Question about Making Proxies

Works in progress and technical screen shots.

Moderator: joepal

Re: Question about Making Proxies

Postby blindsaypatten » Wed Jul 26, 2017 2:01 am

From a fresh startup of MH I set the gender to female and the race to Caucasian, then set the topology to Adult female genetalia, then exported using MHX2. I imported that into Blender, loaded the Average Female, clicked Create Vertex Groups and then Make Clothes. That ran and created a set of clothes. I loaded those clothes on the character described above and as far as I can tell it is a pretty faithful reproduction. I loaded some clothes on top and they seemed to fit exactly as they did on the character without the "proxy as clothes". I didn't take the last step of renaming the files to create the proxy because it seemed easier to compare the meshes as clothes loaded on the proxy.

If you follow the same procedure do you get the same result? If so is there any problem with it?
blindsaypatten
 
Posts: 586
Joined: Tue Mar 14, 2017 11:16 pm

Re: Question about Making Proxies

Postby MTKnife » Wed Jul 26, 2017 2:23 am

I haven't tried that--exporting via MHX2 might be the right way to generate a better target; I might also be able to generate a better proxy by applying the "Adult female genitalia" proxy before exporting; that's a pretty abstruse workflow, though. (Fitting clothes doesn't do me any good, but that at least verifies there are no problems with the exported object).

More info on the original problem....Here are pictures of the differences I mentioned:

Screenshot (12).png
Screenshot (12).png (58.7 KiB) Viewed 7967 times
Screenshot (13).png
Screenshot (13).png (56.48 KiB) Viewed 7967 times


Screenshot (14).png
Screenshot (15).png


The problem around the armpit may be hard to see....It's more obvious when you have a model loaded up and can switch between the proxies with a button press.

One more thing: I noticed, looking through the PROXY and OBJ files, that the coordinates for the new and old proxies are completely different, even though they look exactly the same loaded into Blender. I figured, however, that, even with different coordinates, I could copy the UV map (that appears to be the lines starting "vt" and "f" in the OBJ file), so long as the vertices (actually, in the OBJ file, the faces) are in the same order...and apparently they aren't. Actually, the result you get is not unlike what I got with the target creation experiment I posted a screenshot of in my last post: I think the problem with MakeTarget, in this case, is that the vertices/faces of the imported object don't match those of the "Average Female" target. The result is that you have the weird visual effect that results from Blender forming faces from sets of vertices that are in different parts of the model.

To answer an earlier question of yours, yes, you can transfer a UV map between objects in Blender--but only if they've got the same set of vertices (I don't recall for sure if the vertices have to be in the same places, but if the vertices are were in the wrong order, the result would be garbage in any case)....So that won't help me here.
MTKnife
 
Posts: 311
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2015 5:22 am

Re: Question about Making Proxies

Postby blindsaypatten » Wed Jul 26, 2017 2:44 am

Why do you say abstruse? By setting the gender and race and topology I created an instance of the proxy mesh that exactly matched the model that MakeClothes loads. MakeClothes then generates the needed proxy files. To me it seemed like the most straight-forward approach, no need for targets etc. If you create your desired UV map on the mesh before running MakeClothes and copy and rename the clothes into the proxy directory after you run it, you have exactly what you wanted. No?
blindsaypatten
 
Posts: 586
Joined: Tue Mar 14, 2017 11:16 pm

Re: Question about Making Proxies

Postby MTKnife » Wed Jul 26, 2017 4:54 am

With "abstruse", I was referring to the (hypothetical) method I was describing. Yours seems to be working, but it's not as obvious a path as simply loading up the proxy you want to change.

Also, I want to create a general proxy, not a Caucasian one--in fact, ideally what I want is an exact copy of "Adult female genitalia, except with a changed UV map. Maybe doing what you did, but not touching the "race" slider, would do the trick--I'm wondering though if I'd have to completely redo the UV map.
Last edited by MTKnife on Wed Sep 19, 2018 3:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
MTKnife
 
Posts: 311
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2015 5:22 am

Re: Question about Making Proxies

Postby MTKnife » Wed Jul 26, 2017 5:29 am

OK, just tried your method, but with the "race" sliders at default--it produced a proxy, but still one with problems (actually, far more problems than my original). The good news was that the UV map transferred perfectly. Here's instructions on how to do that:

https://www.blender.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14987

Next, I tried applying the "anti-base" target before exporting....Nope, that didn't work, either. :(

My original method, of loading up the old proxy directly as a Wavefront object, worked best--the result looks fine until you try to put clothes on. I've got one more thing I can try, though.
Last edited by MTKnife on Wed Sep 19, 2018 3:17 am, edited 2 times in total.
MTKnife
 
Posts: 311
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2015 5:22 am

Re: Question about Making Proxies

Postby MTKnife » Wed Jul 26, 2017 5:34 am

Nope, that didn't work, either: I was thinking the MHX2 file was similar to a Wavefront OBJ file, and that I could therefore import the old proxy as MHX2 rather than Wavefront...but I was wrong.

