VScorpion videos gone

[jjones]

I'm sad to see that VScorpion has deleted her makeclothes videos. Now where will I turn for expert info? sigh...

[joepal]

It's a pity. They might be dated, but they were very educational.

I've been considering making an updated introductory video for the modern MakeClothes version, but that won't replace all the videos from VScorpion.

[jjones]

I'm sad to see that VScorpion has deleted her makeclothes videos. Now where will I turn for expert info? sigh...

did anyone by chance download any of them and save them somewhere?

I'm having a hard time finding tutorials. I'm admittedly terribly late to the game, but I want to figure out how to create/load a character in Blender and transfer it into makehuman as a target or proxy or something like this. I'm still trying to sort out the terminology.

Basically I want to take a character, e.g., one I downloaded from Sketchup warehouse, load it up in Blender and then somehow transfer it to Makehuman to become a character that can be posed with a skeleton, etc. So far, in my stumbling around, I have the idea that I need to use Blender to turn the mesh into a "proxy" which I can then use in Makehuman.

I appreciate any and all clues and hints and whatnot

Thank you
-j_jones

[punkduck]

Hi

As long as your character kinda fits to a human that would work. What not really works, is that you add stuff like tail or wings, which can be moved. There are simply the bones missing. Yes I did a test even for that. But it was a hack and it was years ago. The new version will be more flexible, and one could do that, but who will create all the targets?

http://www.makehumancommunity.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16927

So anyway, for a proxy simply use MakeClothes, Assign your new character as clothes, the standard one as Human. Be careful with vertex groups, I would propose to do one for each leg, arm, body and head.
The .mhclo file must be renamed to .proxy and put into the correct folder.

There are limits: Makeclothes (and makehuman internally) use an approximation algorithm based on barycentric coordinates, so 3 vertices near the vertex you want to create. Classically that means that too much distance to the original character will fail, but also when you use a lot of geometry where only a few vertices are around or the other way round. Sometimes it looks fine on the standard until you move the first slider in makehuman or pose the character.

Greetings
Punkduck

[jjones]

Thank you! You've given me lots to think about.

[jjones]

I really want to make this work.

So, in MakeHuman, I made a model as close as I could to a person, let's call him "Pudgy Politician."

Then I brought this model into Blender via MPFB, where I put some finer details on the model with sculpting tools. This way the character is composed entirely of quads, which is required for MakeHuman afaict.

However, I goofed it up somehow and I can't seem to make it either a Target with MakeTarget or Clothes with MakeClothes.

I created "clothes" out of him, and exported them, but they don't seem to work.

Here is the Blend file of the character

pudgy_politician.blend

(6.45 MiB) Downloaded 4 times

Here is the "Proxy" I created out of him
Note that this website strangely won't let me upload a file with the extension "proxy" or "mhclo" so I will use the "txt" extension instead

zzzgrump2.txt

mhclo (proxy) file

(67.92 KiB) Downloaded 3 times

And here is the obj file, if it helps

zzzgrump2.obj

obj file

(1.11 MiB) Downloaded 3 times

I appreciate any and all clues!
thank you!
-j_jones

[jjones]

Just to see, I tried this again using the latest MPFB Blender Add-on
(found here: https://extensions.blender.org/add-ons/mpfb/)

For some reason it insists that I select "exactly two objects" before I can create the clothes? Why tho?

I'm so confused, thanks for any clues
j_jones

[joepal]

Clothes consists of two parts:

- The vertices of the clothes mesh
- Information about how they should be matched against the base mesh

In order to caculate the matching, you need both the clothes and base mesh. So these two objects need to be selected when performing the operation.

[jjones]

Clothes consists of two parts:

- The vertices of the clothes mesh
- Information about how they should be matched against the base mesh

In order to caculate the matching, you need both the clothes and base mesh. So these two objects need to be selected when performing the operation.

Thank you, now I understand that.

