Working with MakeHuman models - looking for suggestions...

[Wee]

Hey y'all!

The modeling bug bit me again. I've tried using blender before, but one thing about blender is that it is very non-intuitive, and (probably thanks to trying to avoid copyright infringement) has some clunky ways of doing things. I'm sure once you get the hang of it, it's OK, but for character model making, I wanted something that could build 3D models quickly and easily, with a wide range of possibilities.

I came across MakeHuman (many of you are probably aready aware of this program, if not give it a look). IMHO this program is awesome for building baseline models, as it allow you to put together fairly realistic human form 3d male and female models pretty quickly. Start with the baseline unaltered model (or another MakeHuman model that you downloaded or already designed in MakeHuman), then move a bunch of sliders around and click a few options to morph that model into a very wide range of results. The models are pretty realistic, although I think that the lighting is a bit harsh (no way I've found so far to tone that down in the program, although you can always manipulate exported images in Photoshop to fix some of these issues).
There are a number of parameters to adjust, relating to eye spacing/shape/color, shapes of various body areas, etc. Definitely download the community plugins, this gives you even more sliders and skins to morph that baseline model to your liking. It's enough perhaps to get one fairly close to that reference photo you may have handy, in a number of cases I'd think.
Most importantly, it is FREE, and has an online community that develops assets (small library available).
http://www.makehuman.org

It has some clothing and such that come with it, and you can find more realistic looking private parts via the 'add on' funciton, but the models aren't perfect (a few deform creases here and there, mostly subtle, sometimes not so much). It also comes with a few poses, and supposedly you can create more poses using that model in other programs, possibly 'importing' those poses back into MakeHuman once you create them (I haven't done this successfully yet, see Blender woes). You can also export your MakeHuman model to .DAE .OBJ and a few other formats, and there are Blender plugins, and the MakeHuman community references Blender often.

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My current goal is to create or find some 'sexy/erotic/x rated poses for MakeHuman, but as I said, Blender is fu++++ annoying. I'm looking at maybe downloading Daz instead and trying to work with the MakeHuman models there, and possibly tweak those creases, but I'm not sure how easy Daz is to use, or if there are import limitations with the 'free' version.

The fact that (as far as I can tell) Blender has no altitude adjustment keys is really annoying. Plus and minus zoom in/out, you can change your orientation, but there are limits... sure you can use the camera but the lack of a quick 'raise altitude/lower altitude key combo is really annoying. I hate extra unneccessary steps when doing stuff... Then there is that whole 'exported makehuman models aren't lighted correctly when you import them' thing which means trying to figure out how to fix the lightmapping of the textures... plus the model is HUGE when it gets imported from Makehuman. AND, if you don't have a 10 key with/plugged into your laptop... this is why I gave up on Blender the last time (the non-intuitive thing, and this coming from a Photoshop whiz).

Call me impatient, but life is too short sometimes, especially if you are doing something just for fun in your spare time.

(rant off)

I'm not looking to spend weeks manipulating models into various poses. Mainly I'd just like to find a program or two that can manipulate the MakeHuman models fairly easily and quickly, and maybe do some enhancements along the way (better hair, texture smoothing, making sexy poses, that sort of thing) once I get the hang of it. And of course touch the renders up in Photoshop once they are close enough. A free 'pose manipulation' program that is quick and easy would be nice too, especially if I can export those poses for MakeHuman. The goal here would be to share those sexy pose 'wireframes' here, this being a collaborative forum and all.

Daz looks promising, but I'm not sure how involved it is. MakeHuman is fast and intuitive, AND free. I"m looking for more of fast and intuitive, and of course FREE.

This all ties in with a game idea I came up with, of course... hence why I'm looking for a quick way to create and animate some enhanced models. I'm looking at about a dozen or more different baseline models for the storyline, hence the desire for 'quick and easy'. RenPy looks easy enough/about my speed, now that I've poked under it's hood, so I'll probably use it as the framework when the time comes.

So my question is:

Does anyone have experience with this (manipulating MakeHuman-created models)? Any suggestions r.e a good FREE wireframe manipulation program that's quick and easy? I have the latest version of Blender, but there HAS to be a better way... And/or maybe have a library of sexy/erotic/xxx poses for MakeHuman that you'd like to share with the community here?

Also, how easy is Daz 3D to use, and does it allow you to import your own models if you have the free version (although I'm not really a fan of having to register to use a free program)?
Or maybe does anyone have a suggestion of another Free/Open source program for manipulating textures on an existing model quickly and easily besides Blender?

[OwnerOfSuccuby]

Good topic and question. I will be very happy if i hear some new solutions too

For now only blender i know So make humans was new to me - i hope that i look on it some day

[Wee]

So it turns out that there is some additional functionality in MakeHuman that you can turn on via the Settings/Plugins tab (after you download the Community pack, I'm guessing).

So you can adjust/create light sources, tweak facial expressions, and a few other options.

No skeleton poser there, but the expressions thing is kinda nice. There wasn't a decent 'lower lip arc smile showing teeth' expression, but you can make one of those, or a numbetr of others (eyewinks, smirk, etc.) using the 'new' sliders under Utilities/Expression Mixer. These sliders are tricky however, as once you've adjusted a particular slider it doesn't always respond afterwords (say, if you are looking to dial something back).

