Ortho/Persp

[ibigfire]

I swear there used to be an option to switch from Orthogonal view to Perspective view and back. But I'm not finding any references to that now. Am I crazy?

[duststorm]

No, there is no such option in MakeHuman.
It might have been possible in the past, but we removed the ugly and unflattering perspective camera.

[ibigfire]

Ugly and unflattering has nothing to do with it though. MakeHuman is a wonderful tool, but it is essentially a character creator, with the freedom to then move those characters into Blender and other 3D applications, and then to other productions, right? The final product every one of these characters will end up in will be in perspective view as far as I'm aware, so to create an accurate character model for the final product's view should be an option, I believe. Possibly more important than an orthographic view for the creation of characters. Can you imagine a character creator for a game using an orthographic view while the rest of the game is, of course, in perspective view? It would be very frustrating for sure. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, or to agree with me if I'm right, of course! I'd love for others to chime in on the matter. Especially a developer of MakeHuman such as yourself, Dust. Thank you for replying.

[duststorm]

I've heard this argument before, but I'm not so sure it makes much sense. The distortion with perspective projection varies with how closer you zoom in to the model. While in a scene, seen at a bit of a distance, this is very moderate, if you zoom in close (which is what you usually do for modeling), it starts looking awful (and is hard to estimate proportions of).
Not modeling in ortho mode can sometimes result in strange discrepancies in your mesh, caused by deceiving projections. While projection might seem natural, in fact it really isn't so much: stereoscopic view and the fact that we look with our brains cancel out most of the projection distortions. You do not get this compensating effect when looking at a screen (unless you use something like an Oculus VR display).

You might have seen artist renders of 3d charaters, the kind you often see on polycount and such. (for example: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=130023 or http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BEfqsDtH95w/U ... Bortho.jpg) Most of these are rendered with orthographic cameras.
To me, really without a scene to support it, a character floating in a void rendered in perspective just looks odd.

After implementing the new camera I just never could be bothered to implement a perspective camera, since I never use it and think it only confuses people. Mostly I found that my time is better spent on other tasks. We accept code contributions for perspective camera, though.

[ibigfire]

The distortion with orthographic projection varies with how closer you zoom in to the model.

Do you mean perspective projection? Because this seems counter to the rest of your post.

Orthographic view makes fantastic sense while modelling mechanical devices and the like, where you do want exact proportions and measurements. It would be incredibly difficult to model things like that in perspective view, for sure. But for organic beings, and especially faces where every small detail is important and not mechanically exact, perspective is important. If they will be used in a game that would have to be in perspective view, for example, being able to see it in perspective view while modelling is absolutely vital.

Say, for example, I had a specific head shape for a character I was making for a game in mind. Something from a picture. For example:


Modelling that in orthographic view alone, with the intent of it being in a perspective medium, is darn close to impossible, yeah?

We accept code contributions for perspective camera, though.

I'm no coder, sadly. I'm just trying to explain why perspective view is sometimes necessary, especially in a program designed specifically for creating organic creatures that may eventually be used in a perspective view based medium. And I'm trying to explain this so that if you ever do find yourself considering including a toggle for perspective view, I fervently vote "Yes, please. Very very much yes please."

[Mikel_J_Gee]

Sorry!

But the answer that comes to my mind is purely and only:

Use Blender for the parts of "fine-tuning", because for that what You explain (my personell opinion) MH was'nt ever constructed. And I dare to doubt, that this will ever happen in MH. And that's totally ok. Cause the intention is to get a base of an human and not a complete and sophisticated unique character.

[duststorm]

The distortion with orthographic projection varies with how closer you zoom in to the model.

Do you mean perspective projection? Because this seems counter to the rest of your post.

Yes, indeed... Correcting it.

[ibigfire]

Sorry!

But the answer that comes to my mind is purely and only:

Use Blender for the parts of "fine-tuning", because for that what You explain (my personell opinion) MH was'nt ever constructed. And I dare to doubt, that this will ever happen in MH. And that's totally ok. Cause the intention is to get a base of an human and not a complete and sophisticated unique character.

No need to apologize! I appreciate the input. But if that's what MakeHuman is intended to be, then yeah, it's already accomplished the ability to make a base human. Done. But that's barely better than grabbing a generic human model of adequate quality from literally anywhere else and fine-tuning it in Blender. MakeHuman can be so much more than that, and it's *so* close. I just want it to be better, more useful to all.

Edit: I just discovered that as far as code contributions go, this post here actually already has a nigh complete code contribution!
http://forum.makehuman.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=10487&p=23522&hilit=Orthographic#p23522
Could this be implemented even as like, a hidden function somewhere since you're worried about confusing your userbase?

[duststorm]

As I said, when I created the new camera system I largely neglected perspective functionality, it's still in there, but it's mainly broken and needs attention.
The patch you mention simply enables the perspective mode of the camera, but does not actually do anything to fix the outstanding issues that are required to enable the perspective camera again.
It's a quick hack with possibly some stability issues.

[ibigfire]

As I said, when I created the new camera system I largely neglected perspective functionality, it's still in there, but it's mainly broken and needs attention.
The patch you mention simply enables the perspective mode of the camera, but does not actually do anything to fix the outstanding issues that are required to enable the perspective camera again.
It's a quick hack with possibly some stability issues.

Oh, for sure, I saw there were some issues, and it's not entirely complete. But much better than nothing for those of us who could use it direly.