OK, I'm out of ideas.
MTKnife
 
Posts: 311
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2015 5:22 am

Re: Question about Making Proxies

Postby grinsegold » Wed Jul 26, 2017 12:32 pm

I still wonder where this all is leading to. I'm sure you have good reasons to not telling us everything. But remember that uv space distribution is an equilibrium - if you magnify the vulvar veins, you might end up with one pixel per eye. But eyes are overrated, right?
grinsegold
 
Posts: 321
Joined: Mon Jun 15, 2015 1:34 pm

Re: Question about Making Proxies

Postby blindsaypatten » Wed Jul 26, 2017 12:47 pm

I think you have a misconception (although it is possible it's me, but in this case I don't think so), using my method does not create a Caucasian proxy. The proxy will take whatever shape the underlying mesh takes, setting the Caucasian slider in my process is just matching the proxy mesh to the model being fitted to in MakeClothes, which is Caucasian. MakeClothes is just determining where to place the proxy vertices relative to the underlying mesh vertices so the proxy mesh has to match the underlying mesh when the mapping is being done. When you use the resulting proxy it will match whatever configuration you have in MakeHuman regardless of what racial, sex, or other settings you use. What configuration is used for the matching is pretty much arbitrary, as long as the MakeClothes mesh and the proxy mesh are configured the same when the matching process is performed. Because the MakeClothes mesh is Caucasian, the proxy mesh must also be Caucasian to get a good matching.

Once you generate the proxy using my method you can apply any set of racial or other targets and then try exporting with the original proxy, and with the new copy proxy, and you should find the resulting meshes match pretty much exactly.

The only way targets come into this is that you could apply the revert to base target in MakeHuman before exporting, and then you could load the Base Mesh instead of the Average Female (Caucasian) mesh in MakeClothes. But why bother, the result will be exactly the same.
blindsaypatten
 
Posts: 586
Joined: Tue Mar 14, 2017 11:16 pm

Re: Question about Making Proxies

Postby MTKnife » Thu Jul 27, 2017 4:54 am

grinsegold wrote:I still wonder where this all is leading to. I'm sure you have good reasons to not telling us everything. But remember that uv space distribution is an equilibrium - if you magnify the vulvar veins, you might end up with one pixel per eye. But eyes are overrated, right?


It's nothing terribly mysterious: I'm trying to remap the genitals area of the "Adult female genitalia" proxy so that it can use the genitals textures that were created for the old genitals proxy. I figure that's the only way to get proper textures without painting/pasting textures for each skin.
Last edited by MTKnife on Wed Sep 19, 2018 3:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
MTKnife
 
Posts: 311
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2015 5:22 am

Re: Question about Making Proxies

Postby MTKnife » Thu Jul 27, 2017 5:01 am

blindsaypatten wrote:I think you have a misconception (although it is possible it's me, but in this case I don't think so), using my method does not create a Caucasian proxy. The proxy will take whatever shape the underlying mesh takes, setting the Caucasian slider in my process is just matching the proxy mesh to the model being fitted to in MakeClothes, which is Caucasian. MakeClothes is just determining where to place the proxy vertices relative to the underlying mesh vertices so the proxy mesh has to match the underlying mesh when the mapping is being done. When you use the resulting proxy it will match whatever configuration you have in MakeHuman regardless of what racial, sex, or other settings you use. What configuration is used for the matching is pretty much arbitrary, as long as the MakeClothes mesh and the proxy mesh are configured the same when the matching process is performed. Because the MakeClothes mesh is Caucasian, the proxy mesh must also be Caucasian to get a good matching.

Once you generate the proxy using my method you can apply any set of racial or other targets and then try exporting with the original proxy, and with the new copy proxy, and you should find the resulting meshes match pretty much exactly.

The only way targets come into this is that you could apply the revert to base target in MakeHuman before exporting, and then you could load the Base Mesh instead of the Average Female (Caucasian) mesh in MakeClothes. But why bother, the result will be exactly the same.


I'm not sure I follow your logic, and I don't think it'll work, but I'll give it a try, maybe tomorrow when I have more time: it's never occurred to me that the MakeClothes meshes are "Caucasian"--are you sure of that?

However, I went and checked the other user-contributed proxies, and similar problems exist with practically all of them, to a greater or lesser degree: put stockings on a model (or, probably, anything else tight-fitting) and click through them, and you can see what I mean. My suspicion is that Blender is introducing a rounding error of some sort that's putting some of the vertices just slightly off. Mind you, if that is the case, it raises the question of how the older proxies (in particular, the genital proxies, which used to be included with the base installation) were created without encountering the same problems.
Last edited by MTKnife on Wed Sep 19, 2018 3:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
MTKnife
 
Posts: 311
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2015 5:22 am

PreviousNext

Return to WIP (Work In Progress)

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest