Makehuman female in iClone

[rampa]

I've been importing Makehuman characters into iClone for the past couple years, but now it's possible to have a truly interactive, as in talking, Makehuman character bu using the new face rig to create bone morphs for visemes and such.

This is also a "dual layer" character. I simply duplicated the mesh in Blender to achieve this. The reason is for for "decal" type effects.

[Aiena_G]

It looks really nice. The scene makes her look like one tribal near the border of a forest.

[duststorm]

Cool! I'm happy to see face poses are working, did they work out of the box or did you have to take many extra steps to make them work?

[rampa]

I guess that would be "out-of-the-box".

I had to export to Blender, and then out to FBX (for my dual layer).

3DXChange, iClone's asset-importing sister-app, had no problem with letting me adjust the bones for facial morphs. The bone layout was "different" then what I've played with before, but fairly functional. I understand it's still in development as well.

The jaw was rather tricky. There are two bones that need to move together, and they do not have a common parent unto themselves. That made the mouth slightly trickier. I also could not seem to get the inner eyebrow to raise by itself.

But, I must confess, I am not used to having the eyebrow bones connected sequentially. I assume this is for IK in Blender?

Also, is there a good place to report issues we find with the facial rig version of Makehuman? Is that needed? I suspect it's changing pretty quickly, so user discovered bugs might already corrected.

[Manuel]

The jaw was rather tricky. There are two bones that need to move together, and they do not have a common parent unto themselves. That made the mouth slightly trickier. I also could not seem to get the inner eyebrow to raise by itself.

It's because mouth muscles should be free to be moved without open the mouth.
The design of the new rigging is complex because, in order to be 100% compatible with any engine, it doesn't need translation of bones.
So even translations are obtained as combination or rotations, using a technique called "pantograph" see image below.

So the mouth was spitted in two parts: mouth muscle movements (that must be independent from the jaw) and jaw rotation.
This is a bit tricky indeed, but it's intended to be controlled by a "control bone", still to implement, that should add at the export time.

But, I must confess, I am not used to having the eyebrow bones connected sequentially. I assume this is for IK in Blender?

No. It's because the restriction of using only rotation. Only last bone is the deforming one. The others are just pantograph connectors.
See the image below.

Also, is there a good place to report issues we find with the facial rig version of Makehuman? Is that needed? I suspect it's changing pretty quickly, so user discovered bugs might already corrected.

It's always good to have feedback with quality reports. The rigging is practically completed (except the derivation of other skeletons from it, and the generation of control bones) so if you see something wrong it can be certainly a bug. In any case, the worst thing that can happen is that the issue is rejected. The place where to post is: http://bugtracker.makehuman.org/projects/makehuman

Thank you.

[duststorm]

I believe you can bake the animation on the deforming bones only and leave out the other bones when exporting to an engine, that would make the mesh less heavy on resources. So the non-deforming bones can be used when creating animations in an authoring tool, and then dropped.

[rampa]

So here is my second complete iClone Avatar.

I am getting the hang of the facial bones better now, although I did straighten some crooked one's in the jaw.

This is another dual skin layer experiment. Next thing to learn is how to make clothes!

[Manuel]

So here is my second complete iClone Avatar.

I am getting the hang of the facial bones better now, although I did straighten some crooked one's in the jaw.

This is another dual skin layer experiment. Next thing to learn is how to make clothes!

Compliments, you are improving very quickly!
Can you post some screenshots about the problems in the jaw? The mouth opening is not so exaggerate, so there should be not crooked errors..

[rampa]

They are "special 2" and "special 4". They are rotated to "-162.61".

[duststorm]

The pose is much improved indeed
Pretty cool picture