My tutorial on how to import in to blenderFINISHED 4/30/2008

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My tutorial on how to import in to blenderFINISHED 4/30/2008

Postby andyp » Wed Apr 02, 2008 3:11 pm

WARNING: this thread is out dated visit http://www.makehuman.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=167&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a for the newest version




so i posted this as a response to another thread,
but i'm gonna make another thread for this so that everyone can read
this is a tutorial that basically explains how to get your mesh rigged, with a facial rig,
and get clothes as well in blender.

it is split up into four parts:
textures & materials
Rigging the Body
Easy Clothes
Mouth Rigging

you will need both:
blender 2.45
and
blender 2.46RC1 or later for this

2.45 for textures/renders
2.46RC1 for rigging

import using the colliada
remember were you saved it from in MH
Image

here are some quick pointers with blender after importing

Textures and materials

to make things simpler to understand for materials
hold your skin up to the light, does it reflect light or does it not reflect light
the answer is simple, your skin is rough and absorbs light not reflects it
so for materials set every material, related to skin or hair, to these settings

spec= 0.00
hard=1

for those who want to be advanced and do SSS rendering there is a tutorial on MH's website, i think... :?:

the textures, located in C:\Program Files\MakeHuman 0.9.1 RC1\data\rib_data\textures_data,
i suggest copying the folder into your blender directory
have to be added manually after import

the textures are labeled with the material they belong to, and the type of texture that they belong to in the map to sections
note: that the head texture also has the textures for the teeth and tounge

_color = col, cspec, cmir
_bump = nor
_specular = spec, hard
_reflection = ray mirror
and make sure you hit UV so that they go on nicely

skin

Image

and when makeing the eye brows and eyelashes(images below), make sure you make the material with the alpha set to 0
and with the tracable and shadow buff off, with the spec and hard set to 0, or 1 with the hard. and then click z-transparency

eyelashes

Image

eyebrows

Image

for the eyes
do the same as you been doing, but select ray mirror for the eye_reflection texture, then click RayMir a second time, and it should turn yellow.

Rendering with textures
blender 2.46 has a bug were the alpha function with textures is messed up so when you set a texture to affect alpha, for the eyelashes, and eye brows the alpha doesn't show up as much, so for renders use 2.45


Rigging

as far as riging
download 2.46 rc1 cause thats the lastest version of blender,
and use that for riging the mesh, but first in edit mode
select all verts listed under the bones material, and delete them.
Image

next in object mode
hit set smooth
Image

next
select the body, and the armature
hit crl + p for parenting
make parent to : armarature => create from bone heat
this will rig your mesh perfectly.

Image

if you get any errors like failled to find solution, try importing the mesh again
and if it still doesn't work check to see if the armature is fully inside, of the mesh or mostly inside

Clothes

for clothes this part i got from when it was posted @ blenderartists a while ago:
make a copy of the main mesh shift + d
then go with it to another layer
in edit mode
select and delete all the verts (and materials) with every material except for the body
then edit where you want the clothes to start and end, making the skin into a shirt or pants by getting rid of the feet/hands, legs for shirt, torso/arms for pants
next exit out of edit mode, go to modifiers
select decimate, set it at .25 hit apply
Image
Image

set smooth
in the materials replace the body with a new material
make sure it doesn't have textures,
and change the color for the clothes
have both layers with character and clothes open,
select clothes, and then go into sculpt mode,
select inflate, and inflate the clothes until they fit out side of the characters skin, instead of parts in the character.
then repeat the rigging steps with the clothes

and thats a fully rigged and clothed character with the exception of the mouth

Image

for hair, ask nicely for someone with hair made using textures to give you the hair and then add it to the mesh and it will look not as well as if its done with strands, but
i've never really been able to get strands to work properly.

Mouth rig

a quick explination of how to rig the mouth

you will need blender 2.46 RC1 or above for this

first take the rig that was imported from MH
then in edit mode, select the node that is between the top head arm, and the lower head arm,
extrude it [e] and drag the new arm to reach to the chin of your character.

Image

next
select the body mesh, hit shift-s, which makes a copy of the mesh that you can edit,
you want to do this twice.
for the original mesh, in edit mode, go into the edit menu, and select the verts in the materials in the teeth and tounge, and delete them.

for the other two copies, one is going to be the teeth, and the other is going to be the tounge. move them to different layers


now
select the modified armature,
go into pose mode
if your properties menu is not open, open it by pressing N
then select the new arm
going to rot x,
set at 10
you'll notice that the arm should be in an open jawed position

select the body mesh, and go into weight paint mode.
make sure you have the jaw bone selected for the paint
(it should be all blue when you first start)
hit n which will bring up a properties menu, and drag the brush size and opasity to the highest possible state
paint the the chin up to the lower lip completely red

Image

then hit wire in the properties menu,
and then click the button that looks like a yellow triangle on a green plane, next to the layers menu,
this is a new feature with 2.46 that allows you to select a face and weight paint just that face.

Image

so now you want to paint the lower lip, face by face, which actually doesn't take that long

Image

next you want to get inside of the mouth and make sure the lower jaw, but not the top, and insides are painted
you can do this by hitting 5 on the key pad, and swinging the view into the mouth,
now you can use a combination of painting by face or every thing, and make sure the inside is fully painted.

Image

makesure you unclick the yellow triangle, and then the wire button
and go into object
if you look at the mouth,
it looks a lil bit strange, and disfigured

Image

which brings us to the next new feature of the weight painting in 2.46 RC1
blurring weight paint.
go back into weight paint mode
and skim the areas where red meets blue
and it should blur it from red to yellow to green to blue
just make sure you dont over use it.

