Some Suggestions

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Some Suggestions

Postby Robitron » Tue Nov 27, 2018 11:55 am

I have some suggestions that I'd like to get some feedback on;

    1 Additional Material Slots
    2 Value Input
    3 Bring Back the Penis

    1 As it stands, MH can only use one material per item. This is a bit of a nuisance since most of the items that I create wind up having at least two materials that I then have to either bake into one or remove the second completely. Also, if I make a shirt for instance and want to have several material designs for that shirt, it's impossible to do unless I create a complete new shirt object with each material so 20 materials = 20 shirts whereas with multiple material slots, I could just make the one shirt then choose from the materials tab one of the 20 materials.
    2 Although the sliders are great for general purpose but if you have a specific value in mind (such as age, height, weight, etc...) it's a bit tricky. So I suggest having a value input for each slider. So that the slider updates if a specific value is entered and the value updates if the slider is moved. Ideally, the input box would be beside the slider.
    3 I know that the word penis is somewhat taboo and that penis is not a word used in "civilized society." Further, I know that there are many out there that feel uncomfortable having to deal with a penis in their modeling. However, from my understanding of MakeHuman's mission statement, the goal of MakeHuman is realism and there is nothing less real than seeing a nude model without genitalia (male or female though less real for the male). I know that I am using the word penis a lot in this post but that's because, like it or not, if you're a guy, you've got a penis. It's that simple. It is not something that should be shameful. So in the name of realism, please bring it back instead of us having to rely on using a strap on. See what I did there? lol I'm not saying it has to be fully functional, I'm not planning on doing porn, but if I want to do a nude scene then I don't need a Ken Doll looking fake model. Realism, people, realism! :D

    Anyway, there are my three suggestions. Please comment and consider. Thanks. Love you. Bye.
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Re: Some Suggestions

Postby joepal » Tue Nov 27, 2018 12:37 pm

For materials, blindsaypatten took some swipes at multiple materials in a forum attachment a while ago. The problem here is that there are lots and lots of places in the code which simply assumes there's only one material. Just to mention one, the GL sublayer would have to take into account that a texture should possibly only be drawn on a subset of surfaces, while another texture should be drawn on others. So while I don't have anything in principle against the idea, I do hesitate starting to do something about it.

For value input, that's probably less of an issue. It'd just take some UI work.

For the penis, this war is endless. If we have it, we'll get a lot of flak from think-of-the-children users, and risk getting banned from the predominantly american cloud platforms we use. If we don't have it we get a lot of support requests for it and rage about us bending for hypocritical rules stipulated by said platforms. The best compromise we found is to make genitals available, but require users to download them separately. Something which only takes a few mouse clicks with the asset downloader addon. If I could choose freely, I'd include genitals in the default distribution. But sadly, we have to live in a reality where hysterical moralists control a large part of the internet, making this more or less impossible.
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Re: Some Suggestions

Postby Robitron » Tue Nov 27, 2018 1:10 pm

Thanks for the input. I can understand the drama surrounding the penis. It's just so terrible to have to admit that such a thing exists at all. lol But seriously, I didn't know there was an addon that I could download. The best that I found was the import option for the mhx2 importer for Blender. I'll have to give the addon a search. Thanks for that info.

As for the materials, if no one starts to change it, how could it ever get changed? Admittedly, I know next to nothing about coding for 3d software but the change has to start for it ever to be finished, right?

And finally, the value adder, that would be great if it were implemented.


Again, thanks for the response. :)

*Edit: Okay, I've checked the assets and the only penis I could find looks disproportionately large (or maybe it's just me?) and absolutely will not work with a "black" model. (I quoted the word black because there's no such thing as a black person or a white one. We're all different shades of brown. ;) )
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Re: Some Suggestions

Postby joepal » Tue Nov 27, 2018 3:14 pm

The penis in question is here: http://www.makehumancommunity.org/proxy ... lia.html_0

You can find other genitalia-enabled proxies here: http://www.makehumancommunity.org/proxies.html

(This is also described in the FAQ here: http://www.makehumancommunity.org/wiki/ ... nitalia%3F)
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Re: Some Suggestions

Postby MargaretToigo » Tue Nov 27, 2018 5:33 pm

The value input thing is a good idea, at the very least for fine tuning.

