Human Progress

I remember following your work since 2020 (4 years ago now) and remembering you replying to a user here with a WIP from 2021:


Now, seeing this post honestly fascinates me, considering I still wanna test actual muscle objects instead of just having corrective shape keys. The thing to figure out is to display the line bumps of the muscle on more exaggerated body meshes without looking too ridiculous lol

Great work, Chris!
(Also you should make music more often, they always sound great-)

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Hey chris! This isn’t exactly UH related, but i wanna share it with you and i wasn’t sure how else to contact you.

I recently watched The Bourne Ultimatum, and I can’t get out of my head how much the bourne soundtrack sounds like String Theory.

Take this song for example:

I can’t unhear the similarities!! Anyways, thought you might find that interesting :smile:

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@Holopaxume

Well now we have the answer I guess. :wink:

Assuming you mean more prominent muscles; if the Shrinkwrap modifier was more tolerant of the target object repelling the skin without breaking it or attracting nearby surfaces, that would be much easier to achieve.

I have a large backlog, some of which I’m planning to take time away from this to finish… :notes:

@thedocruby I don’t think I’ve heard that track before, but I’ve seen a few people have made the comparison (if not to that soundtrack then one of the others). Must be the staccato strings :violin:

I’m curious to know, when you did the forearm twist rig, did you encounter a problem where the forearm bone unsteadily follows the rotation of the Hand FK bone with the Bone Constraint “Copy Location”? More specifically, it’s as if the bone goes beyond 180 degrees and goes straight to 0 degrees, causing the forearm bone to make a lightning fast 180 degree turn when rotating the Hand FK bone. The problem spread and many people respond that it is best not to pose the hand in this position if this malfunction occurs. I am interested to hear your comments on this one


I don’t recall exactly how the forearm rig came to be now, but I think it involved orienting the bone that’s circled in your screenshot (which is parented to the forearm and deforms its distal end, but isn’t connected to the hand) towards a pole bone that’s parented to the wrist, so that it follows whatever the hand is doing while being rotationally restricted to its Y axis.

I haven’t seen any unsteadiness since I set it up that way, it’s pretty solid. If the forearm is twisted well beyond normal human limits, then the proximal end of the forearm will do an instant 180°, whereas the bone in question keeps going round and round.

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A few hand renders from the past months.

Add two images here. Change ‘data-direction-horizontal’ to ‘data-direction-vertical’ for a vertical slider.


Add two images here. Change ‘data-direction-horizontal’ to ‘data-direction-vertical’ for a vertical slider.


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Neck and scalp textures


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Here’s another thing that further compounded the aforementioned musculoskeletal difficulties (along with just about everything else for that matter).

Age 1c

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Hi Chris, your work is amazing!
I noticed you haven’t released a body skin material asset, do you have any plans to release it when?

Thanks :slightly_smiling_face: The Skin Shader applies to the whole body, but I’m not sure if/when there will be torso/leg textures.

Will there ever be some kind of ecorche texture release?

Possibly - it would need to be redone from scratch though, and while I get the urge occasionally, my Wacom is no longer up to the task. I’m waiting for them to release new models (seems like they’re always just around the corner…).

Chris, I wanted to know one thing regarding your rig. If Universal Human raises the arm with the IK bone and then change the switch from IK to FK, will the arm (raised with IK) go back to the standard FK position or will the arm stay in place just by changing the switch from IK to Fk?

There’s no IK/FK snapping, so the arm will go back to its FK position. It has to be manually aligned if switching to FK mid-animation.

May I ask whether there’s any roadmap for the future works on this project?

No roadmaps, just a general trajectory with various checkpoints along the way (like hair and clothes).

Oh yeah, I tried to do IK/FK auto snapping too, but without success. I don’t know how to do it without an addon and script, so I have, like you, my arm returning to the FK position if I switch from IK during animation. However, my arm returning from IK to FK position unnaturally, the bones are not lowered anatomically, that is, they pass between other bones through, but eventually return to FK position perfectly. For example, when your Universal Human fully raises the arm up from IK and then switches to FK, will the arm bend anatomically or will it be like mine, passing between other bones through but returning perfectly to the correct position? I don’t know who else has done a similar rig as yours, so I’d be interested to hear your comment. And will you be able to show me how your arm goes down while switching from IK to FK? I have the impression that it is actually possible to achieve a realistic arm drop when switching, but I don’t know how to do it. I would be very grateful if you could share your result.

If the arm is straight up in IK mode, it will rotate down when switched to FK.

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