Alpha 8 - Tongue, Teeth, expressions missing etc...

[Fred Astair]

Hi There,

I've been using Alpha 7 for a while now, and was using the nightly builds on and off up until the RC of Alpha 8 came out. As recently as Jan 27, 2014, the nightly build of Alpha 8 contained the expressions and visemes, and they could be imported into Blender. Now, that it has been conditionally released, the expressions and visemes have been removed.

I've been searching and googling, and the best I've been able to understand about this is that Manuel, and the other wonderful and kind staff that work so hard to share this program with us, decided not to include expressions and visemes because they feel they are not comparable in quality to the rest of the model. It seems to me, although I could be wrong about this, that they intend to work to improve the expressions and visemes and implement them again in Alpha 9. Is any of what I've just said true?

I've reverted to using my January 27 (nightly update), copy of Alpha 8, instead of the RC release ( any of the nightly's after that have been stripped of expressions and visemes), because I'd rather be able to make my models smile and wink and frown etc...imperfectly, than not have any expressions at all. The only problem with that release however, is that the skins are too bright and look like hard shiny plastic in Blender. I fix that by lowering the lighting in Blender to a very low level, but then of course, anything else I create alongside is too dark. That severely limits where I can use the models. Is there a way to lower their brightness? I have managed to get into the skins and clothing in Blender and lower the intensity there, and that works too, but then I seem to lose a lot of the realism of the color and textures.

I'm also curious as to what the point is in having teeth and a tongue available in the RC release of Alpha 8? Since there are no expressions available, it is not possible to open the mouth, and therefore the teeth and tongue are not visible.

I couldn't find any real, direct discussion about the lack of expressions, or the reason for including the tongue and teeth in Alpha 8, so I thought I'd ask the question myself. Forgive me please if this has been discussed and I just haven't found anything yet. I did search here, and I googled for it, and I looked on You Tube, before writing this. If there is a future road map where Makehuman is going with all of this, could someone please point me to it?

Thanks,
Fred

[SaltyCowdawg]

Actually there is expression in A8 RC1. If you go to the pose/animate tab and the expressions sub-tab you'll see a bunch there. If you had said there is no face rig I'd say you're right..

[duststorm]

If you go to the pose/animate tab and the expressions sub-tab you'll see a bunch there.

They're not enabled by default, and are considered experimental (no support).

[Fred Astair]

Actually there is expression in A8 RC1. If you go to the pose/animate tab and the expressions sub-tab you'll see a bunch there. If you had said there is no face rig I'd say you're right..

I have A8 RC1 and the first place I looked was the pose/animate tab because that is where they used to be. Now, in A8 RC1, all there is is an option to choose skeleton, and none of the usual expressions etc...

They disappeared around the beginning of February...

[Fred Astair]

If you go to the pose/animate tab and the expressions sub-tab you'll see a bunch there.

They're not enabled by default, and are considered experimental (no support).

I don't understand Duststorm. Do you mean that there is a way to enable them in the release candidate? All I see under the pose/animate tab now is skeletons, where there used to be a whole bunch of expressions up until the beginning of February. I've been using the nightly build from January 23rd because that is the last version that I can find them in.

[ThomasL]

Changing that setting will only affect expressions within MH. Export of expressions has been removed in a hardcoded way, and cannot be revived by changing some settings.

[Fred Astair]

Changing that setting will only affect expressions within MH. Export of expressions has been removed in a hardcoded way, and cannot be revived by changing some settings.

Thanks Thomas, but I'm still not getting an answer to the question of "what is the point in having teeth and a tongue if you can't open the mouth and see them? Now, you can even choose the set of teeth from a list, plus you can choose a material for the tongue. What's the point?

Why were they not also removed from the RC release along with the expressions?

[Fred Astair]

Changing that setting will only affect expressions within MH. Export of expressions has been removed in a hardcoded way, and cannot be revived by changing some settings.

This is a model that I just made using the January 27 2014 nightly build of Alpha 8, Thomas. This is a screen capture from Blender 2.69. Obviously the expression did export.

I just did a quick model without touching it up to show that the expressions do export.

Can you guys not see the value in being able to create the A8 models with expressions, even if they are not perfect?

[Oscalon]

You actually can still open the mouth, as there is a bone for the jaw and the tongue has bones.

I am in the same situation that I found the expression keys to be of use, but I also understand why they didn't want to keep them in. Hopefully we can just get a facerig soon.

Be careful with using the nightly build where they were still working. As I remember, there was an issue in those builds that caused the area of the spine between the shoulder blades to behave strangely when imported to Blender, so check your model for that. I believe it wasn't fixed until after the keys were removed.

[Manuel]

I've been searching and googling, and the best I've been able to understand about this is that Manuel, and the other wonderful and kind staff that work so hard to share this program with us, decided not to include expressions and visemes because they feel they are not comparable in quality to the rest of the model. It seems to me, although I could be wrong about this, that they intend to work to improve the expressions and visemes and implement them again in Alpha 9. Is any of what I've just said true?

Yes. Alpha9 will be focused on poses.