Ok, so, I imported the basic human as caucasian male and then pasted in my sculpted model, which I marked as 'clothes'. Then I selected both and ran the clothes check which looked okay except it gave one warning which I don't know how to interpret. It says: "Basemesh vertex group 'Delete' has very few faces (0)"

check clothes warning

So I exported the sculpture as clothes, saved as files an copied the files over to the proper data/proxymeshes folder and renamed the .mhclo file to have the .proxy extension.

In MakeHuman, trying to assign the proxy to the base model produces this stack trace:

applying proxy seems to have no effect in MakeHuman

Code: Select all

Exception during event onFileSelected
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/jjones/src/makehuman/makehuman-peach/./core/events3d.py", line 166, in callEvent
    method(event)
  File "/Users/jjones/src/makehuman/makehuman-peach/./apps/gui/proxychooser.py", line 163, in onFileSelected
    self.proxyFileSelected(filename)
  File "/Users/jjones/src/makehuman/makehuman-peach/./apps/gui/proxychooser.py", line 240, in proxyFileSelected
    gui3d.app.do(action)
  File "/Users/jjones/src/makehuman/makehuman-peach/./core/mhmain.py", line 913, in do
    if action.do():
  File "/Users/jjones/src/makehuman/makehuman-peach/./apps/gui/proxychooser.py", line 60, in do
    self.library.selectProxy(self.after)
  File "/Users/jjones/src/makehuman/makehuman-peach/plugins/3_libraries_proxy_chooser.py", line 80, in selectProxy
    self.human.setProxy(pxy)
  File "/Users/jjones/src/makehuman/makehuman-peach/./apps/human.py", line 124, in setProxy
    super(Human, self).setProxy(proxy)
  File "/Users/jjones/src/makehuman/makehuman-peach/./core/guicommon.py", line 402, in setProxy
    self.updateProxyMesh()
  File "/Users/jjones/src/makehuman/makehuman-peach/./core/guicommon.py", line 368, in updateProxyMesh
    self.proxy.update(self.__proxyMesh, fit_to_posed)
  File "/Users/jjones/src/makehuman/makehuman-peach/./shared/proxy.py", line 188, in update
    mesh.changeCoords(coords)
  File "/Users/jjones/src/makehuman/makehuman-peach/./core/module3d.py", line 594, in changeCoords
    self.coord[indices] = coords
ValueError: could not broadcast input array from shape (19158,3) into shape (53514,3)


I'm not sure where that 53514 is coming from.

I wrote this basic Python script for Blender to check the number of vertices for both the imported base mesh and the clothes sculpture. They both have 19158 vertices.

Blender python code to count vertices for selected object:

Code: Select all

import bpy

obj = bpy.context.object

if obj is not None and obj.type == 'MESH':
    print("Number of vertices:", len(obj.data.vertices))
else:
    print("Selected object is not a mesh or no object is selected")


Blender console output of this whole procedure

Code: Select all

Info: Mesh imported
Number of vertices: 19158
Info: 1 object(s) pasted
Info: Mesh type was set to Clothes
Info: A new UUID was set in the text box
Info: Clothes check performed, see panel
Writing to /Users/jjones/Documents/Blender/zzz2.obj
OBJ export of 'zzz2.obj' took 46.44 ms
Info: Total files 7 | Changed 7 | Failed 0
Number of vertices: 19158


(Not sure why it says 7 files were involved, but I'm just going to ignore that)

Here's the weird part!

If I restart Blender, leave MakeHuman running and import a new human (with the seemingly not-applied proxy)... I get this strange result!

importing new human with zzz2 proxy applied

Here are the files involved

generated mhclo/proxy file:
(This website won't let me upload files with .mhclo or .proxy extension so I'm using the .txt extension)

zzz2.txt

zzz2.proxy file

(1.11 MiB) Not downloaded yet

obj file:

zzz2.obj

obj file

(7.91 MiB) Not downloaded yet

blend file:

clothes_problem.blend

blend file

(7.14 MiB) Not downloaded yet

I appreciate any ideas or clues
Thank you
-j_jones