How can I make a MH pose identical to Rigify rest position

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How can I make a MH pose identical to Rigify rest position

Postby Ian_Samit » Sat Jul 10, 2021 7:57 am

I've recently discovered a wonderful blender add-on called Rigify Animbox that would be very useful animating MH models. However, it seems to assume that the rig's rest position is Rigify standard, and so it distorts e.g. the default walk cycle of a MH-generated rig.

I'm planning to use this add-on with multiple models, so figure the most efficient method would be to create a MH pose that could be imported with each model to be the rest position. I tried exporting a standard Rigify rig to a .bvh file, then placing that in the pose directory, but this only works if the rig was originally created my MH.

So my questions are:

1) Has anyone else done this before? - if so I would love a copy of your bhv file.

2) Failing that, does anyone have any ideas for efficiently modifying a MH-generated Rigify rig to at least approximate a standard Rigify rest position?
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Re: How can I make a MH pose identical to Rigify rest positi

Postby joepal » Sat Jul 10, 2021 9:05 am

Which approach did you use for rigifying the MH rig?

The rigify stuff in MPFB2 is a lot closer to vanilla rigify than (for example) MHX2. If it wasn't MPFB2 you used, then maybe you could give that a try and see if works better for you?

For most rigifyish results, you might want to either create the charater directly in MPFB2 or import from MH without a rig, and then add the rigify rig in MPFB2.

MPFB2 is a blender addon and can be downloaded here: http://download.tuxfamily.org/makehuman/plugins/
Joel Palmius (LinkedIn)
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Re: How can I make a MH pose identical to Rigify rest positi

Postby Ian_Samit » Sat Jul 10, 2021 7:51 pm

Thanks for the response Joel. Yes I've been adding the rig with MPFB2 - taking the extra step of importing the rigless character first as that produces a much more detailed final rig than importing the character and rig together.

But, unless I missed something, the rest position of that rig will be determined by whatever pose the character was in when imported. The standard A-Position in MH has the legs further apart, the arms further forward and several other differences from the default rest position of a vanilla Rigify rig. So I figure if I can somehow duplicate the default Rigify rest position, and convert it to a MH pose, I should be able to import characters using MPFB2 in Rigify standard pose.

If necessary, I could go into edit mode and adjust every bone to conform to the Rigify default but I'm hoping there's a way to avoid that.

Unfortunately my desktop is being repaired at the moment, and this laptop doesn't have enough juice to run Blender, so I'll have to wait until the desktop comes back to do further testing.

BTW, I am loving MPFB2 now and am really looking forward to full functionality.
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Re: How can I make a MH pose identical to Rigify rest positi

Postby joepal » Sun Jul 11, 2021 8:31 am

Ok, now I think I understand better.

My suggestion on the next thing to try is this:

* Perform steps as before, up to and including adding the meta-rig. Do not generate yet.
* Create a new human meta-rig (by using blender's add armature). It's just for reference, so dont apply or parent.
* Scale the new meta rig so it is roughly the same size as the character's rig
* Pose the character so that it matches the rigify rest pose rig
* Apply the pose as rest pose (I think ctrl-a, but not sure)
* Generate

Check if this makes things work better.

If it does, and to answer your question:

Yes, you can make a pose for MH to better automate this. But the pose has to be made using the "default" rig.

* Import your character with a default rig
* Add a separate human meta rig for reference as with the above
* Pose the character to match the rigify rest pose
* Export as bvh with only first frame selected
* Put bvh file in pose folder
* Optionally make a thunbnail and upload the pose to the asset repos, as I am sure more people will be interested

I will be curious to hear back on whether this solves your problems.
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Re: How can I make a MH pose identical to Rigify rest positi

Postby Ian_Samit » Tue Jul 13, 2021 6:13 pm

Thanks Joel.

Yes I was afraid that would be the case. I've started on it - it's difficult because the MH default rig and rigify are so different, so it's not just a matter of matching bone for bone.

My process is:
1. Adjust the scale of the Rigify rig to match the MH rig.
2. Adjust angles of the MH rig to approximate the Rigify rig.
3. Export the MH rig as a .bvh in the pose directory.
4. Set the default character to that pose.
5. Import the default character.
6. Generate a Rigify rig from that character.
7. Compare that rig to the vanilla Rigify rig.
8. Repeat from Step #1!

It's tedious but, hopefully, I'll only need to do it once. I have around 20 characters planned for my project, so this should be more efficient than adjusting each model by hand.
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