MakeHuman - Skinning him going well, and now this!!

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Hi All,

First of all - many thanks for a great team effort.

I am using the new MHX on Windows and developing clothes for a character. I have ran across a number of serious problems using it with Blender 2.49B. First off the list is not being able to import items such as a hat mesh, walking stick, instead I had to extrude a vertice and then create mesh from the original MHX mesh. As time developed, I got strange spikes forming in the model, and thought I would apply weight paint, but this did not stop the problem. Also I designed a hat and moved it onto the head, but inOBJECT Mode it floats above his head!!! See images. Can someone please advise what I'm doing wrong here??

Note: The model is strangely large size of 8 megs so cannot load blend, instead I'm just attaching a series of JEGs to highlight my MHX problems. Appreciate your efforts, and hope you can suggest a way forward to sorting out these glitches.

MKH-problem.jpg

hat problem.jpg

spike problem despite weight paint.jpg

moving-causes-deformations.jpg

[ThomasL]

Your links just show up as ordinary text, at least in my browser, so my response is based on a guess what your problems are.

1. The large file size is due to morphs. Blender stores morph targets in a very uneconomical way - the new location of each vertex of the mesh, even if it is not affected. E.g., the "Smile" morph stores how the vertices in the toes have moved (not att all). Since the MH mesh consists of some 15,000 vertices, the blend file becomes quite large. In contrast, the MHX file only stores the verts that are actually moved, which makes it smaller.

If you don't need morph targets, don't load them: deactivate the "Body shapekeys" and "Facial shapekeys" buttons in the MHX interface. This will save you both load time and file size.

2. Only mhx files can be imported, and the only mhx file around is the MH character. Props must be imported as obj files, using the standard obj importer in Blender.

3. Editing a mesh with shape keys is tricky, at least if you plan to alter topology or add or remove vertices. I am unsure if you are allowed to do that at all. Even if your mesh does not have shapekeys, there may still be problems with UV coordinates.

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Thank Thomas, this is a second attempt to send the images. Not sure why it did not happen the first time around...

The attachment moving-causes-deformations.jpg is no longer available

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Hi Thomas, many thanks for your reply. I have made the following comments to yours:


The large file size is due to morphs. Blender stores morph targets in a very uneconomical way [ETC.] If you don't need morph targets, don't load them: deactivate the "Body shapekeys" and "Facial shapekeys" buttons in the MHX interface. This will save you both load time and file size.

UNDERSTOOD - MANY THANKS

2. Only mhx files can be imported, and the only mhx file around is the MH character. Props must be imported as obj files, using the standard obj importer in Blender.
IN BLENDER, IF I IMPORT A PROP INTO THE MH CHARACTER, HOW DO i COMBINE THEM. I TRIED CRTL + J, AND ALSO PARENTING [CRNTL + P] BUT THIS DID NOT WORK, NOTE: have not tried obj import as yet... will try...

3. Editing a mesh with shape keys is tricky, at least if you plan to alter topology or add or remove vertices. I am unsure if you are allowed to do that at all. Even if your mesh does not have shapekeys, there may still be problems with UV coordinates.

I DO NOT THINK I HAVE BEEN EDITING IN SHAPE KEYS. ALL I HAVE DONE IS EDIT THE MESH TO EXTEND AS CLOTHING. I THEN ADDED VERTEX GROUPS FOR COLOUR TO BE ADDED, I.E. HAT.

What I'M HOPING TO HAVE ANSWERS TO IS HOW I CAN EDIT THE MH MESH SO THAT THE DEFORMATIONS DO NOT OCCUR. WHY THE BIG DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE MESH AS SEEN IN BLENDER EDIT MODE, AND BLENDER OBJECT VIEW MODE??? HOW I CAN REMOVE THE SPIKES?

BOTTOM LINE IS: HOW CAN I ADD CLOTHING TO MH FIGURES AND AVOID THE PROBLEMS I'M HAVING HERE???. SEE ATTACHED IMAGES

MANY THANKS FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE IN ADVANCE.

[ThomasL]

Your mhx file is old; I haven't seen that panel for several months. Download an up-to-date copy of MH from svn, or at least use alpha4, and export the file again. Apart from that, there seems to be something odd with the vertex weights.

One can attach a hat to the character in several ways.

1. Parent the hat to the head bone.

2 Join the meshes as Human and assign all hat vertices to the Head vertex group.

A suit is somewhat more tricky since it moves with several bones, but you have to parent it to the armature. There are several ways to weight the suit.

1. Use automatic weights from bone heat.

2. Project the body weight with the Bone Weight Copy script. This can be found under the menu Help > Scripts Help Browser, and then Object > Bone Weight Copy.

Once the suit has been weighted, it can be joined to the body mesh if you so desire.

It may be a good idea to delete parts of the body that are covered by the suit, both to boost performance and to avoid that the body peeks through the suit.

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Thanks Thomas!