MHX Rig Breast Movement?

[BudJillett]

Hi All,

The MHX rig exported from MakeHuman is awesome! Very detailed and well organized.

I'm using the rig in Blender 2.78 and for the life of me cannot get the breasts of a female character to move up or down. I can turn them x,y & z with the available driver, but that is all. In fact, if I press G to grab in Blender, the tool goes to rotation mode just as if I'd pressed R for rotation.

I've been through every bone layer and tweaked anything that looked like it might possibly control this motion, all to no avail. I've tried unlocking the transform and rotation controls, even the scale, and all I can do is rotate using the drivers in front of the areolas.

Any ideas? Anyone else using a MHX based female in Blender 2.78?

Thanks in advance,
Bud

[joepal]

MHX does some funky stuff with a combination of bone drivers and transformation locks.

If a bone doesn't move/rotate the way you want it to, you might have to either delete a driver or unlock a transformation.

The bone locks are on the bone panel:

lock1.png (20.65 KiB) Viewed 9950 times

The drivers crop a bit here and there, but if a text field (for example the rotation) has a purple background, you can right-click it and select "delete all drivers".

Anyway, you are best off by selecting the rig "default" or "default no toes" in MH, export, and then in blender "override presets" upon import and set rig type to "exported mhx". This way you should get all weight painting and bones in proper order.

[BudJillett]

Thank you so much, Joe, for your detailed reply. I think I'll try your export method and see if that goes any better. I have not tried deleting drivers yet. I kinda liked the driver setup, but I guess if the drivers don't do what I want, then I might as well delete it.

Ultimately, I'd like the breasts and other body parts (such as the belly of a heavy character) to moved dynamically. I'll be browsing this forum for relevant threads on that soon, but if you know any good threads here covering the topic please let me know.

I'll post back on the re-import so the results will be here if anybody else has the same issue.

Thanks again for all your help!

Peace,
Bud

[joepal]

If you aim at animation, I think you'll have more success using soft bodies than using rigging for jiggly parts like breasts and stomach. Rigging is more for rigid parts which deform in a linear way.

[wolgade]

I tried to do using breast animation with soft bodies a while ago. You'll find my Blender file here: http://www.makehumancommunity.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=12842#p31344. You can see the result in the attached video file. NUDITY WARNING: Don't mess with this file if you fear to get blind or fall from grace of god by watching poorly rendered female breasts.

[BudJillett]

I tried to do using breast animation with soft bodies a while ago. You'll find my Blender file here: http://www.makehumancommunity.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=12842#p31344. You can see the result in the attached video file. NUDITY WARNING: Don't mess with this file if you fear to get blind or fall from grace of god by watching poorly rendered female breasts.

Thanks, Wolgade,

I tried this approach last week and got poor results. However, I viewed your attached video and see you had much better luck. Nice job! I just scanned your referenced forum post as well and see that you built a low-poly cage around the breasts. I hadn't tried that. Thanks for making the blend file of that available, I'm going have a peek at it later and see what I learn

Peace,
Bud

[BudJillett]

JoePal--I had tried unlocking the transforms on both the bones and the drivers to no avail. However, after reading your reply I went in there again to go over my steps. I don't know why it hadn't occurred to me the first time, but I tried unlocking the drivers AND the bones at the same time (which now seems obvious!) and--voila!--the bones transform.

I kinda like what you and Wolgade are saying about soft body physics, though, at least as far as dynamic motion goes, and will be revisiting that soon. Wolgade's file will surely help in that endeavor.

Now, however, I'm going to try your suggesting about choosing the default rig on export from MH to see if I can't improve on my MH-to--Blender pipeline.

Thanks everybody for all the help!
Bud

[loki1950]

@wolgade your .blend file is improperly compressed can't open it on Linux while on Windows10 with 7-zip I get a data error and a default blend file just the cube,camera and light BTW .blend file are already zipped

Enjoy the Choice

[BudJillett]

I've been trying the technique in Wolgade's file, copying the settings back and forth to an existing Makehuman character of mine.

I cannot get the target mesh to deform in Object mode like it is in Wolgade's file. Anyone have enough experience with the mesh deform modifier to know how to get it to work in object mode?

Seems to work fine in Wolgade's file.

Scratching my head . . .

[wolgade]

I just scanned your referenced forum post as well and see that you built a low-poly cage around the breasts.

This is important. Otherwise you get wrinkled instead of moving breasts. Doesn't look good on any woman.

@wolgade your .blend file is improperly compressed can't open it on Linux while on Windows10 with 7-zip I get a data error

I don't have any problems unzipping the file using Ubuntu Mate and the built in "Engrampa". The file has been downloaded 67 times without complaints. I'll attach the uncompressed file for your convenience. BTW: It's 50% larger than the zip file, so blend files seem to benefit from compression.

I cannot get the target mesh to deform in Object mode like it is in Wolgade's file. Anyone have enough experience with the mesh deform modifier to know how to get it to work in object mode?

It's a while ago since I played around with it. The obvious first: Did you bind the mesh deform modifier. Without it won't do anything. Another idea: I used a very basic rig in my file. There are no breast bones. Trying to manipulate a mesh with an armature and a simulation at the same time can lead to weird results. If your rig has breast bones then try to remove their weight making them do nothing.