Makehuman cannot find Aqsis renderer (MAC)

[jgstyle]

I'm not certain how other people have gotten this to work, but it won't work for me just yet.

I'm running Mac OS 10.5.8, and I've installed MakeHuman 0.9.1RC1. I also installed Aqsis 1.4.2 and when that didn't work I tried 1.6.0.

Makehuman always reports the error "Unable to find render engine!" when I try to render.

As usual on the Mac, when installing, I just dragged the file from the disk image into the Applications folder, but this obviously is not good enough.

Doing some digging, I found the "makehuman.parameters" file in the Users>USERNAME>Documents>makehuman folder.

Opening this file, I see this right at the top:

<aqsis_path command="aqs">
/Applications/Graphics/MacAqsis.0.9.1/
</aqsis_path>

So "/Applications/Graphics/MacAqsis.0.9.1/" is hardcoded into this parameters file. I I really mean HARD coded. I changed this path (and the name of the App) to the root my Applications folder so it read like this:

<aqsis_path command="aqs">
/Applications/Aqsis/
</aqsis_path>

but it didn't work. Still the same error in Makehuman. Re-opening the parameters file, I saw that it was being overwritten back to its original state as Makehuman was opened. To prevent this, I locked the file so it was unwritable and tried it again. Same error.

I tried removing the slash at the end, naming the file Aqsis.app, renaming it to MacAqsis.0.9.1. I even created a "Graphics" folder and put it in there. it still would not work. Wow, talk about stubborn.

Trying to reset the path in the console did not help either. In short, how do you get this program to connect to the renderer on the Mac?? Thanks.

[renderguy]

Hi jgstyle,

Makehuman always reports the error "Unable to find render engine!" when I try to render.

This is probably due to the Aqsis binaries not being specified within your PATH (environment variables).

As a quick test try launching Aqsis and select the "Terminal" option, this should open a terminal window with the PATH environment pre-configured. From this terminal try launching MH and rendering your scene.

I'm not sure why there's hardcoded paths in MH, the Aqsis OS X package is designed to run from any location, but hopefully the above will solve your problem.

[jgstyle]

Hi renderguy,

Thanks for the help. I tried it but again it did not work.

I chose the "shell" option, and it opened a terminal window for me.

The command prompt was for aqsis-1.6.0.

I opened makehuman with this command: open /Applications/MakeHuman\ 0.9.1RC1.app

after it opened I just hit the render button and I got the same "Unable to find render engine!".

Thanks again but do you have any other ideas why this may not be working?

[renderguy]

Hi jgstyle,

Thanks again but do you have any other ideas why this may not be working?

I can only assume this must be something to do with the hardcoded paths within MH, given the Aqsis terminal environment is aware of everything regarding Aqsis itself.

Hardcoded paths are usually a no-no as you can rarely guarantee where a user has placed things on their system... especially if using the flexible .app/bundle nature of OS X.

Perhaps this has been fixed/revised for MH 1.0?

[jgstyle]

Hi renderguy,

I really can't believe that no other Mac user has managed to overcome this problem, but apparently it is the case.

I tried the 1.0 Alpha, and I was able to get the Pixie renderer to work, though it started up the X11 environment to do so. Of course, it looks as if the export feature in 1.0 Alpha is not working, so 6 of one, half-dozen of the other.

Also, the Pixie renderer suffers from the same problem as the Aqsis in 0.9.1RC1, ie its path is hard coded into the parameters file in a place that it definitely is NOT installed (/Applications/Graphics/Pixie/). So I still can't render out of that version.

Oh well, thanks for your help, I appreciate the suggestions.