A makehuman tutorial.

so i posted this as a response to another thread,
but i’m gonna make another thread for this so that everyone can read
this is a tutorial that basically explains how to get your mesh rigged, with a facial rig,
and get clothes as well in blender.

you will need both:
blender 2.45
and
blender 2.46RC1 or later for this

2.45 for textures/renders
2.46RC1 for rigging

import using the colliada
remember were you saved it from in MH
http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j158/Batboy853/1.jpg

here are some quick pointers with blender after importing

the textures, located in C:\Program Files\MakeHuman 0.9.1 RC1\data\rib_data extures_data, have to be added manually, and make sure you hit UV so that they go on nicely, and when makeing the eye brows and eyelashes, make sure you make the material with the alpha set to 0
and with the tracable and shadow buff off, with the spec and hard set to 0, or 1 with the hard. and then click z-transparency

however

blender 2.46 has a bug were the alpha function with textures is messed up so when you set a texture to affect alpha, for the eyelashes, and eye brows the alpha doesn’t show up as much, so for renders use 2.45

as far as riging
download 2.46 rc1 cause thats the lastest version of blender,
and use that for riging the mesh, but first in edit mode
select all verts listed under the bones material, and delete them.

next in object mode
hit set smooth

next
select the body, and the armature
hit crl + p for parenting
make parent to : armarature => create from bone heat
this will rig your mesh perfectly.

if you get any errors like failled to find solution, try importing the mesh again
and if it still doesn’t work check to see if the armature is fully inside, of the mesh or mostly inside

for clothes this part i got from when it was posted @ blenderartists a while ago:
make a copy of the main mesh shift + d
then go with it to another layer
in edit mode
select and delete all the verts (and materials) with every material except for the body
then edit where you want the clothes to start and end, making the skin into a shirt or pants by getting rid of the feet/hands, legs for shirt, torso/arms for pants
next exit out of edit mode, go to modifiers
select decimate, set it at .25 hit apply


set smooth
in the materials replace the body with a new material
make sure it doesn’t have textures,
and change the color for the clothes
have both layers with character and clothes open,
select clothes, and then go into sculpt mode,
select inflate, and inflate the clothes until they fit out side of the characters skin, instead of parts in the character.
then repeat the rigging steps with the clothes

and thats a fully rigged and clothed character with the exception of the mouth

for hair, ask nicely for someone with hair made using textures to give you the hair and then add it to the mesh and it will look not as well as if its done with strands, but
i’ve never really been able to get strands to work properly.

a quick explination of how to rig the mouth

you will need blender 2.46 RC1 or above for this

first take the rig that was imported from MH
then in edit mode, select the node that is between the top head arm, and the lower head arm,
extrude it [e] and drag the new arm to reach to the chin of your character.

next
select the body mesh, hit shift-s, which makes a copy of the mesh that you can edit,
you want to do this twice.
for the original mesh, in edit mode, go into the edit menu, and select the verts in the materials in the teeth and tounge, and delete them.

for the other two copies, one is going to be the teeth, and the other is going to be the tounge. move them to different layers

now
select the modified armature,
go into pose mode
if your properties menu is not open, open it by pressing N
then select the new arm
going to rot x,
set at 10
you’ll notice that the arm should be in an open jawed position

select the body mesh, and go into weight paint mode.
make sure you have the jaw bone selected for the paint
(it should be all blue when you first start)
hit n which will bring up a properties menu, and drag the brush size and opasity to the highest possible state
paint the the chin up to the lower lip completely red

then hit wire in the properties menu,
and then click the button that looks like a yellow triangle on a green plane, next to the layers menu,
this is a new feature with 2.46 that allows you to select a face and weight paint just that face.

so now you want to paint the lower lip, face by face, which actually doesn’t take that long

next you want to get inside of the mouth and make sure the lower jaw, but not the top, and insides are painted
you can do this by hitting 5 on the key pad, and swinging the view into the mouth,
now you can use a combination of painting by face or every thing, and make sure the inside is fully painted.

makesure you unclick the yellow triangle, and then the wire button
and go into object
if you look at the mouth,
it looks a lil bit strange, and disfigured

which brings us to the next new feature of the weight painting in 2.46 RC1
blurring weight paint.
go back into weight paint mode
and skim the areas where red meets blue
and it should blur it from red to yellow to green to blue
just make sure you dont over use it.

