Few feelings and questions.

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Few feelings and questions.

Postby Teto » Mon Aug 25, 2014 4:52 pm

First, I have to say that I do like your soft. For something free (so developed during your free time) it’s the best we could find on the market. So that I’ll say won’t be criticizes, just few thoughts and requests.

So, I’m using your soft since 2 weeks now and there’s few things I have to say :

:arrow: The GUI is really good, except for the cursors. We can change the settings with mouse, we can't type the value directly somewhere in the frame. Pity.
:arrow: I’ve seen that the genitals are “clothes” now. One year ago, there were part of the body, now they’re not, I understand why. I also know that you’re doing new models for that, highly detailed, that’s good too. Anyway, that’s mean that we can have body parts made like clothes. But how we can change their shape in the soft, like the penis, that is a cloth but we can change length (and so on) in Makehuman directly ? I really want to know, because it would be useful for other things, like hair(s), warts, …
:arrow: By the way, about hair, OK, I’ve read what you want to do. But I hope you will release tools to add them easily in models, and, well, a special tool to design it would be great… (I know, much work for that…) ^^


But the point for me is about the shape of the models. I’ve read most everything on your site and forum, so I know what you want to do and what you don’t.

You want to be realistic, and you’re right. But for me your tool is also perfect to design cartoonish humans. I tried to make a female like we can find in many mods in Skyrim, and I succeeded. But if I try to “design” a character from last Disney’s films (like Elsa, or Eugene), it’s not possible for the faces, mostly. Impossible to have these big eyes. Another example : The TV show Clone Wars. I take this example because the show was made via performance capture, so the proportions of the humanoid characters are correct, but the faces are cartoonish (and members are quite thin, but we can do that in makehuman). I’d like to make faces like that, for my own comics and illustrations, and I’d like to do that with makehuman. A good documentation or a tool, to create your own cartoonish style for faces would be really appreciated, and I’m pretty sure that your soft would become famous fast. Last example, the Incredibles. I tried to reproduce Mr Incredible, and I succeeded again (even the weird proportions in the legs compared to the torso), except for the face, especially the eyes and nose, and the rectangular shape of the head.

You're working on poses. That's good, except that the tools in Blender for this function are good (what's your opinion ?), so, maybe, a tool like makewalk in Blender would be enough ?

By the way, the possibility to put my "target file" in the good place (leg, nose, torso, whatever) in GUI, and not just in a special tab, would be greatly appreciated.

About addons. I talked about few features that I want to see in your soft. But what about this feature for modders :
:arrow: The modder can choose the area to change/modify/replace. The engine replaces original area by the new one.
:arrow: The modder design the new topology in 3 positions, minimum, average, maximum (in Blender).
:arrow: He could subdivide squares (forgotten the right word) many times to have the precision he wants. All must remain rectangular.
:arrow: The engine (or a tool in blender) makes a "clothe" with that 3 shapes, and a cursor to choose (with good interpolations between those).

I was long enough, so I stop here. But once again, there are just wishes, nothing more.

Cheers,
Teto.
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Re: Few feelings and questions.

Postby Manuel » Tue Aug 26, 2014 7:19 am

Hi Teto, welcome!

for something free (so developed during your free time)


It's not exactly developed during free time. Some of us is working hard and very seriously on it, but it requires more resources.
We will increase them in next months.


The GUI is really good, except for the cursors. We can change the settings with mouse, we can't type the value directly somewhere in the frame. Pity.


It's discussed here: http://bugtracker.makehuman.org/issues/278

I’ve seen that the genitals are “clothes” now.


In MH 1.1, the genital will back as part of body (proxies): http://bugtracker.makehuman.org/issues/36
Anyway the genital features can be edited in the current versin too: after loading the geometry, go in modelling->gender

By the way, about hair, OK, I’ve read what you want to do. But I hope you will release tools to add them easily in models, and, well, a special tool to design it would be great… (I know, much work for that…) ^^


As you said, it's a lot of work. But this is not the main problem. The real issue is that hair are so vary that it's almost impossible to design a tool flexible enough to represent all them using polygons.
We are working right now to increase the library and increment the variety.
But for me your tool is also perfect to design cartoonish humans.


