MB-Lab Release for Blender 2.80

Hey flaw,

My skin material is a pretty big system, too much to cover as a side note here in someone elses thread…

On the up side, I am in the process of writing a udemy course that will show you how to make a character from the ground up, including all the skin stuff I do.

Wouldn’t be holding your breath though, writing and recording this sort of thing takes months to push through.

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hi
mb lab is no working in 2.8 release candidate
install the addon does sen any error message, the folder in roaming blender foundation is created, but you can not enable the addon

It is a common issue with the releases from Github.

You need to rename the folder from MB-Lab-1.7.4 to MB-Lab-1_7_4 or something similar.

You need to get rid of the periods in the folder name (1.7.4). Blender assumes that it is a file extension of some kind and gets confused.

MB-Lab 1.7.5 will be released tomorrow morning with a different filename when you are downloading it from Github, so this SHOULD help with the installation issues people have.

It will be named as MB-Lab-1_7_5 instead of what I have been releasing them as. I will also be deleting the old releases, since some of them have been buggy. In my eyes the versions from 1.7.0 (when it first was ported over to Blender 2.80) have been beta versions, we have been building up to this next release, after all this is what it is all about right?

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Wow!

Has Manuel ever tried to contact you?
Do you know if he is still alive??

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No he has not contacted us. I would assume he is alive and well though, I would hope.

Fellow Blender users, MB-Lab enthusiasts and more!

MB-Lab 1.7.5 is released!

This is supposed to be the “stable” build of MB-Lab and Blender 2.80 RC1 and above, this is the version we have been building up to since version 1.6.5, the last version for Blender 2.79.
Remember Blender 2.80 has been in Beta status for some time, it has only recently come out of that and MB-Lab has been worked on to work with it since version 1.7.0, sometimes with buggy releases of it’s own but over the past couple of months have really tried hard to squash the most serious bugs that have popped up. In our eyes from version 1.7.0 to 1.7.4 have been developmental versions, as some of you may recall there have been MANY bugs in MB-Lab over the past 6 months, some of them quite serious.

Version 1.7.5 has been in development for 3 months and has been heavily tested to make sure that things work. The outstanding issues still present are not serious enough to hold off on releasing this.

New Features this release :

GUI change. Now there are icons EVERYWHERE!

This is one of the most striking changes between previous versions and this one, the GUI has been worked on quite a bit.

Tongue Shader

For some reason it took forever to realize the tongue changed color with changes to skin complexion so this shader was created

tongue_001

Improved Iris and Eye Shaders

This was a late addition to the release but it is an improved version of the iris, which the first version looked awful, so this one was a nice surprise.

Face Rig Updates

The face rig has not gotten touched since it’s introduction, the developer Amir has done quite a bit to it and now includes a FACS rig as well

BVH Bone Config

With this feature, you’ll be able to tweak XYZ bone rotations, store in a file for a specific BVH Animation ( or more depending on the adjustments ) and then simply load this file whenever you want to reuse that BVH animation and the tweaked bones will self-adjust.

bone_offset_01

Documentation Updates

The documentation has been updated for this release specifically with new imagery to replace the old Blender 2.79 images.

https://mb-lab.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Updates -

Added

Added icons and modified GUI
Tongue shader added
Improved Iris and Eyeball shaders
Save/Load BVH Bone Config

Changed

Changed descriptions for male and female elf and dwarf characters
Changed Blender minimum version to 2.80.74
Removed Buggy message from Muscle checkbox because the Blender bug has been fixed
Changed CREATION TOOLS in GUI to CREATION OPTIONS at startup
Documentation updates
Changed characters_config.json for tongue shader
Rebuilt humanoid_library.blend file for Blender 2.80.74
Reduced SSS value for EEVEE in human skin shader
Edited bump maps
Changed "Body Measures" in "Body Measures" to "Measurements" to fix confusion
Eyes UV remapped

Bug Fixes

Fixed API change 'bpy.context.scene.update()' to 'bpy.context.view_layer.update()' in animationengine.py fixing BVH import bug
Gloss fix for EEVEE in human skin shader
Muscle FK and IK, Skeleton FK and IK roll fixes for various bones in armatures
Registration bug that caused errors during unregistering classes
Fix 'Bones rot. offset' in after-creation tools
Fixed Skin complexion function related to SSS
Toes_R connected bug fixed
SSS scale fixed in Teeth shader

