Am I in the right place?

[flowney]

I came to MakeHuman on a quest for a simple pose-able character modeled on the likes of those little 3D people you see so many still images of (see: http://images.freepicturesweb.com/img1/01/02/6.jpg). My students and I are interested in creating short, stop motion videos using a small cast of similar characters - very probably with a virtual green screen (or alpha channel) background so that we can place them in various contexts.
Beyond that, we are interested in learning how to map one of these characters to video of a human actor such that the avatar eventually takes the place of the human actor moving about exactly as s/he did. Eventually, this could become so precise that we could mimic facial expressions and speech.
So, am I in the right place at least for the least of these ambitions?

[joepal]

Probably. If I understand what you're asking for, here's an example of exactly that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_afDJbGGE8o

That is, a set of MakeHuman models exported to a 3d program (blender) and then used in an animation based on BVH (ie a script generated by tracking a real actor, motion capture).

MakeHuman as such supports part of the pipeline: the characters and the rigging. By combining this with blender and the tools makehuman provide for blender, you are able to go through the whole pipeline.