MakeAnime and MakeToon are planned since long time. But as said above, we require more resources to afford this kind of tasks.
The problem is also that most os relistic morphings will not work with the toon faces and bodies, so we should design an elegant and smart way to handle them.

You're working on poses. That's good, except that the tools in Blender for this function are good (what's your opinion ?), so, maybe, a tool like makewalk in Blender would be enough ?


Do you mean we should drop poses in MH because there is a pose tool in Blender?

By the way, the possibility to put my "target file" in the good place (leg, nose, torso, whatever) in GUI, and not just in a special tab, would be greatly appreciated.


This is not feasible atm, due the architecture of MH.

I talked about few features that I want to see in your soft. But what about this feature for modders :
:arrow: The modder can choose the area to change/modify/replace. The engine replaces original area by the new one.
:arrow: The modder design the new topology in 3 positions, minimum, average, maximum (in Blender).
:arrow: He could subdivide squares (forgotten the right word) many times to have the precision he wants. All must remain rectangular.
:arrow: The engine (or a tool in blender) makes a "clothe" with that 3 shapes, and a cursor to choose (with good interpolations between those).


I've not completely figured out what do you mean...can you better explain it, perhaps using some sketches?
Manuel
 

Re: Few feelings and questions.

Postby Teto » Tue Aug 26, 2014 5:40 pm

Manuel wrote:Hi Teto, welcome!

Hi! :D

Manuel wrote:It's discussed here: http://bugtracker.makehuman.org/issues/278


Ah, good. Added a commentary.

Manuel wrote:In MH 1.1, the genital will back as part of body (proxies): http://bugtracker.makehuman.org/issues/36
Anyway the genital features can be edited in the current versin too: after loading the geometry, go in modelling->gender


Fine too.

Manuel wrote:MakeAnime and MakeToon are planned since long time. But as said above, we require more resources to afford this kind of tasks.
The problem is also that most os relistic morphings will not work with the toon faces and bodies, so we should design an elegant and smart way to handle them.


Oh, great ! How can I help ? Really. :P

Manuel wrote:Do you mean we should drop poses in MH because there is a pose tool in Blender?


Yep, basically. Your tool is designed to fake humans. It's well integrated in Blender which can do everything else (hair for example... :lol: ). So, except if your pose tool is far better than Blender's one, I'm not sure that it's useful to spend energy on a tool (no offense :P ), especially because I have to render, add hair, lights and objects in Blender anyway.

Manuel wrote:This is not feasible atm, due the architecture of MH.

Oh, pity. Any chance to change that ? :hope:

Manuel wrote:
I talked about few features that I want to see in your soft. But what about this feature for modders :
:arrow: The modder can choose the area to change/modify/replace. The engine replaces original area by the new one.
:arrow: The modder design the new topology in 3 positions, minimum, average, maximum (in Blender).
:arrow: He could subdivide squares (forgotten the right word) many times to have the precision he wants. All must remain rectangular.
:arrow: The engine (or a tool in blender) makes a "clothe" with that 3 shapes, and a cursor to choose (with good interpolations between those).


I've not completely figured out what do you mean...can you better explain it, perhaps using some sketches?

Ok. Imagine that I need a special button belly for a reason and the on in the original model is useless, because I want better definition or something. I can try to make a .target, but sometimes it's a pain in the ass, especially when I need high definition.

So the idea is to tell to the engine : OK, delete these faces (orange in the image below) and replace them by my faces. Faces that can be morphed as usual, since I gave to the engine position 1 (mini) and position 2 (maxi) and maybe average position of my own replacement of belly button.

