Before starting to test the new alpha release of MakeHuman and experimenting with other users addons and scripts I decided to do one last (I think) effort on my character deformations. As previous mentioned I use corrective smooth modifier to adjust the characters deformations but it needs a vertex group to avoid smoothen certain parts. Then I got a tip how to counteract the ugly deformation when rising the arms and "Preserve Volume" in Armature Modifier is activated. One can avoid using "Preserve Volume" but it can make big difference when doing certain poses, but only together with corrective smooth.
There is some other threads about this topic, but this is my solution and made to be pretty simple for experienced Blender users. All my character use the "default (none)" topology and the rig "Default no toes" as well as the dummy for compatibility reason.
When imported a new character using mhx2 and no special settings, I append this dummy character and transfer (only) my own two vertex groups and corrective shape-keys. Then add all modifiers and assign respectively vertex group. My modifier stack looks like this, (the settings for the corrective smooth modifier is character dependent but this is the most often used.)
The part that I dont manage to get decent is the knees when bending the legs. Not even with the corrective shape-keys. Some close-up previews are planned. This .blend file includes the dummy with my vertex groups and corrective shape-keys, and modifier stack. Press play, the character is animated
The problem when changing deformations of a character using modifiers in Blender is that the clothes wont deform exactly like the character. Sometimes its enough to the clothes add "Surface Deform" modifier and bind it to the character's body. Or if adventurous use cloth simulator. I still prefer doing it manually using proportional edit and sculpt.
To test the result I did some ballet posing by trying to mimic poses from real dancers. The result got better than expected and the poses was quite fast to make. It was ment to be only Jennifer but Bellatrix started to create a male ballet costume and wanted Kamden to participate. While Bellatrix worked on Kamden's costume I decided to improve the ballet dress.
In the last image, Jennifer's right armpit looks bad, but I am overall satisfied. It's possible to do manually corrections or another shape-key if in the future need to do this kind of extra ordinary arm pose. Or back to the drawing board and adjust the weighting for corrective smooth or preserve volume.
When doing the texturing for the costume, I tried yet another aproach to make the folds and wrinkles, much faster and effective than all my previous methods. More on that later.
This "Ballet Costume" and material is now available:
http://www.makehumancommunity.org/cloth ... stume.html
http://www.makehumancommunity.org/conte ... erial.html
---Wishes the community and especially all asset contributors and the MakeHuman developers/team a very great year 2019---