I am new here and have been working with Blender for some time.
My application is the printing of buildings and characters for the model railroad in scale H0 = 1:87.
I design buildings in Fusion360. Then I use Blender to provide the surfaces with textures (roughcast, wood grain. etc.).
This works very well so far.
My problem are the characters I design them with MakeHumen. Import them into Blender to show different poses.
So far OK.
But if I want to change something at the clothes and switch to the edit mode, the characters takes the basic pose.
I have now already found hints on the internet that one should do the following: basemesh → bake shape keys and possibly delete helpers.
As a beginner I neither understand the meaning of these commands, nor can I find them in the many, many menus and forms.
Where exactly, in which mode do I have to execute these commands? What exactly happens there?
to use them in blender there is the problem (like with any other app) that you have to have some knowledge about the thing which are imported into blender and why those are what they are… or in short:
You have to know a bit about blender to use it…
So the menue Help → Manual … will help… and
well. if you look up armature the you will see… alsoyou imported object from MakeHuman is very thight to blender and the importer has proberly added and blender armature to the model…
In the Modifiers Properties (right side Wrench Icon ) you find it… and also if you hover with thr mouse cursor over the icons you get some more hints…
Select the mesh - go to the modifier stack. Thats the blue spanner icon in the Properties window where you add subsurface etc…
Hover over the buttons for an explanation. If nothing happens, Go into Edit > Preferences > Interface and turn on User Tooltips in the Display section. Then most of the interface will give you clues if you hover the mouse over it. Very helpful for beginners.
… Edit mode is obvious.
The on cage Button means the mesh adjusts to fit the end result of all modifiers. Sometimes you will want to see the subdivision modifier smoothing - sometimes you will not want to see it (or other modifiers)
Baking turns your animation into a permanent series of keyframes. Helpful for rendering and exporting for other apps. But then you can no longer (in this case) pose the character any more.
So that is not a good idea.
Mesh Menu (In object Mode) > Object > Animation > Bake Action.
And some modifiers have their own bake Buttons in their settings.
Now I know a little bit more. I will see.
Of coarse I use the help and books. But it is so hard to search for help when you don’t know what to search for.
How can I find the meaning of a button, if I only see the graphics and do not know what it stands for,
Not all icons have a hoover text.
What I have found is a switch in Skeleton where I can chose between Rest and Pose position!
It seems this solves my problem at the moment. But I still want to learn whats all behind,
I am only 73, so still lot of time to learn… I hope
Thanks for the further explanations. That brings me a little bit further again.
Learning Blender completely is not a goal for me, as I am not an artist. I try to find the parts that are relevant for me for 3D printing. Everything that has to do with e.g. rendering,animation, light, perspective etc. does not concern me. But often it is not easy to turn what I just see into real geometry.
I have learned that ‘apply’ is an important keyword!
It was just as hard to understand the difference between a texture and real 3D surface. What you see is not what you get (From the 3D printer)!
So I have to filter out of this super software the one percent that I really need.
…