I do understand the difficulty : the seam between original shape and mine. But, if we keep all faces in the border of altered faces, I think that it would be possible to do something, to help modders that have specific needs. Another option, sew all vertex in the border via the tool, "manually".

Cheers,
Teto.
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Re: Few feelings and questions.

Postby Manuel » Tue Aug 26, 2014 6:11 pm

Oh, great ! How can I help ? Really. :P


Do you have a site or portfolio? It's mainly matter of modelling hundreds of morphing.


Yep, basically. Your tool is designed to fake humans. It's well integrated in Blender which can do everything else (hair for example... :lol: ). So, except if your pose tool is far better than Blender's one, I'm not sure that it's useful to spend energy on a tool (no offense :P ), especially because I have to render, add hair, lights and objects in Blender anyway.


Here you go: http://www.makehuman.org/doc/node/short ... eline.html


So the idea is to tell to the engine : OK, delete these faces (orange in the image below) and replace them by my faces. Faces that can be morphed as usual, since I gave to the engine position 1 (mini) and position 2 (maxi) and maybe average position of my own replacement of belly button.


This is already implemented. It's called "Alternative topology" feature:
http://www.makehuman.org/doc/node/makeh ... ogies.html
You can create a custom alternative topology using MakeClothes. It's not straightforward, but not so hard.
Manuel
 

Re: Few feelings and questions.

Postby Teto » Wed Aug 27, 2014 5:03 pm

Manuel wrote:Do you have a site or portfolio? It's mainly matter of modelling hundreds of morphing.


I'll send a PM to you.



Arf. Already read, already forgotten... sorry. :mrgreen:
By the way, I don't understand why A-pose is a longer goal than "already made" poses.

Manuel wrote:This is already implemented. It's called "Alternative topology" feature:
http://www.makehuman.org/doc/node/makeh ... ogies.html
You can create a custom alternative topology using MakeClothes. It's not straightforward, but not so hard.


Oh, I've just understood the thing. But if I make a different topology that is not all the body, we'll see that it's a "patch" on the body, not a part of the body.

----------------

Great work anyway. Few addons are available for Blender that facilitate (facial) and animation, poses, morphing, I think I'll make my character like that : Start with makehuman (of course) to have all proportions I can have with it, and refine/finish with Blender (eyes, especially). Many things can be done with .target too.

Oh, last question : Is there a way to make a target for the eyes, or tweak something, in order to have the size I want ? :P
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Re: Few feelings and questions.

Postby Teto » Thu Aug 28, 2014 7:03 pm

I've just read radmap and few answers to other posts.

Genitals will be inside model for the next release, not clothes anymore.

Does it mean that the model will change within 2 months, so the .target won't be useful anymore ?
If it's that so :
- Another request , tell the place of an old target to the new model (in Blender) in order to not waste time to remake it again and again... :P
- How long this new model will be OK for modding ?
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Re: Few feelings and questions.

Postby Manuel » Thu Aug 28, 2014 7:14 pm

Teto wrote:
Does it mean that the model will change within 2 months, so the .target won't be useful anymore ?


Don't worry, the targets will continue to work. The new genitalia is just an alternative topology, the base mesh is always the same.
Manuel
 

Re: Few feelings and questions.

Postby Teto » Thu Aug 28, 2014 8:06 pm

OK, thanks. :P
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Re: Few feelings and questions.

Postby duststorm » Fri Aug 29, 2014 8:44 am

Teto wrote:Oh, I've just understood the thing. But if I make a different topology that is not all the body, we'll see that it's a "patch" on the body

It's possible to create an alternative topology that for 90% has exactly the same vertices at the same positions as the basemesh, and that simply varies in a few places. That would have the same effect as your proposal for patching areas.
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Re: Few feelings and questions.

Postby Teto » Fri Aug 29, 2014 5:37 pm

Right, I see what you mean. :)
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