Project MakeHuman4SL/Opensimulator

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Project MakeHuman4SL/Opensimulator

Postby Naiyro » Mon Jun 18, 2018 3:21 pm

Hello,


Makehuman has been created to design avatar simply and in an accessible way in order that anyone can use it.

However, this accessibility disappear for users from Opensimulator and Second Life. Indeed, only expert users familiar with modelling or users who have money to spend in a third party software can use it because of the difficulty of the export. And that for an avatar with a skeleton not really satisfactory.

It is a shame because it could be an important part of your users. Nowadays more than 45,000 accounts are connected simultaneously in Second Life and Opensimulator had more than 100,000 users.

It is also this majority who could, for example, to pay for help Makehuman to grow.

As a student in an engineering school, I am doing an internship in a French non-profit organization specialized in digital and 3D research.

For example, Meza is creating a web application that allows simple users to manage an opensimulator without messing with .ini files and using command lines. This application will also be encapsulated in a package with a Win, Linux and Mac os compatible python launcher so that everyone can see their own opensimulator server on their computer.

As soon as a package is functional, Meza will launch a call for participatory financing.

Ultimately, Meza also plans to integrate Makehuman directly into the Second Life / Opensim compatible 3D viewer / client or to build a bridge between the two tools allowing inworld to create and/or adapt avatars.

Meza is also working on a whole Terra FrancoPhonia concept with one part on SL and another on Opensimulator. For this program, participants already French and paying taxes will be encouraged to use a system of Donation with financial part and part in competences. It is a way to attract people to remake their SL avatars on Opensimulator because currently you can't export creations from other people, so you have to remake everything. Make Human would therefore be most adapted because it would allow users to easily remake an avatar close to the old one.

Considering all this, would you be interested in collaborating?

I know python well and would like to help in a first time to simplify export by making Makehuman avatars compatible so they can be imported directly into Sl / Opensim.

To get there I would need information about what you know about it that would allow me to correct this problem.



Do not hesitate to mp me for more information.

Sincerely,
Naiyro
 
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Re: Project MakeHuman4SL/Opensimulator

Postby RobBaer » Tue Jun 19, 2018 12:10 am

Naiyro wrote:Hello,
As a student in an engineering school, I am doing an internship in a French non-profit organization specialized in digital and 3D research.
...

Ultimately, Meza also plans to integrate Makehuman directly into the Second Life / Opensim compatible 3D viewer / client or to build a bridge between the two tools allowing inworld to create and/or adapt avatars.
...

Considering all this, would you be interested in collaborating?

I know python well and would like to help in a first time to simplify export by making Makehuman avatars compatible so they can be imported directly into Sl / Opensim.



Without discussing details, I can say we are always interested in collaborating. Right now the development team is focused on porting from python 2 to python 3, moving from Qt4 to Qt5, and modernizing our use of openGL which is sadly aged. We all have full time work commitments and do development work on MH on the side. That said, the prospect of an energetic collaborator is always attractive if the goals are consistent with our commitment to open source. There has been an interest in second life of long standing on the forum and providing stronger direct support would be terrific.

If you want a central private contact to the development team, i would suggest that you PM Joepal, or feel free continue an open dialog here. We are a very open group.
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Re: Project MakeHuman4SL/Opensimulator

Postby Naiyro » Wed Jun 20, 2018 1:48 pm

Hello,

If we contact you, it is precisely for the opensource side that is our core.

Our goal is to simplify the lives of simple users and to advance a tool like makehuman to make it accessible beyond the world of developers and modelers. In short, to make it accessible to simple users of secondlife and especially of opensimulator in our case.

To be able to export avatars directly compatible we need for the moment to have answers on the processes that could be used.

Of course, we also think about the financing of developers, but in the general interest. If we make some initial efforts with the means available, we can obtain enough to attract them so that they can finance.
For collaborative parties such as making calls for participatory cross-financing between Makehuman and our developments, we will already talk privately with the Makehuman project leaders.

But if simple users or coders want to take some of their time to help us, the door is open.

To summarize technically we wish that Makehuman allows to export the avatars directly compatible SL and Opensimulator according to two forms:
-Full head to toe avatar with mesh and textures, and compatible with Bento technology bones.
-Avatar in mesh without head with another part in xml format for the shape and texture of the head.

This second version is very important to have avatars that can have facial expressions and lip movement compatible with simple old scripts, and directly compatible with the voice function for lip movement of the viewer.

We would also like to contact Joepal by private message but this option is blocked on this account.

See you soon for more details.

Sincerely,
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Re: Project MakeHuman4SL/Opensimulator

Postby joepal » Thu Jun 21, 2018 9:18 am

It's a spam thing, where new accounts are not allowed to post PMs before having a few accepted posts.

I have manually moved you to the registered users group now, while hoping I didn't mess things up in the process.

In general, concerning the above:

I'm available to answer questions concerning code and will help in what ways I can. As a former university teacher on a computer science department, I will probably also be able to answer some more theoretical/scientific questions you might have in regards to your studies vs the particular coding project. However, as I have recently got a large systems development contract in my company, I will have very limited time to do much actual coding the next few months.

