Modifying a pose in Blender

[Litmusdragon]

HI all

So I am attempting to fix a pose because it clips on the character I am working with

As near as I can tell I am doing the exact steps outlined here:
https://youtu.be/MQBtZgWyrI4

However, when I select the BVH I created from the poses menu, it comes up as the default pose. Meaning it does not work, I guess.

I've attached the BVH here

Any idea why it doesn't work?

[Litmusdragon]

Bump

Still can't get this to work unfortunately. As a coder of Ren'py visual novels, this tool has tremendous potential for generating art assets, but not if I can't make my own poses!

I'm following the steps in the video I linked but to sum up:

1. I chose the pose that I want to modify in Makehuman (in this case, standingnatural.bvh which is one of the downloadable assets)
2. I made sure that the normal skeleton was selected
3. I go to File -> Export and export as MHX2
4. In Blender, from a document with the default lightsource, camera, and square deleted, I go to File -> Import -> Makehuman mhx2
5. I adjust the pose of the left arm slightly
6. I export a single frame as a BVH into Makehuman's data\poses\ directory
7. When I select this pose from Makehuman, it reverts the character to the "None" pose. The pose file itself is attached to the previous post.

Thanks for any help!

[joepal]

I'm somewhat surprised the approach in the video works, because when you export a posed character from MH, the selected pose becomes the rest pose.

As an alternative approach:

* Download and install both the MH side and blender side of the plugins found here: https://github.com/makehumancommunity/c ... y-plugins/ (you need MH_Community for blender side, and at least MHAPI and socket for MH side)
* have a new toon in MH
* Select the default skeleton
* export as MHX without changing anything else
* Keep MH open. Go to the socket tab and enable the server socket.
* In MH, select the pose you want to use/modify
* Import in blender without using any overrides
* Select the skeleton in blender
* In blender, go to the MakeHuman tab and click "sync pose"
* Modfify the pose
* Export as BVH to the mh dir

(this is out of my head right now, I might have missed or mixed up something)

Anyway, if things do not work this way either, try starting from the default pose and move something to see if you can get any posing whatsoever to work.

[blindsaypatten]

I would guess that this is the same issue that I had where any changes you make to the pose in Blender are applied relative to the default pose when you bring them back into MH. I found that I had to export in the default pose and do the complete pose from there.

I would think that there would be some way to derive the relative pose between two poses in Blender, but I've never tried to figure it out. Or, perhaps you can take the MH pose and apply it in Blender instead of in MH?

Purely out of curiosity, why do you need to transfer the pose back to MH if you have it right in Blender? Can you transfer the character directly from Blender to Ren'Py? I don't know anything about Ren'Py so this may be a stupid question.

[Litmusdragon]

I'm somewhat surprised the approach in the video works, because when you export a posed character from MH, the selected pose becomes the rest pose.

As an alternative approach:

* Download and install both the MH side and blender side of the plugins found here: https://github.com/makehumancommunity/c ... y-plugins/ (you need MH_Community for blender side, and at least MHAPI and socket for MH side)
* have a new toon in MH
* Select the default skeleton
* export as MHX without changing anything else
* Keep MH open. Go to the socket tab and enable the server socket.
* In MH, select the pose you want to use/modify
* Import in blender without using any overrides
* Select the skeleton in blender
* In blender, go to the MakeHuman tab and click "sync pose"
* Modfify the pose
* Export as BVH to the mh dir

(this is out of my head right now, I might have missed or mixed up something)

Anyway, if things do not work this way either, try starting from the default pose and move something to see if you can get any posing whatsoever to work.

This ALMOST works. Like, 95%. You are correct in that the BVH is only recording the adjustments I make, not the whole post. So by following your instructions (loading a default pose model into Blender, changing the pose in Makehuman, syncing, making my adjustment, and then exporting) I actually do end up with a BVH I can open in Makehuman that MOSTLY does what I want. However. For some reason the character is floating above the ground!

I though that maybe the problem was the "feet on ground" checkmark when exporting. So, in following your steps, I tried with both an export with that checked, and one without. The result of both is that when I open the pose i made in Makehuman, the character is floating above the ground. If I checkmark "feet on ground" when exporting the character is floating MUCH higher than when I do not checkmark it. However, in neither scenario is the character properly position with their feet on the ground. So when I switch between some other pose, and then to the pose I created, the character jumps up into the air, basically. Any idea why this is happening?

