Question on making Morphs

[PJFGamer]

Hi, first time poster here.
I've been working on figure software since poser 1.0, and I know just enough to be a PITA.
I am really impressed with the development on MH, especially on the nightly builds.
But I have no luck making morphs in Cinema 4D in Windows 7, and Blender is like a foreign language. (And while I think I got the MakeTarget add-on to load in Blender, I had no luck in getting it to show up in the menus so no way I know t o access it.)

My questions are (and they are myriad)

-What files do I import? When I try to open the BASE.OBJ file that comes with morphtarget, I get not only the helper parts but the body is broken into over one hundred pieces making it impossible to make a morph! (I also get this problem when I tried it Blender.) Perhaps we are to use the A8_v74 obj?
-There are a ton of helper and joint pieces. what do I do with them? Ignore them or can I delete them? Do morphs effect the helper objects and joints?
-The documentation references getting a BASE.OBJ file from Bitbucket and this does not have the Helper/joint parts. It also causes Maketarget to crash. "Cannot subtract OBJs: different number of vertices. (s:\users\...base.obj) has 19158 and resources\base.obj has 18528 vertices." Note I get this even when it try an unaltered BitBucket Base.obj file. Perhaps I am to replace the MakeTarget Base.obj file?
-I tried combining the parts (Even going so far as open the OBJ file in a text editor and make everything all one group.) but the resulting morph is unusable.
-This may be Cinema 4d specific, but when I import either BASIC.OBJ or a8_v74.OBJ and go to push vertices, I get a cloud of unused vertices. Is it OK to delete them? The topology remains unchanged but it may affect vertex order. (Cinema 4d has a option to delete unused vertices, but does not seem to solve anything.
- My first goal is to make anime face morph. Can a morph make the eyeball larger or is it restricted to the body/skin only? I guess it is possible to make larger eyeballs as a geometry option but that defeats the purpose of a gradual morph. This goes back to the helper question. How get eyes to grow and move position with a morph?
-It took me a while to figure out to put the, target files in user/documents/makehuman directory once you are done with it. This really should be in the documentation.

Finally, the documentation for makeTarget assumes the reader knows quite a bit, is not basic enough. I find its common issue with open source programs. Once I figure it out I'll happy to write a version for us no-brainers noobs.

Thanks for all your great work!

[duststorm]

MakeTarget has buttons to load basic males or females to start from, which is a much better starting point than base.obj

If you want to import base.obj correctly, then make sure you choose "keep vertex order".
Then, if you want to get rid of the helpers, select them using L button and remove. But note that good targets should also model the helpers, otherwise clothes and hair will not match your model when the target is applied. The joint helpers are important for skeletons to fit. If you model a target that changes the body, make sure the joint helpers go in the right places as well.
Hiding them is the better solution. You can create vertexgroups for them to make it easier to show/hide them while modeling a target.

If vertex count differs of the basemesh, thats an indication the mesh is probably not correctly imported.
You should have a mesh with 19.158 vertices for a mesh with helpers.

Deleting vertices will make the obj unusable for target creation, as you change the order of the vertices.
You also need an obj importer that can ensure the vertex order is unchanged.

If you dont like blender, there is a maketarget standalone tool that can be fed obj files. The requirement is of course that the OBJs you create maintain vertex order.

[PJFGamer]

Actually I was using the stand alone. (Blender to the uninitiated is a pain.)
It took some searching and trial and error but I found out the problem.

According to a post on the site, turns out the problem is the BASE.OBJ mesh included in the Maketarget standalone.
For example it does not have the HAIRHELPER group, that alone throws off the vertex count.
I downloaded the new version off of bitbucket
https://bitbucket.org/MakeHuman/makehum ... at=default
and replaced the old BASE.OBJ.
I then copied the new BASE.OBJ to a file named MORPHME.OBJ, and made it all one group using just a text editor.
(IE replace all occurrences of "g " with "#g " except for the first occurrence.)
Now I use the MORPHME.OBJ file to make new morphs and it works fine in makehuman!

IMHO, they really need to update the old base.obj in the current standalone bundle.

(Duststorm- I have no idea where to find the base male and female forms of which you speak. is there a way to get ahold of them without using the Blender add-on?)

[duststorm]

Actually I was using the stand alone.

The MakeTarget Standalone binary you can download from googlecode comes with the old A7 basemesh (or at least some old basemesh that is not used for version 1 of MakeHuman).
You need to replace it with the new basemesh, by copying base.obj in data/ folder of MakeTarget.

I have no idea where to find the base male and female forms of which you speak. is there a way to get ahold of them without using the Blender add-on?)

Blender MakeTarget has buttons for loading a standard male or female character directly.
If you prefer not to use Blender then you can (with the latest nightly unstable of MakeHuman) export a character of your choice to OBJ, make sure to UNCHECK "Feet on ground", and CHECK "helper geometry". Also, make sure you remove all proxies (geometries) from this character before exporting: Set eyes to NONE, same for hair, set Topology to default, make sure no hair, eyebrows or eyelashes are added to the human.