for the teeth,
go into weight paint mode, and have the jaw bone selected
go to sub(for subtract) and make sure that it is not already painted for the new bone
it likes to trick you some times saying that it’s not painted when really it is
next make sure that it is fully painted to the head bones by selecting the lower head bone, and painting it all red
you’ll have to move the camera around to get every nook and cranny
and then repeat the step for the upper head bone
now for the jaw bone
simply weight paint the mesh, and make sure you do the upper parts of the lower teeth face by face(with the yellow triangle thingy), so that you get just the lower teeth.
(hint rapid fire the mouse,as in click the right and left buttons on the mouse really fast can make this work better,
cause then you are selecting each face and making it all red :smiley: )

forthe tounge just paint it half way, so that its green, and now when you move the jaw, the tounge should move, but not completely.
use the blur function if needed to make it all green

hope you guys find this useful

oh and mods if you think that this would work better in the tutorial forum, feel free to move it. cause i didn’t know where i should have posted it since it has to do with another program. :smiley:

how do u change to a male when mine starts up it goes on a female

one the side of the menu there are sliders, the have like age/sex
muscle/weight, breast shape/size, body height/shape

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/attachment.php?attachmentid=78550

Just a question, I have a self-made character mesh, and a self made upper body armature. Can I use the ‘Create From Bone Heat’ function there? if so how? ctrl + P only gives me the usual parenting options…

you need 2.46 RC1 =]

cool, good tute batboy853.
i already posted on the mh forums.:wink:
anyway, i encountered some problems with unheated verts.
so based on your tutorial, here’s my method.
Import the MH Collada mesh using Blender 2.46 rc2.
In Edit mode, Vertice Select.
Select 1 vert from the Body mesh.
Press Ctrl/L or Select/Linked Vertices.
Press P to separate selected.
In Object Mode,
Select the Skeleton (The Bones Mesh).
Press M, then move the skeleton to the layer below.
Press A so the Skeleton is unselected.

  • Select & Make a Copy of the Armature & move to Skeleton Layer now if you need to.
    With nothing selected,
    In the first layer Select the Body,
    Then hold Shift & Select the Armature.
    Press Ctrl/P or Object/Parent/Make Parent,
    Then choose Make Parent to Armature.
    Create Vertex Groups > Create From Bone Heat.
    Thats it, Select the Armature, Enter Pose Mode, then pose your Character.
    Perfect flawless Rigged character…nearly…

*Note this does not import/ the eyes or eyebrows these will need to be selected from the Skeleton Layer, then moved & Your choice of linking to the body/head.
In my lazy method there is no need to tidy up the Bone Heating.
However,

*If you made a duplicate of the Bones Rig you can repeat the above.
Select then move the Eyes/Eyebrows, & copy then move the teeth,
to a layer of your choice.
Then you can Bone Heat Rig the Skeleton Also.
This has many flaws, so makes for good practice in Weight Painting & cleaning up loose vertices.
Rigging the skeleton a good practice exercise.

When 2.50 & macros/actions come about this could become quite automated!:smiley:

Anyhoo, thanks for the tute bb. Great!.:smiley:
now to work on the facial rig & cloths.
Thanks
m.a.

so i didnt realize that people were still following this thread, so i’ve updated it to the latest version
i’m still going to be working on the texture part of the tutorial next

Wow! Thx for the tut! Really amazing! The only point I didn’t get is how to use the textures MH creates…

Could you please give some more detailed instructions?

Thx a lot!

Great Tutorial,

my only question is, why if i tried to import the collada file i can’t get any camera view?

then i modified it by copying the armature only and put it in to the .obj file. which i import from makehuman. It work well… and less heavy then when you try from collada, ofcourse not as complete as .collada file. But then a problem showed up, the strand won’t follow the head. oh and don’t try to make parent several mesh to the bones because it made crash for “can’t parent loop” or something like that.

I’m using Blender 2.46 official release Big Buck Bunny, Blender 2.45 16 from peach (the latest SVN i can find), make human 0.91 RC(i forgot).

So if anybody know how t solve my problem, it’d be nice if u can send me an e-mail at [email protected]. Thank you very much, Terima kasih.:o

The collada file does not include a camera in it. The camera is a feature of BLENDER. So you need to add a camera and lights to you scene once you import the collada file.

Thanks for the tips. I’m just starting out with both Blender and MakeHuman so I’m just starting to find my way around. Did find how to export the MakeHuman figure as an obj file so I could import it to Blender but have been trying to find how to be able to rig a figure after that. Will keep an eye out for the rest of the tutorial still to come. Thanks again for the tips.

in order to get the rig you need to export it as a colida format

WARNING: this thread is out dated visit http://www.makehuman.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=167&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a for the newest version