I need to start playing around with MH again… My avatar image was based on a MH base mesh from around 3 years ago.
MakeHuman? I’ve heard of it before but didn’t really investigate it much, to busy learning to use blender. The video was good anyway, even if it was slightly strange. MH might be useful, thanks for the link 
Does it work well in a pipline with other software?
I started using MH in Blender 2.5 when the Python API was constantly breaking. The MH devs have since rewritten their program to be mostly Python. I’ve downloaded the latest installer but haven’t tried it out yet. MH exports a fully rigged character model that can be used instantly in Blender. This is about as close as one can get to automatic character generation in FOSS.
The commercial alternatives like DAZ Studio and Poser suffer from export incompatibilities with Blender, which is unfortunate considering the character design possibilities are far more advanced in those programs. There is a script (which itself has many limitations) currently available that will allow one to export scenes from DAZ Studio for rendering in Blender, specifically with Cycles. It is designed to support animations made in DS, too. However, the DS interface is very clunky, IMO, and posing characters in DS is rather slow and tedious. I can’t imagine trying to actually make animations with it.
The compatibility between MH and Blender is virtually seamless. The characters that you import have the most beautiful rigs imaginable, and I’ve never once had a problem with UV Mapping or anything else.
I really love MH, but the current major overhaul into a pure Python API for the 1.8 release is most definitely needed, because the 1.7 release had a very, very cumbersome interface and was frustratingly slow. So once 1.8 is fully refined, it will be much faster and cleaner than 1.7, and I believe that it’s really going to expand the user base dramatically.
It is cool to see the animation there at Vimeo, although I certainly never need nor desire the approval of the mainstream media to appreciate anything.
Congrats Manuel !
It was also at the U.S. site of Wired: http://www.wired.com/design/2013/08/parametric-expression-animation-makehuman-mike-pelletier/?mbid=social10572934
There are some interesting criticisms of it there - of the “artist” not of MakeHuman! - basically saying he did some elementary experiments and called them art. I agree. If Wired wants to be “deep” about this sort of thing, then they’d be much better off interviewing Manuel and other MH developers about the great work they do, not pretentious “art” silliness.
Whoa David that is fine art speak. You’ve seen them on TV holding court at a gallery opening. Well they’re a few who are big enough not to do that. But, it’s a ego driven business and those rich folks want some of that bull shit to go along their purchase.
I have a friend who has made a fine living with a oil brush. He went from Atlanta to a New York opening. The Super Bowl of fine art.
Immediately people were paying two to three thousand in New York for a piece he would have sold them in Atlanta for Seven Hundred.
And, they were glad to do it because it was now a piece purchased in a NEW YORK gallery. You and I don’t understand the business and probably never will. My friend besides being a talented painter made it his business to understand all of that pretentious shit.
Now if you have to ask the cost of a large paintings you can’t afford the bitch anyway. I mention this because looking at this guys work I get the impression he is going the fine art route.
Indeed. Manuel reminds me of this Bertolt Brecht’s quote:
There are men who struggle for a day and they are good.
There are men who struggle for a year and they are better.
There are men who struggle many years, and they are better still.
But there are those who struggle all their lives. These are the indispensable ones.
i will never be able to sleep again :’(
Yeah, I agree with your dismissive cynicism about the whole professional art industry in the West. Heck, I think even going back to Picasso and some of these guys, people don’t really care about the artwork, but about the posturing of being sensitive and sophisticated. It’s really just SWPL status posturing.
Tragically, the capital could be utilized far more effectively if these people would invest it in promising technologies, distribute it to genuinely productive artists, or simply give it to a family member in need. But, again, people are willing to pay a premium for their high status.
This particular animator, though, I don’t want to speak too definitively about. He might have just been having some fun, and didn’t intend to be a pretentious poseur or anything. I don’t know.
Yeah, totally. The creators are always greater than the consumers (although there’s a lot of feedback and interdependence, obviously).
This is the philosophical reason I get irritated at how the culture in the U.S. now so much lionizes the government - whether it’s Obama or the military or anything else. These people are, by definition, reactionary consumers of the works of others. The greater appreciation should be directed at the people who build the bridges, homes, cars, programs, hospitals, etc. that these people then (claim to) “regulate” and “defend”. If there is nothing created in the first place, then there is nothing to regulate and defend.
How eerily appropriate to post here another quotation from Brecht:
“They are, to put it bluntly, enemies of production. Production makes them uncomfortable. It cannot be trusted. You never know where you are with production; production is the unforeseeable. You never know what’s going to come out. And they themselves don’t want to produce.”
He is, of course, talking about critics.
Yeah, but “criticism” is a very broad word. Saying, “I didn’t like Transformers 3.” could be interpreted as harsh criticism. To my point of view, the only criticism that’s really bad is the sort that has the power to coerce and penalize. For instance, government regulators demanding that the inventor of a new jetpack prove that his invention is 100% safe before he’s allowed to sell it (which is impossible to do). Or a bureaucrat saying, “We don’t like the way you educate your children, so we’re going to take them and teach them what we want.”
These sorts of critics - with the power of the government to send men with guns into your home and throw you into a cage - are a lot more harmful than observational criticism.
That video is some creepy s#!t… Horror maybe, but art, I don’t know.
Posing in MH would be cool, apparently that is the last thing on their minds
Hi, guys!
Maybe I don’t know something about MH… But I’ve found that it’s only (really) helpful to start your own model. To use as a base mesh and sculpt over then. I’ve didn’t seen properly made topology and good (accented) muscles there. Maybe the meshes were made from 3d scans (sorry I’ve didn’t checked teethes and gums yet) but hands looks not good. The MH models are good for some quick dirty work, for animation studies (probably).
OK! I can be wrong. If it’s so… please tell me what I’m missing! Thanks!