I don't care about genitalia because I don't do nude scenes. If I ever need a penis, I'll make one -- in Blender.

MakeHuman doesn't really need more than one material slot because after humans are imported into Blender (or some other 3d modeling/rendering package), more materials can be added, such as assigning a reflective/metallic texture to buckles, buttons or zippers.

You don't have to create a whole new mesh/item just to change its color as long as the UV mapping is the same. Many of the assets here have multiple alternative materials available for download. If an item has more than one material installed, you'll see it under the Materials tab in MakeHuman...

Screen Shot 2018-11-27 at 12.29.47 PM.png
MakeHuman, Materials tab...
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Re: Some Suggestions

Postby Robitron » Thu Nov 29, 2018 3:46 pm

MargaretToigo wrote:You don't have to create a whole new mesh/item just to change its color as long as the UV mapping is the same. Many of the assets here have multiple alternative materials available for download. If an item has more than one material installed, you'll see it under the Materials tab in MakeHuman...


So how would I import a new material to an existing mh model in my library without having to do the whole makeclothes process? I've tried with just importing the materials but it didn't do anything that I can tell.
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Re: Some Suggestions

Postby MargaretToigo » Thu Nov 29, 2018 4:48 pm

Robitron wrote:So how would I import a new material to an existing mh model in my library without having to do the whole makeclothes process? I've tried with just importing the materials but it didn't do anything that I can tell.


It's really just a matter of putting the files (.mhmat, .thumb and the relevant textures) into the directory/folder where MakeHuman can find them. In a typical Windows setup it's usually...

Documents/makehuman/v1/data/clothes/[asset]/materials

But you don't really need the /materials sub directory for MakeHuman to find the materials, it's just more organized.


Of course, the easiest way to add new assets and materials to MakeHuman is with the Asset downloader, which can be found here:

https://github.com/makehumancommunity/community-plugins-assetdownload


Now, if you have MakeClothes installed inside Blender, you can make new materials by selecting "Export Material Only" in the MakeClothes side panel. You have to tick the box "Show Materials" to see it. Also note the the destination for new assets and materials is under "Show Settings" (again, you have to tick the box to see it). Whenever a new asset or material is made, MakeClothes creates a new sub directory with the name of the asset/material.

You should also rename an asset (under the Blender Properties panel) before clicking "Export Material Only," or you'll get a warning box about the original being overwritten.

Screen Shot 2018-11-29 at 11.33.46 AM.png
MakeClothes-side panel
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Re: Some Suggestions

Postby Robitron » Thu Nov 29, 2018 8:05 pm

Cool! Thanks!
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Re: Some Suggestions

Postby blindsaypatten » Sat Dec 08, 2018 6:26 pm

With regard to multiple materials, I was too cowered by trying to deal with the MakeHuman code, and I am a Blender user, so I just created .mham files that contain all the materials and the faces that they apply to. I then modified (my version of) the MHX2 exporter so that it would check if there was a .mham file in the same directory as the object, and if so, included the info into the exported .mhx2 file. I then modified my version of the Blender mhx2 importer to read this extra information and set the materials on the object during import.

So, this didn't change the appearance in MakeHuman at all but once I have created the .mham file I never have to manually add the materials after importing into Blender again. Most people who post here appear to take it for granted that you have to do tedious manual adjustments every time you import a model. One of the objects that I include in practically every model I create is a modified version of the eyes, which uses two materials. Having to reassign the materials every time I imported a model was just annoyingly tedious for me, so I created the above solution. I have a few other items that have metallic or shiny materials incorporated so I use it for those too, but the eyes were the main impetus for me. Since probably nobody else uses my eye model it is less of an issue for them.
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Re: Some Suggestions

Postby Robitron » Fri Dec 14, 2018 2:28 am

mham...now I'm hungry. hehe

But seriously, I do something similar with the skin texture that you do with the eyes. I usually use both an African texture and a Caucasian one then blend them together with the nodes to get different pigmentation for each character. I never tried that with the eyes though...might be interesting to try it.
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