I also discovered that, as you manipulate the sliders in the various areas (particularly in combination with the new community created sliders), your image can begin to deform a bit. This can be fortuitous or bad. The only 'undo' option you really have with particular sliders is to save often and revert to your last save (remember to save to a different filename) if things get too weird, or go into another program and see if you can adjust it there.

Textures are accessed pretty easily outside of the program (find file, open in Photoshop or whatever, tweak colors and such to taste), should you want to tweak say haircolor for a particular hairstyle. As far as I can tell so far, you can only have one texture at a time for a given hairstyle, but just rename the old texture (add descriptor/identifier to old filename, so you have it for later, and save your edits to the original filename). You may be able to point the hairstyle/clothihg/etc. to a different filename, I haven't tried this yet (looks like you can do this, not sure yet).

On another model had an issue where I had the stomach looking just right, then 'lost' that look while trying to tweak other areas. I'd suggest keeping another program in mind if you are 'close enough' for now, and maybe tweaking the wireframe in Blender or whatever to dial in further. Again, I think that this program is great for getting you close to where you want to go, and refining it elsewhere. Particularly in the facial region, there are so many options to slide there (and a couple of missing ones) that things can get deformed (sometimes hideously) if you aren't careful.

Here's the first gal I created as I was playing with MakeHuman. This is a render that I exported from MakeHuman directly. Took me a couple of hours to do, plus a bit of time to download the community assets (new clothing). She's not based on any reference art, I just followed whatever whim struck my fancy as I was playing with the sliders. She has a rather athletic build, although you can't see that in this photo (wanted to keep this share PG)

There are a couple of texture layer problems - note the bra sticking through the shirt. I could have removed the bra with no issues, but I liked the strap peeking through at the back, plus this helps show potential issues you may have. There's also an issue with the 'realistic vagina via proxy download' poking through the jean shorts (note the brown patch between her legs) - The body parts thing poking through in various areas as you use the 'addon' sliders' seems to happen occasionally, and maybe even if you use the default sliders only. I"m assuming that I could adjust the relevant clothing wireframes in Blender or something to move a few nodes outward so that the textures aren't overlapping. Looks pretty good for a first try, I think.

The nice thing about the background being white in the render is that it makes it easy to 'crop out' the background using Photoshop's magic wand tool, and then saving it as a .gif with transparent background. I'm sure that Gimp has this feature as well (magic wand), but I haven't used Gimp in a while, seeing that I bought Photoshop a while back.

Here's my attempt to create another model, based on a reference. I've overlayed the reference pic, over the MakeHuman window. I wanted to recreate how the Ass looked, this is pretty close (again, I'm assuming I could dial this in better in another program, now that I've gotten it this far). Again, this is took about 2 or so hours for me to get to this point (this is my second model, the facial features can take a while if you are trying to get close to a reference pic), I'm getting faster at this as I go along.

NSFW, hence the spoiler tag.

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

thatass.jpg (43.58 KiB) Viewed 1099 times

Overall, still liking this program very much. I"m already working on a fourth model, and am pretty happy with how the other three turned out so far, of course I"m planning on doing the final tweaks in another program (That'd probably be Blender, *sigh*.)

A quick tip: There are a couple of sliders available via the Settings/Plugin tab via Community Download that can adjust eyebrow height. I recommend using those if the eyebrows end up being too low. The 'Forehead' adjustments won't do that particular thing for you, although you can adjust their curve a bit using the standard sliders.

Overall, I think that this program may be suitable for some beginning storytellers, assuming that we can assemble some useful additions for MakeHuman's pose and expression libraries (clothes too, but those take a bit to design). Sure, you can get better models using other programs, but this may be good enough for some, especially for beginners tackling their first erotic game/visual novel.

Just wanted to share. Still looking for Free alternatives to Blender that are quick and intuitive, and/or a good Free skeleton posing program that is fast and intuitive, that can create new poses for importing into MakeHuman.

[Totsboy]

im having problems with running the program in windows 7, anything i may be doing wrong?

[Wee]

im having problems with running the program in windows 7, anything i may be doing wrong?

I'm using Windows 8.1, and it worked for me right out of the 'box', so I'm probably not going to be much help to you. It does take a bit of time to load, but once it's loaded it does OK for me. Once I start accumulating a lot of morphs, it does slow down as it is implementing my current slider transform, etc., but not unbearably so (for me anyways). Also, if you go 'back' to some of the basic sliders (specifically age, to a lesser extent others) after making a bunch of adjustments, the transform visual can sometimes look a bit exaggerated/deformed while a slider is in motion, but the actual transform performs as expected.

There's only one version (win32) for Windows, so there isn't a 64 bit version in the first place. My laptop OS is 64 bit btw, with 16 Gigs of memory installed. I couldn't find anything about memory requirements on their site, so I don't know what the minimum recommended amount of memory might be.

You might try searching their community forum at: http://www.makehumancommunity.org/forum/ for your issue, using the forum search box to describe the issue you are having.

I quickly looked at their FAQ but didn't see anything about Windows issues there. What sort of problems are you having?