So, I am extremely new to Makehuman, having downloaded it yesterday afternoon.
Since then, I have tried making a couple of characters with reasonable success, however, downloading assets to apply works as solidly as wet meringue. Almost ALL new textures for assets I download fail to load at all, (instructions followed - placed in V1/data/(subfolder, etc), complete with "materials" folder containing the correct files) Most textures of assets now have a grey/orange/text wraparound look to them (and an error message informing me that the texture cannot be found) or are untextured white objects stuck to my model (no errors there - the program just thinks this is not a problem). I followed the instructions for installing assets to the letter. I haven't the first idea why this is happening. Surely, everyone else seems to be getting on with the process, so what on Earth is preventing me from getting the same results with the same instructions.
Downloaded expressions are completely absent from the program, half the poses are also missing. I used the expression mixer to make some new expressions, however, while the first one saved successfully, any subsequent attempt to save an expression goes... weird. It's hard to know exactly what is happening, but wherever the first expression was saved, I cannot find it anywhere on my PC, but it's definitely in the list of available expressions. In fact, it's the only expression that has ever saved and reloaded at all. All new attempts just try to drop the file in the main program directory and WILL NOT allow them to be used in the program.
No files I save can be opened from within the program. All character models I save must be right-clicked/opened with makehuman, or the program won't let me see the models under the "load" window.
I have tried to add the MHAPI/asset downloader plugins as instructed, but neither appear to work at all. There is no new "community" tab, and the program doesn't seem to list the asset downloader anywhere (8_asset_downloader).
Basically, despite my obvious frustrations, I love this program. It's literally EXACTLY what I need for my writing, but so far, it has behaved really inconsistently, and I've been faced with constant, endless and deeply frustrating problems that have really made me reconsider if it's worth learning to use the program better at all. I don't want to have to move on, but so far, I've been left bewildered and angry by any attempt to make a character with more than the "in the box" assets, which, given how few they are, is seriously limiting how useful I can actually make the program. No beards, no clothes, no expressions, no plugins, no new assets.
I'm hoping that I've just made one simple, fundamental mistake that can be fixed, but I'm worried that the program just has no idea what it wants from me, and all my problems are caused by a diverse list of issues I haven't even begun to understand. I appreciate there is a learning curve to any program as complex as this, but when the basic newbie instructions for basic newbie functions do nothing they are meant to I don't know where to begin making this worth my while.
Does anyone even know where to start with this list?