Image

for the teeth,
go into weight paint mode, and have the jaw bone selected
go to sub(for subtract) and make sure that it is not already painted for the new bone
it likes to trick you some times saying that it's not painted when really it is
next make sure that it is fully painted to the head bones by selecting the lower head bone, and painting it all red
you'll have to move the camera around to get every nook and cranny
and then repeat the step for the upper head bone
now for the jaw bone
simply weight paint the mesh, and make sure you do the upper parts of the lower teeth face by face(with the yellow triangle thingy), so that you get just the lower teeth.
(hint rapid fire the mouse,as in click the right and left buttons on the mouse really fast can make this work better,
cause then you are selecting each face and making it all red :D )

Image

forthe tounge just paint it half way, so that its green, and now when you move the jaw, the tounge should move, but not completely.
use the blur function if needed to make it all green

Image

hope you guys find this useful
Last edited by andyp on Wed Jun 11, 2008 5:29 am, edited 5 times in total.
andyp
 
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Re: My tutorial on how to import in to blender

Postby nphillips » Thu Apr 03, 2008 5:40 am

andyp wrote:as far as riging
download 2.46 rc1 cause thats the lastest version of blender,
and use that for riging the mesh, but first in edit mode
select all verts listed under the bones material, and delete them.
next hit crl + p for parenting => parent from: armarature => create from bone heat
this will rig your mesh perfectly.
This doesn't work at all. Maybe I'm doing something wrong...I don't know. I have blender 2.46rc1 running, no problem. I can delete the verts that are "bones".

If I hit ctrl+p, I receive an error saying "Select 1 to 3 vertices to parent to". Selecting all does the same, and I'm pretty sure I don't want to parent 3 verts at a time ;)

Technically, you say "crl + p", but I assume that is supposed to be "ctrl + p", yes?
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Re: My tutorial on how to import in to blender

Postby andyp » Thu Apr 03, 2008 8:01 pm

nphillips wrote:
andyp wrote:as far as riging
download 2.46 rc1 cause thats the lastest version of blender,
and use that for riging the mesh, but first in edit mode
select all verts listed under the bones material, and delete them.
next hit crl + p for parenting => parent from: armarature => create from bone heat
this will rig your mesh perfectly.
This doesn't work at all. Maybe I'm doing something wrong...I don't know. I have blender 2.46rc1 running, no problem. I can delete the verts that are "bones".

If I hit ctrl+p, I receive an error saying "Select 1 to 3 vertices to parent to". Selecting all does the same, and I'm pretty sure I don't want to parent 3 verts at a time ;)

Technically, you say "crl + p", but I assume that is supposed to be "ctrl + p", yes?


yes i did mean ctrl + p sorry,

two questions,
are you parenting just the body mesh to the rig?
and
are you in object mode?
andyp
 
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Re: My tutorial on how to import in to blender

Postby nphillips » Fri Apr 04, 2008 1:17 am

Yeah...I got it to work.

You should probably change that section to say:

1) you need to go back to object mode
2) first select the body, then shift-click to select the armature so both are selected, but the armature is the active object
3) ctrl+p (and continue from here)

It's too vague, otherwise. Then you have tired people like me, blindly following a tutorial without thinking, ending up with silly questions. Remember, just because something is blatantly obvious to you, it might not be that way to someone else.
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Re: My tutorial on how to import in to blender

Postby b!d » Fri Apr 04, 2008 8:07 am

Thanks for the guide, but I think some screenshots will help.
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Re: My tutorial on how to import in to blender

Postby nphillips » Sat Apr 05, 2008 4:16 am

nphillips wrote:Yeah...I got it to work.
Actually...I sort of take that back.

Yes, I was able to figure out the steps you described. But, when I try to pose the armature, verts and edges don't move with the rest of the mesh. Example image in the attachment. Are there some specific/special settings I might need to use?
Attachments
armature.png
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Re: My tutorial on how to import in to blender

Postby andyp » Sat Apr 05, 2008 7:18 pm

nphillips wrote:
nphillips wrote:Yeah...I got it to work.
Actually...I sort of take that back.

Yes, I was able to figure out the steps you described. But, when I try to pose the armature, verts and edges don't move with the rest of the mesh. Example image in the attachment. Are there some specific/special settings I might need to use?


once in a while i had those problems too,
where it would give an error message as well
just repeat the steps
and it should work
and make sure you delete all of the verts associated with the bones material
cause the messes with the rigging from bone heat

i'll post some screen shots when i can figure out how to make them
would anyone know how to do that?
andyp
 
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Re: My tutorial on how to import in to blender

Postby nphillips » Sun Apr 06, 2008 12:19 am

i'll post some screen shots when i can figure out how to make them
would anyone know how to do that?
What OS?

In most cases, the printscreen button does a lot more than take up room on your keyboard. If you're in windows, hit printscreen, then make a new image in your graphics app of choice, and paste. Linux, it should open a save file dialog (in recent releases of Gnome and KDE, anyway)
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Re: My tutorial on how to import in to blender

Postby andyp » Sun Apr 06, 2008 9:47 pm

oh wow,
thanks i'll work on getting inmages up soon
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Re: My tutorial on how to import in to blender(UPDATED 4/13/2008

Postby andyp » Mon Apr 14, 2008 2:27 am

hey all i posted the first half of images
if you guys have any trouble let me know
andyp
 
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