Eyes from makehuman to blender 2.66a

[yumri]

I have been trying to get the eyes, eye lashes, and eye brows to show up right when imported, in a .mhx file, from makehuman to blender 2.64 through 2.66a without success so far. What I have been getting is thick black lines for the eye brows and eye lashes while the eyes are just like black half spheres. So I am wondering how ,in blender cycles preferably, can I get the eyes, eye lashes, and eye brows to show up as seen on the makehuman program?

[duststorm]

You need to make sure that transparency is enabled for those materials. The texture is a png with an alpha channel. If no alpha is applied, the areas that should be otherwise transparent will show as black.

[jmatthews]

The shader you're looking for is traditional called a "cut-out", likely looking for cut-out-diffuse if it follows the standard naming convention.

[seeks]

Hey, I just recently discovered a solution to this problem myself. Here's a video that, among other things, shows the way to fix this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbdwEo84nNo

Here's a render with the eyes working (cycles render). I haven't tweaked it too much, but it's miles better than what it was.

*Edit: For the sake of posterity (in case the video goes down or whatever), I'll go ahead and describe the process.

First, make an alpha map of the texture you're using. The method shown in the video is to open the image up in the GIMP, and then:

Code: Select all

Image > Mode > Grayscale
Colors > Brightness-Contrast.  Set Brightness all the way up (+127), Contrast all the way down (-127).
Colors > Brightness-Contrast again.  This time, just turn the Contrast all the way up (+127).
Create a new layer, set it to all black.
Move new layer under first layer.
Now, export it to a new file and you're done.  PNG, JPG are both acceptable, and probably TIF as well.


After that, you should have a total of three image textures to work with: your regular texture, your texture_ref (the sort of shiny, transparent gray one), and the new alpha texture. I've also attached a screenshot of the node layout used, which should be pretty self-explanatory.

[ThomasL]

Those are quite beautiful eyes.

I am more and more convinced that trying to export good materials from MH, e.g. in the mhx format, is a wasted effort. Instead MH should host a blend (and files for other apps) with a set of good materials for skin, eyes, nails, etc. The material data does not vary much between characters, and with a material library available it is easy to change material in Blender.

[duststorm]

MH should host a blend (and files for other apps) with a set of good materials for skin, eyes, nails, etc.

That, or host a blend file with material prototypes, that are copied by the mhx importer and get modified a little based on some material properties coming from MH (such as texture, maybe diffuse color etc).
It should be possible now that blender has a python API for node materials. Unfortunately this feature will not be available on older (2.65, 2.66) blender versions.