Has anyone tried MakeHuman or something similar?

Comments

• MoKaLux Member

  January 6

  I have indeed used makehumans for various if not all of my games (platformers, beat'em up, ...)
  
  In makehumans application,

  clothes are fitted to the model automatically

  https://static.makehumancommunity.org/makehuman/docs/hairstyles_and_clothes.html#clothes
  
  If you want the same behavior in Blender you will have to use makehumans mpfb https://static.makehumancommunity.org/mpfb.html
  
  Hope this helps

  Likes: PaulH

  my growING GIDEROS github repositories: https://github.com/mokalux?tab=repositories

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• PaulH Member

  January 6

  Thanks for the tips! I'm so glad to hear MakeHuman has worked for you!
  
  I'm seeing fitting problems even within MakeHuman. Some garments seem to fit, at least mostly, while others not well at all. Here's the same model in the same pose with the the sample work suit and formal suit, as seen in MH:
  
  
  
  Maybe this is an issue with the specific version of MakeHuman I'm using. I'll play around with MPFB and see how that goes.
  
  These seem like pretty useful free tools for indie developers. I'm also looking at Reallusion's Character Creator. That appears to be vastly more powerful, evidently capable of making Hollywood quality characters, but it's far from free, especially once you start buying assets like garments. It seems like major overkill for indie mobile games, but it's fascinating to see what's possible.
  
  Thanks again!
  

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• MoKaLux Member

  January 6

  yes PaulH, there may be some artifacts with some clothes made by other users. Clothes seem to be tricky to make so they fit makehumans characters deforms. In your case some vertex pulling in Blender should help
  
  Some makehumans clothes are ccby so be sure to know what you are using.
  
  There is also this awesome characters creator website https://readyplayer.me/ but unfortunately the license as far as I understand is:
  

  7.2. You may use the Avatar for your own personal, non-commercial use.

  
  https://readyplayer.me/terms
  
  I have been looking into Reallusion's Character Creator too but decided that makehuman would be enough for my use case
  
  Then there is also mixamo.com of course where you can use their models (as you wish?).
  
  I use a mix of those, plus some awesome assets made by awesome people on sketchfab.com now fab.com.

  my growING GIDEROS github repositories: https://github.com/mokalux?tab=repositories

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• PaulH Member

  January 6

  This has been a rabbit hole, in a good way. Good tip about the CCBY licensed stuff. And yes, CPFB appears to work much better. I'm pretty happy with what I could achieve with just a little playing around, especially given that it required a new version of Blender and I'm relearning the interface.
  
  
  
  The next step will be to see if I can bring a character like that into a Gideros app and have the code toggle on and off or alter different components. If so that will achieve the single model that can represent many characters that I'm after. If that proves too cumbersome it clearly wouldn't be too much work to create a reasonable set of characters separately with CPFB.
  
  And perhaps jump down the rabbit hole of learning to make original clothes for CPFB.
  
  Thanks again!

  

  

  mpfb_experiment.png

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  mpfb_experiment.png 135.7K

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• keszegh Member

  January 6

  by CPFB you mean MPFB or something else?

  Likes: MoKaLux

  Longtitle Productions, creator of
  Fragmenter - animated loop machine and IKONOMIKON - the memory game

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• MoKaLux Member

  January 6

  you can definitely bring those humans into a Gideros app (self promotion warning https://mokatunprod.itch.io/3dpixel-obj )
  
  In my app I deform Blender models (position, rotation, scale). In order for some things to work I have to "cut" (separate) the model into several meshes. That may be what you want to do if you want to scale the eyes, nose, ...
  
  All the best for your Gideros project

  my growING GIDEROS github repositories: https://github.com/mokalux?tab=repositories

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• PaulH Member

  January 6

  Yes, I meant MPFB. I assume that's Make Person For Blender.
  
  This is really cool stuff! The process for creating assets like clothes seems pretty straightforward. I just whipped up a pair of snow pants, and they fit, pose and scale like they should. Where were these tools 17 years ago when I was modeling people and clothes from scratch?
  
  So your tool bulk generates 2D sprites from 3D objects? That's really cool! Some of my games do something similar at runtime, posing 3D models and generating 2D images to using during game play. But your tool looks so much more flexible! That's a really clever app!
  