I have no personal experience of second life / open simulator, so will be of rather limited help there.
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Re: Project MakeHuman4SL/Opensimulator

Postby Naiyro » Thu Jun 21, 2018 2:26 pm

Thanks for the permission. I can now write PM but when I try to send it to you this error message appears: "This message was flagged as spam and has been denied."
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Re: Project MakeHuman4SL/Opensimulator

Postby joepal » Thu Jun 21, 2018 2:39 pm

I'll try sending you a PM instead, and see if you can respond to it.
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Re: Project MakeHuman4SL/Opensimulator

Postby Naiyro » Thu Jun 28, 2018 10:39 am

Hello,

After a few days of testing I think I have located the problems and I would like your feedback in case I missed something.

Currently all you need to do to use a makhuman Avatar in Opensim/Second Life is import the makehuman avatar into blender and re-export it with the right settings. The skeleton is not modified. So the main problem is probably related to makehuman collada export before being related to the skeleton itself.
Here are some pictures where I compare the differences between the import via blender and the direct import from makehuman

Here is a first avatar upload by checking only the option " Include skin weight ".

Image

You get the next avatar whether you go through blender or use the avatar directly from makehuman. His eyes are out of his sockets and his legs are deformed. (This problem does not exist when using the blender avastar module skeleton. So maybe it's a skeletal problem.)
Image



Now here are the avatars by checking the "Include skin weight" and "Include joint position" options :
Image

First, the avatar obtained by going through blender :
Image

It is well as it should be, functional, we can even make him wear the textures of makehuman :
Image


Then here is the avatar of makehuman upload with the same options but without going through blender :
Image

So we have a big problem with the "Include joint position" option which is not supported by makehuman collada export.


So I think the only python files that should interest me are in "makehuman/plugins/ 9_export_collada" and potentially in "makehuman/plugins/3_libraries_skeleton".
I'm taking any more detailed assumptions to help me in my research.


Another thing I've noticed is that the makehuman avatar has an impressive number of vertices which make it too heavy for SL and Opensim. Are there any existing ways to reduce this precision in makehuman?

Sincerely,


EDIT : Here is a link to a blender dev forum where I ask questions about how Blender's collada export code works: https://devtalk.blender.org/t/need-information-about-the-blender-collada-export-code/1039
Last edited by Naiyro on Thu Jun 28, 2018 1:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Project MakeHuman4SL/Opensimulator

Postby Aranuvir » Thu Jun 28, 2018 12:59 pm

Naiyro wrote:So I think the only python files that should interest me are in "makehuman/plugins/ 9_export_collada" and potentially in "makehuman/plugins/3_libraries_skeleton".
I'm taking any more detailed assumptions to help me in my research.

I don't know that much, but as far as I know 3_libararies_skeleton just provides a skeleton chooser gui. You will probably take a look at "makehuman/shared/skeleton.py", too. And further more "makehuman/core/export.py" could be of general interest for exporting...

Naiyro wrote:Another thing I've noticed is that the makehuman avatar has an impressive number of vertices which make it too heavy for SL and Opensim. Are there any existing ways to reduce this precision in makehuman?

Therefore Makehuman provides other topologies (Geometries/Topologies). Perhaps you have to download new proxies first: http://download.tuxfamily.org/makehuman ... oxymeshes/. Male1591, Female1605 or Proxy741 could be of interest.
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Re: Project MakeHuman4SL/Opensimulator

Postby Elvaerwyn » Thu Jun 28, 2018 7:50 pm

Most of these issues were worked over by the opensim community using makehuman to create their avatars some time ago. A working skeletal system inside makehuman that uses the bento setup would be desirable but not necessary to convert the avatars for use in opensim/sl. The weight of the builds can be changed in the upload to opensim process. I have no issue to bring my avatar to opensim at present since the issues server side were addressed that hampered me. What exactly is it you are trying to accomplish here and how can those using the existing systems help you? I personally bring my avatars in opensim regularily.
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Re: Project MakeHuman4SL/Opensimulator

Postby Naiyro » Fri Jun 29, 2018 9:00 am

Thank you Aranuvir. I'll take a look at that.


Elvaerwyn wrote:Most of these issues were worked over by the opensim community using makehuman to create their avatars some time ago. A working skeletal system inside makehuman that uses the bento setup would be desirable but not necessary to convert the avatars for use in opensim/sl. The weight of the builds can be changed in the upload to opensim process. I have no issue to bring my avatar to opensim at present since the issues server side were addressed that hampered me. What exactly is it you are trying to accomplish here and how can those using the existing systems help you? I personally bring my avatars in opensim regularily.


Hello Elvaerwyn,

You say most of the problems have been solved. Can you please elaborate? Our first goal is to allow everyone to import the makehuman avatar without using third party software. The manipulations currently required to import avatars are not accessible to a normal user without any notions. Even if once used to it seems easy, the first steps are far from being accessible and can discourage people from using makehuman.
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