Import Custom Model Into MH?

[Homura]

Hello I am a 3D Artist and I am wondering how to go about importing my models that I have made in zbrush into MH? I found the folder where MH loads the models and tried just dragging and dropping my model there but then MH wouldn't start. I honestly believe being able to import our own meshes into MH and building our own libraries would be a neat feature.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and looking forward to a solution.

[joepal]

You don't. You can't "import a model" into MH. MH presupposes a base mesh with exactly the vertices which exist in it. Everything inside MH is specified as modifications and/or additions to this mesh.

You could theoretically replace the base mesh with a modified base mesh as long as you only moved the vertices around (ie, not added or deleted any and all vertex numbers are the same), but this would probably produce odd results when applying targets.

Otherwise the pipeline for modifying/extending the form of the toon is by producing targets, ie differences calculated against the base mesh, see http://www.makehuman.org/doc/node/mhble ... arget.html

[Homura]

So basically impossible unless I take the source code and basically remake the whole infrastructure so it would work like poser and allow importing models for morphing, rigging, animating etc which would take years to do. Thanks for the feedback. Just was wanting a quick way to make variations of my models without having to do it manually and after looking at what mh does it kind of fits that bill but without being able to import models I wouldn't be able to get the results I wanted.

Thanks anyways.

[duststorm]

Just was wanting a quick way to make variations of my models without having to do it manually and after looking at what mh does it kind of fits that bill

You could use a software such as R3DS Wrap and fit the MH basemesh around your models, then generate targets out of it. Those can be loaded as custom targets in MakeHuman.

[Homura]

Just was wanting a quick way to make variations of my models without having to do it manually and after looking at what mh does it kind of fits that bill

You could use a software such as R3DS Wrap and fit the MH basemesh around your models, then generate targets out of it. Those can be loaded as custom targets in MakeHuman.

Is there any tutorials on how to do that? My models are High poly over 3 million for hair alone and I put a lot of detail in them so would prefer them not losing that detail. I have a job right now making 3D Characters for games and it is just too much work making 60 variations x 12 races so I have been trying to find tools that are drm free that will help with that.

[joepal]

Ignorance question, aimed largely at jonas: Is it possible to make a proxy with a *higher* poly count than the base mesh?

[duststorm]

Ignorance question, aimed largely at jonas: Is it possible to make a proxy with a *higher* poly count than the base mesh?

Yes, but making it too much more detailed than the basemesh might lead to precision problems.
It might work, though.

The question is rather how many polygons will MH accept in a proxy and still run acceptably.
Of course you could first model the mesh and then apply the proxy as a last step.

MakeHuman was never designed to work with millions of polygons, it might work, it might not, I have not tested it. The blender script might have terrible performance issues though, as I seem to recall they are not very optimized. Last time I used it, MakeClothes was very slow.

[duststorm]

Is there any tutorials on how to do that?

http://www.russian3dscanner.com/tutorials/
http://www.makehuman.org/doc/node/mhble ... arget.html

This is mostly unexplorered territory, though, so you would have to do a bit of research yourself.
I'd be very interested in your results though

If you say you have millions of polygons, I assume this is a sculpted mesh, like created in ZBrush? You might consider modeling (with MakeHuman) on a lower subdivision level, and plugging it back into ZBrush after the shape is modified, to reproject/reapply the high level details.
You could consider too if at the point where you apply MH, whether it would be enough to use normal and displacement maps. Since this is for game characters, I assume at some point you will be poly-reducing and baking maps.

Another interesting thing to look at might be Zbrush GoZ which is an exchange format that appears to have been designed for problems like this, where you interchange your high poly sculpt back and forth between lower poly game-oriented tools like Maya or motionbuilder. I believe blender has a plugin for it too. We have not (yet) made direct compatibility for it with MakeHuman, but through a tool like Blender you might be able to set up a valid pipeline. What GoZ allows you to do is export to a lower poly mesh with normal/disp maps, modifiy it, and reimport it in Zbrush while re-applying the high resolution details. Much like what I proposed a little above.

Blender has a very similar and cool feature like this (and I believe ZBrush does it too): the multires modifier, which allows you to subdivide a mesh multiple times, and model and sculpt on it at different subdivision levels. The cool thing is that modifications on one level are synchronized to the other levels. This means that you can modify, for example, the body proportions on a low level, while the sculpted pores and details on the higher subdivision level simply follow the shapes. Something like this would be a very valid approach to using MakeHuman in such scenarios.

A more rudimentary approach would be to re-shape a lower poly retopoed version of the mesh, that has normal and displacement maps, and then reverse-apply the normal+disp map to transform them into geometry again and restore the high poly version.

[BillDStrong]

The typical workflow you would use with MakeHuman, at least the easiest one, would be to use MakeHuman to create your base mesh, take that into Zbrush, subdivide and detail.

Now, here is the interesting thing. If you then bake that into a displacement map, you can use those same details on any of the base meshes you export out of MakeHuman.

This is the quick method. Quick means fast, not perfect.

So, lets use this to your advantage. Go into make human and make a Human with similar features as your current model. It doesn't have to be perfect, just close. Using xNormal you can create a Displacement map using the make human as the base mesh and your Sculpted mesh as the high poly. If your model is posed, you will want to make the models line up.

You can now apply your details to any MakeHuman mesh you export. So you would create a different character base, then add the detail from your Sculpted using the Displacement map. Zbrush will allow you to bake that Displacement into the mesh to recreate a high resolution mesh. you can then make the detail changes necessary for the character to be perfected.

keep in mind, you want to use larger maps for this, as a 1kx1k map in an ideal situation can keep the detail of about 1 Million polygon faces, but the Make human UVs are not optimum for this particualar purpose, as they don't maximize the space used by the model, they maximize artist readability. A 4k map should have enough resolution for up to 16 million polygon faces ideally, so figure about 30 percent of the UV map is wasted in this use case, and you have enough for a mesh of about 7million polygon faces.

This is the almost perfect method. Means not fast. R3DS Wrap Method.

Open MakeHuman and simply export out the default MakeHuman character as an obj. Open up Wrap, and import the high poly and low poly meshes. Size and orientate as needed. Create the control points Wrap requires, then just let it keep running for a while. Wrap will try to adjust the MakeHuman mesh to fit as perfectly as possible to the space occupied by your mesh, mapping it as closely as it can. It does this in an iterative fashion, so it is hard to know how long this will last.

Once it is finished, export the MakeHuman model out, then perform the same steps as before, going through xNormal and Zbrush. Essentially you are recreating the high poly version of your mesh with the MakeHuman as the base.

Now, When I say this is more accurate, what I mean is that the Displacement map is recording the difference between the two meshes. In the first process, that difference is greater and probably not exactly the detail you were trying to get. Whereas the Wrap method removes this difference, so you are only getting the detail from the mesh, and not the minute differences your eyes didn't catch.