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• PaulH Member

  January 8

  @MoKaLux, have you combined animations from Mixamo with characters made with MPFB? In Blender one can make a MPFB person, add a Mixamo rig, and import an animation from Mixamo, then snap the animation to the existing rig, and that works fine. But the Mixamo rig lacks bones for expressions, the jaw for speech, etc., so the resulting character can no longer do those things. I'm trying to find a practical way to apply those Mixamo animations to a standard MPFB rig. Any ideas?

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• MoKaLux Member

  January 8 edited January 8

  PaulH, I have indeed combined mixamo animations.
  If I remember correctly the steps:
  - in blender I have a 3d human character with "human" proportions (my models are around 1.8m tall)
  - export as fbx to mixamo (no textures but that's fine because we will add those back in blender)
  - add a mixamo animation -> export to fbx (first download model and tpose)
  - add a mixamo animation -> export to fbx (then you can only download pose)
  - repeat above step for as many animations as you want
  - once all animations downloaded, back to blender
  - in one collection I put the T-pose model and fix the textures
  - in another collection I put all the mixamo animations (skeletons)
  - in blender Animation tab you can switch between animations and they should work on the T-pose model
  - once I am happy with the animations, I hide the mixamo collection and only export the fbx tpose model (mesh + armature) which should have all the other animations attached
  
  Once the blender and mixamo stuff is done:
  - fbxconv to convert your blender fbx to gideros json
  - from there you can animate your model

  my growING GIDEROS github repositories: https://github.com/mokalux?tab=repositories

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• MoKaLux Member

  January 8 edited January 8

  Part2:
  
  In your case you are using bones for the face which are not available in mixamo. What I could suggest:
  - use the mixamo rig + add your own bones for the face (blender has a face rig available)
  - use the mixamo weight paint for the body and manually weight paint the face

  my growING GIDEROS github repositories: https://github.com/mokalux?tab=repositories

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• MoKaLux Member

  January 9

  it looks like you opened this GH issue
  
  https://github.com/makehumancommunity/mpfb2/issues/169

  my growING GIDEROS github repositories: https://github.com/mokalux?tab=repositories

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• PaulH Member

  January 9

  Very interesting... I'm not surprised this issue has gotten some attention from the MH community. The Mixamo animations are great, but if it takes some major work to apply them to a model with animated face bones, at least a jaw for speech, that's a major hurdle to using those for a lot of projects.
  
  I'm still exploring options. I tried joining the head parts of the mesh and the head parts of default MPFB2 rig with the import Mixamo rig and mesh. That works as far as getting the character walking while also being able to manipulate the face bones, but I'd have to manually weight the vertices around the severed neck to make it more correctly. But then one also can't add assets to the mesh, since MPFB no longer considers that a base mesh. So I'd have to apply all the assets before making the merged rig.
  
  Then I found this: This demonstrates using the AMHB2 (Automate Make Human for Blender 2) addon. With that you can select two armatures in Blender, the Mixamo and then the full rig, and then retarget the full rig to the Mixamo, making a transfer rig. That almost works. In my case, with a default MH model and rig, plus an imported Mixamo rig with a walk cycle, I end up with the character walking, and also with the posable facial bones, and to which it's still possible to apply assets without redoing other steps, which is the goal, but...
  
  There are a few glitches. In the YouTube tutorial they end up with thumbs positioned wrong that have to be manually posed. In my case the shoulders are wrong, and the model walks with his arms crossed through his chest. Maybe the solution is as simple as starting with a model in the T pose rather than the MH default. Or I'm missing a step from the tutorial, so I'll have to go over that again.
  
  Hopefully the community will add the functionality to simply import the Mixamo animation and automatically map it to the corresponding bones in the other rigs, but for now this seems like the best solution.
  
  

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• PaulH Member

  3:14AM

  I was indeed missing a step. Basically you make a Mixamo rig and standard rig, retarget the full rig to the Mixamo rig to create a transfer rig, then import your animation, select the animated rig and then the transfer rig and use the AMH2B "Snap Target Transfer" function. And bingo. The imported animation works fine, the face can be posed, and the mesh is intact. So AMHB2 seems to be the solution, at least for now.
  

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