Makehuman 2 Stable Alpha on Steam!

[Elvaerwyn]

Greetings all,

It has been a very long while since updating-been very busy and yes on MH2 Development .

Punkduck and myself are proud to announce that the latest version of Makehuman 2 is live on steam! Get your copies, have your say and give us your feedback! Find us on steam here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4676360/Makehuman_2/

Follow us and find future updates on youtube here:

https://www.youtube.com/@Makehuman2Official

Join us on discord here:

https://discord.gg/tnhDFdVFyC

And find your new slowly growing MH2 site here:

https://makehuman-2.github.io

And look forward to your first patch release in End of July with the fantasy base mesh, and much more!

Elvaerwyn_MH2 and Punkduck

[WojackOWL]

I WILL BE DOWNLOADING THIS!

Thank you to everyone who has spent their time and effort getting this project this far. I'm over here vibe-coding personal fixes to get MH 1.4 to work on Wayland and getting some smaller features added. I'll check it out and give my feedback.

[WojackOWL]

I just let the folks over at GameFromScratch's Discord know that the software has been released, so we can promote it a bit more and get feedback.

[Elvaerwyn]

I just let the folks over at GameFromScratch's Discord know that the software has been released, so we can promote it a bit more and get feedback.

Ty so much wojack!

Elv

[WojackOWL]

Okay, I've been trying out MH2's alpha and have around 10 hours of usage on it Steam. I have some thoughts.

I once again want to congratulate PunkDuck and Elvaerwyn for working very hard to make Makehuman's sequel and getting it out on Steam for the public to use.
PROS:
I like the new customization features for the interface like being able to change themes.
I like that I have an environment in the background so I can preview my clothing in different lighting scenarios, in addition to being able to move and adjust colors for my 3-point lighting setup
I like the new addition to use PBR-compliant materials now that I can use Metallic and Roughness.
When downloading assets from the online asset repo, being able to search manually for the asset you are looking for is a great quality of life improvement compared to using the old version in MH 1.4 or using the website.
Another quality of life improvement I was excited for was with Transparent objects. One of the bugs that irritated me the most in MH 1.x is that I kept having Transparency sorting issues when it came to hair, and I'm fighting the editor to see if my hair meshes that I'm either importing or making from scratch actually look correct. That's fixed here and I'm able to see what I needed to add or change before going back to Blender.
CONS:
I am not a big fan of the UI and UX. I personally think it's a downgrade for a few reasons. Compared to MH 1.4, it looks like I'm navigating a kid's program from Windows 95 when the original was a lot simpler and clean. I can see the vision in terms of accessibility, with less text in exchange for visuals for what the tabs do. I don't like that you now have to click more to show and apply an asset, versus you double-clicking to see what asset you are applying. It feels like a worse version of a character creator that you use in the Sims or NBA2K cause even those allow you to preview the clothing item or hair item before confirming. It would be nice if we could have interactions that are quick and responsive. Mouse responsiveness when rotating the camera can use a bit of work too.
I understand we're keeping things forward-compatible from MH 1.x, but having the base mesh HM08 with the default MakeHuman rig isn't going to work. The base mesh isn't really the issue; it's the rig attached to it and what's bundled out of the box. It's not really good for anything other than posing renders, the quadruple-jointed arms and legs. It would be nice to have the game-ready rigs built-in or a hybrid rig that combines the simplicity of the body and the complexity of the facial rigs.
I think the biggest issue for me, and pretty much the deal breaker for me, is saving and loading characters. I will make a character and save it for later. I open up the program, all the materials, clothing, hair, and even worse the body adjustments are gone. You can tell if there is something supposed to be there, parts of the base mesh where I have clothes on the mesh were deleted. This happened every time I saved a mesh.
A small nitpick is that I miss how modular the previous editor was. You needed new functionality? Just create another script to add an extra tab or subtab for what you want. You can also make custom shaders too, but to be honest, I think barely anyone used that feature and just used the built-in materials.

Overall, I think this is a good first step, but it's a gonna be bumpy road ahead until it's better. I'll stick with my modified MH 1.4 version until that issue gets fixed.

[tomcat]

I'm really glad to hear that work on the new version is continuing!

Will the normal version still be available? What's the reason for switching to the questionable Steam platform?

I hope news about the project will continue to be posted here.

[Elvaerwyn]

Greetings Tom and Wojack,

Tom-Glad to hear you are still watching . Yes there will be always the original version in its existing state-however no it will not receive content patches going forward as there is noone to maintain it and bug fix in that eventuality! Such is the state of old software.

Why Steam? Why not its a platform like any other and it happily hosts us, MH2 will be available as a standalone download on Makehuman 2 site as well as on github and the actual code can of course be downloaded at any time as well. Ty to steam we are aware of many of the bugs mentioned by Wojack just now and are actively working on them.

Yes, Happy to continue to give news updates here going forward of course! .

Wojack,

That is entirely your choice to use the old software in its existing state- just be aware that it will stay in this state going forward! Again as stated above bugs are mostly known about due to reporters, always feel free to report on git best place for that to be seen and heard, or join us on discord!

UI-that is your opinion-though I wonder what you are looking at tbh lol the previous test version from punk or the upgraded version since? That said it continues to improve, and of course in MH 2 you can make your own qss quite easily and improve it to your own liking along with the sky-room. That said these are the simple things that are evolving.

With that out of the way,

Again the fantasy release is July 25! This will bring the arrival of the fantasy skeleton and attachments that are able to be posed such as the mermaid tail. The plan, though mostly under wraps due to being a team of 2 with very little time is to be adding content patches every 3-6 months in the form of new content, bug fixes, quality of life improvements etc. Your support is appreciated, your attention is valuable, and your feedback is very much helpful so always feel free to reach out!

Elv

[tomcat]

Tom-Glad to hear you are still watching

Well, my project—or rather, an important part of it — the character generator — is based on MH, so yes, I’m following it closely and actually downloaded MH2 for Windows a long time ago, right when it first appeared in the repository.

Yes there will be always the original version in its existing state

By “normal” version, I meant a version not tied to Steam. My project will not be distributed on that highly questionable platform.