Skins - general discussion

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Skins - general discussion

Postby JuergenPB » Mon Jul 02, 2012 2:58 pm

2 cents about skins...


I just tried to alter an existing skin.

For this test, I just made minor changes, like some more beard/chest hair, and two tattoos.
The major problem is, that you don't really see what you are doing.

Let's have a look on the tattoo on the upper arm:
Finding out, where to place it, is a "try and error game". The whole arm in the skin file is very short. So you have to keep in mind, that the skin is stretched and everything you draw on it is also stretched. If you alter the measures of the upper arm (diam/lengh), you get the same problem. After posing the figure in Blender et.al. there might be some similar problems.
Therefore for some kinds of modifications of the skin, like such tattoos, it is impossible to make a skin, that fits to all kind of characters. It's of cause no problem for general changes like colors etc., that has effects on large body parts.
It mainly depends how much the skin is stretched generally and by the different modifiers in MH.

I think, the only way to get good results is, first generating a character and then altering the skin only for this particular character.

Of cause, it's possible to draw on a final rendered picture, but as we have skins in MH, imho it's a better solution to do as much as possible on the skin image.

with_tat.png
with_tat.png (51.22 KiB) Viewed 10199 times
with_tat_detail.png
with_tat_detail.png (81.03 KiB) Viewed 10196 times

caucasian-male-young-tat.png
caucasian-male-young-tat.png (116.04 KiB) Viewed 10199 times
tattoo-detail.png
tattoo-detail.png (105.28 KiB) Viewed 10196 times
Regards
Juergen
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Re: Skins - general discussion

Postby Manuel » Mon Jul 02, 2012 10:39 pm

JuergenPB wrote:
I think, the only way to get good results is, first generating a character and then altering the skin only for this particular character.


Yes. we should create many skins, for the main characters (currently we have only the male and female).
We are planning an upload/sharing for them..and also we are looking for someone that help us to write this doc:

http://www.makehuman.org/node/127

Thanks for testing!
Manuel
 

Re: Skins - general discussion

Postby JuergenPB » Tue Jul 03, 2012 2:43 pm

Dealing with "painted hair" is also difficult.

If you paint hair on the skin it might be OK for chest hair etc.
But for beard hair od head hair it's no solution. The painted hair is rendered like the skin and doesn't look good.

Especially for very short hair and some simple hairstyle a particlesystem may be good (in Blender).
I also think that that might be good for short beard hear like "three-day beard".

For other hairstyles it's good to use the hair provided by MH.


So skins are better without painted beard/head hair on them.

hair1.png
painted hair
hair1.png (24.28 KiB) Viewed 10176 times

hair2.png
simple particlesystem
hair2.png (32.38 KiB) Viewed 10176 times

hair3.png
Punk
hair3.png (31.52 KiB) Viewed 10176 times
Regards
Juergen
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Re: Skins - general discussion

Postby Manuel » Tue Jul 03, 2012 3:37 pm

JuergenPB wrote:

So skins are better without painted beard/head hair on them.


Using subtextures feature we should be able to choose different types of head.
I should found the time to write a short tutorial about them.
Manuel
 

Re: Skins - general discussion

Postby JuergenPB » Wed Jul 04, 2012 2:22 pm

As said before there are at least 3 ways for making hair.

- paint it on the skin
- use a hairstyle from MH
- use a particle system (Blender)

Painting on the skin gives the worst results.

The particle system is a bit tricky to use, but there are some features for (easy ??) hairstyle like comb, cut, smooth, etc.

hair_test.jpg
Some hair with the particle system
hair_test.jpg (12.2 KiB) Viewed 10157 times
Regards
Juergen
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Location: Paderborn/Germany

Re: Skins - general discussion

Postby joepal » Wed Jul 04, 2012 4:53 pm

Unfortunately particles doesn't work for blender cycles either.
Joel Palmius (LinkedIn)
MakeHuman Infrastructure Manager
http://www.palmius.com/joel
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Re: Skins - general discussion

Postby Manuel » Wed Jul 04, 2012 10:12 pm

joepal wrote:Unfortunately particles doesn't work for blender cycles either.


Also the particles are not easy to export.
We can code a particle system in MH, but then export it will be hard, due the fact each external software has his own format and his particular way to handle them.
Manuel
 

Re: Skins - general discussion

Postby wancow » Tue Dec 11, 2012 10:56 pm

Manuel wrote:
JuergenPB wrote:
I think, the only way to get good results is, first generating a character and then altering the skin only for this particular character.


Yes. we should create many skins, for the main characters (currently we have only the male and female).
We are planning an upload/sharing for them..and also we are looking for someone that help us to write this doc:

http://www.makehuman.org/node/127

Thanks for testing!


Are you still looking for someone to help you write the Texturing section of that document? I have a bit of experience tech writing, and a lot of experience dealing with UVS and creating/adapting textures. Blender is not the only option for viewing applied textures on an OBJ, either. There is also UVMapper Pro, Poser and DAZ Studio. UVMapper Classic (the freeware version) will make the UV template for you should you need one to get into GIMP, for instance. There are also several free skin texturing resources out there that can be adapted fairly easily for use with the current MakeHuman figure.
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Re: Skins - general discussion

Postby Manuel » Tue Dec 18, 2012 11:56 pm

Yes, please write me by our contact form: http://www.makehuman.org/contact

Best,

Manuel
Manuel
 


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