by jwc » Sun Jul 02, 2017 2:13 am
I looked for an example of the Terminator endoskeleton, and had the following (verbose) thoughts.
It will be difficult to use make-clothes for this type of object for a couple of reasons.
Clothes are Quads only:
With the human skeleton I had to search to find a set of bones based on quads, and even the one I found required additional editing. I found one free example of a terminator, but it was all triangles (and lots of them). The only way to use make-clothes would be to remesh this example, not easy with all of the different parts.
Different sizing:
With a human skeleton, our bones follow the joint positions, so eventually you can find some points that let the bones resize and move "approximately" the way they do in real life. A close observation of my skeleton will show issues both in resizing and motion. It works, but don't look too close.
With the terminator, the "moving piston" and the "solid frame" pieces are not aligned with a body's joints. Resizing a body will distort both items in ways that you probably would not like, and during motion the two types of items will rotate around the joints, not necessarily resembling a piston extension/contraction.
That said, let me take a step back and ask a different question.
Do you need to use make-human? Are you looking to make varieties of obese, short, ethnic terminators? Make-human supports the creation of a wide variety of human models, and with make-clothes, poses, and mhx2 export enables motion based simulations and rendering.
But the terminator is closer to an automotive engine than a human. It has solid parts and pistons that move. If I were modeling an engine, I would do it using blender type software, not make-human.
If you have bvh or motion capture files, create a skeleton (used in the rigging/motion sense, not bone sense) between the mechanical joints in the terminator, and constrain the pistons to extend/contract with the joint motion. This would scale/move in a more "realistic" fashion and the solid pieces attached correctly will remain undistorted.
Alternately, if you are trying for a partially "skinned" terminator, make the visible portion of the endoskeleton as described, and then place it inside (and parented to) a makehuman model. You can then use transparency to display the visible skeleton areas.
Good luck.