Purely out of curiosity, why do you need to transfer the pose back to MH if you have it right in Blender? Can you transfer the character directly from Blender to Ren'Py? I don't know anything about Ren'Py so this may be a stupid question.

Ren'py is 2D, so I must pre-render everything I plan to use with it. I'm basically using Makehuman to generate character sprites. (Or I would like to, anyway ...)

[loki1950]

MH uses strictly OpenGL for it's render engine and there is a very limited number of shaders defined if you want 2d renders to make sprites blender is a much more flexible tool setting size and colour space as well as alpha transparency giving you more control of the final character image,also save moving back and forth from MH >blender>MH .I am sure that someone has used blender to produce sprites for Ren"Py have you tried googling for a video of the workflow.

Enjoy the Choice

[RobBaer]

[quote="Litmusdragon]"I though that maybe the problem was the "feet on ground" checkmark when exporting. So, in following your steps, I tried with both an export with that checked, and one without. The result of both is that when I open the pose i made in Makehuman, the character is floating above the ground. If I checkmark "feet on ground" when exporting the character is floating MUCH higher than when I do not checkmark it. However, in neither scenario is the character properly position with their feet on the ground. So when I switch between some other pose, and then to the pose I created, the character jumps up into the air, basically. Any idea why this is happening?[/quote]

This is a known (and well-discussed / investigated issue on the bug tracker ) that stems from the way Blender exports .bvh files. Jonas submitted a Blender patch, but its status went into no man's land when Campbell Barton moved on from that development team. The best solution for now is to manually edit the offset in you .bvh file.

see the infamous http://bugtracker.makehumancommunity.org/issues/758

[Litmusdragon]

MH uses strictly OpenGL for it's render engine and there is a very limited number of shaders defined if you want 2d renders to make sprites blender is a much more flexible tool setting size and colour space as well as alpha transparency giving you more control of the final character image,also save moving back and forth from MH >blender>MH .I am sure that someone has used blender to produce sprites for Ren"Py have you tried googling for a video of the workflow.

I would rather use Makehuman for exporting though as it is much simpler and would be much faster at rendering a variety of poses, clothing options, and expressions, especially since this is my first toe-dip into 3D and I find Blender kind of baffling. Also, the way that Makehuman renders models is pretty much ideal for my needs already. If only I could this pose thing to work.

[quote="Litmusdragon]"I though that maybe the problem was the "feet on ground" checkmark when exporting. So, in following your steps, I tried with both an export with that checked, and one without. The result of both is that when I open the pose i made in Makehuman, the character is floating above the ground. If I checkmark "feet on ground" when exporting the character is floating MUCH higher than when I do not checkmark it. However, in neither scenario is the character properly position with their feet on the ground. So when I switch between some other pose, and then to the pose I created, the character jumps up into the air, basically. Any idea why this is happening?[/quote]

This is a known (and well-discussed / investigated issue on the bug tracker ) that stems from the way Blender exports .bvh files. Jonas submitted a Blender patch, but its status went into no man's land when Campbell Barton moved on from that development team. The best solution for now is to manually edit the offset in you .bvh file.

see the infamous http://bugtracker.makehumancommunity.org/issues/758[/quote]

There is a .patch file in there that is supposed to fix this issue, however I have been trying unsuccessfully for over an hour now trying to find some way to apply a .patch from Windows 10. The instructions on applying a .patch in Blender's wiki assumes you are on linux. GnuWin32 seems incompatible with Win 10 64 bit. I've ran out of time for the moment and will continue to search for a solution but if anyone knows one it'd be appreciated.

Thanks for the help so far!

[blindsaypatten]

You don't need to patch blender, just replace the file as specified in the video you cited at about the one minute mark:

Here's the direct link:
http://bugtracker.makehumancommunity.or ... ort_bvh.py

On my Windows machine the file goes in this directory:
C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.78\scripts\addons\io_anim_bvh

[Litmusdragon]

You don't need to patch blender, just replace the file as specified in the video you cited at about the one minute mark:

bvh_fix.png

Here's the direct link:
http://bugtracker.makehumancommunity.or ... ort_bvh.py

On my Windows machine the file goes in this directory:
C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.78\scripts\addons\io_anim_bvh

issue is FIXED now, thanks very much everyone!