the first. While you could use human.setDetail to this, it is easier to use the Modifier class which we wrote and does all of the needed logic behind the the method modifier.setValue, it has an accompanying modifier.getValue which has the reverse logic. To use it, you create a modifier passing the two opposite targets:

modifier = humanmodifier.Modifier(human, "data/targets/macrodetails/universal-stature-dwarf.target", "data/targets/macrodetails/universal-stature-giant.target")

A value between -1.0 and 0.0 will use the dwarf target, while a value between 0.0 and 1.0 will use the giant target. Using 0.0 will remove both targets.
While using a modifier also applies the target, to keep changes interactive other targets are not reapplied and normals are not recalculated.
Once you have made the necessary changes, you commit them using human.applyAllTargets. Which does exactly what it says. It applies all the targets one by one and additionally recalculates the normals. Reapplying all targets minimizes the size of mathematical error in the final model.

Developing in makehuman - 2 - GUI

2010-03-07T17:45:00.001-08:00

The GUI in makehuman is still far from finished. Since the first alpha there have been many changes already and many other will come. This is because when features are added or modified, we can run out of space, or start to see things differently. Sometimes we experiment to see how a modifier can be manipulated in a different way. For example in the details and microdetails we chose to have tools manipulating the model directly instead of using sliders. Another idea for the macrodetails was a multidimensional slider, like a radar chart which would replace all five sliders. It is impossible to pour the GUI into into its final form while we are still adding functionality and getting new ideas.

However don't let the lack of guidelines stop you from adding a GUI to your own plugins. The current GUI API is very usable, and gets more mature every day.
The layout at the moment is a two level tab control. The tabs at the top represent categories, like modeling, files, render. The ones at the bottom are the tasks in the current category and refine the more broad category in macrodetail, detail and microdetail modeling, or loading, saving and exporting.
So when creating your plugin, the first thought should be "In which category does it belong?". From experience we know that it can be a though question to answer. Sometimes the only answer is adding a new category. This is what we did for measurement for example.

def load(app):

category = gui3d.Category(app, "Measurement", app.getThemeResource("images", "button_measure.png"))

Next you probably want your own task to implement your feature. While it's possible to attach functionality to an instance of gui3d.Task, it's often easier to derive your own class. When you create an instance of your class, you pass the parent of your task, which can either be an existing category

taskview = HairPropertiesTaskView(app.categories["Modelling"])

or the new one which you added.

taskview = MeasurementTaskView(category)

In your derived task you will then add the necessary controls to let the user interact. A good place to see how to use the different controls is the example plugin. You will see that even if you don't add any controls, the model is already visible. This is because the model is attached to the root of the GUI tree. In the onShow event of your task you might want to reset the camera position, like we do in the save task, or hide the model, like we do in the load task. Just don't forget to reset the state when your task gets hidden in onHide.

parts_adapter news

2010-03-07T09:14:00.000-08:00

I added a new functionality about the script parts_adapter: automatic reposition. Now the script restores the shape of unconnected groups (joints, mouth, eyes, ...) and puts them in a right position.
This is an example

DDOS against build servers

2010-02-25T03:37:00.000-08:00

Just a head's up that tomorrow's nightly builds for linux and windows might be delayed or missing. Right now the server hotel I host my build machines on is under a DDOS attack (directed at the hotel as such, not at my servers). I can't even reach the machines right now, and (hardly surprising) there seems to be no ETA for when they can manage to fend off the attack.

The MaxOSX nightly build won't be affected, since it is built on Hans-Peter Dusel's machines and not mine.