To download you can go to the repository here -

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Right! I’m concerned that he may have fallen into some
deeply disturbing depressive spiral.
Else, he should have been giving signs of life by now! :cold_face:

I hope he knows just how valued and brilliant a person he is…

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hi, you guys are doing an awesome job.
Here’s my concept:
If you were to write a script, like an empty addons updater, there might be a chance to put it in Blender.
The way it would work would be the “Installer script” would let people automatically install mh. No overheads for Blender file size. sub scripts could also be added.
Just a thought. Now we have blenderkit, the door may be opened for this type of approach.
let me know what you think.

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Hello, I wanted to know how to correctly bake the ik and muscle rig to the anime characters
thank you in advance

Is there Blink eyes expression in face expression keyframe?

@Amirhameed_Amirjalal Unfortunately there is no way to do that with the current code and rigs, I do not know why Manuel never did this for the anime models but they are currently only FK. I am sorry. Hopefully in the future this will change but right now it’s not possible.

@loveordie There is no out of box option for blink itself but there is expressions for eyes closed, left or right. They are in the Body Measurements panel under Expressions. Once you finalize these are then added to the Shape Keys panel in Blender.

@Meta-Androcto I don’t think it will happen, MB-Lab is too specialized function wise.

Been away for a bit, had to take a break from the project to focus on real world priorities and events. Plus been working on something…

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Thank you, I get it

I know it might sound like a strange request but could it be possible to implement an alternate version of the anime templates (male and female) that would not not have any eyes or mouth holes?
(essentially for 2d texture/sprite based facial animation).
Of course if that is not too difficult to do.
Thanx

I may regret this I don’t know but here goes…

I made a Patreon account that will focus on future development updates in the form of short (or long) blog style posts, with WIP images not seen on social media or the Github repository. Over the course of time working on this project I have amassed quite a collection of images, renders and screenshots that are never seen by the public because I use them for internal review, my own critique I guess.

So I am offering these plus explanations about them on Patreon.

I said I wasn’t gonna do it but I guess I caved to pressure after several requests for it. I feel terrified and not sure the outcome of this…

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Unfortunately until we figure out how to write new JSON morph data the ability to add new mesh to the project is not possible. This is a highly requested subject for MB-Lab and the people helping develop this addon hear you guys, problem is that Manuel did not document his code at all so the breadcrumbs are sparse, he also must have used tools not available to us in regard to reading and writing the JSON database.

We at least know more now than we did at the start of this project but we are still a ways off.



The above is some of the JSON morph files, one of our users was able to extract that data back into Blender (but of course I don’t have the code he has not been online much since)…

So we are working on this it just might be some time before anything happens. Still looking for a solid development team for this project, especially for something like this.

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B-but WHERE IS Manuel !? :cold_face:

Did he erase himself from the face of this Earth??

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So instead of telling you guys that adding new characters is not possible, I wrote a post on Patreon about what we have been able to figure out and what is preventing us from doing this at this time until there a skilled Python dev can join us long term for this.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/28907888

It is a Public posting.

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Over the past week have been working on a new skin shader, in my opinion the current model is not up to quality standards, in other words I don’t like it and needed work.

There are too many maps for simple rendering functions, like specular, SSS, roughness… the look of the shader is sketchy, in all the shader got too bloated with things that are not necessary.

So the next day after releasing MB-Lab 1.7.5 I searched my hard drive for a shader that was submitted to me by one of our users (whyoh), it had been sitting there for a couple of months and I liked it but at the time I was focused on my own shader which is now garbage.


This was the start of that shader.


Some testing with the MB-Lab displacement map and skin complexions.


New freckle generation. Uses the same map as the current model does.


Procedural skin bump.

It uses more procedural elements now and the texture maps are more of masks that drive this procedural texturing.

The SSS in the current model is not good, it fades at the fingers and toes which is also unrealistic.

With the new model there is a thickness map that helps solve this issue.

There have also been requests for skin tones based on the model selection, such as Caucasian, Afro or Asian, so when you select these models the appropriate texture map is loaded, instead of using a single map for this as it is currently. The skin complexion shader network (the last of Manuel’s original shader) was added to the new shader so users can fine tune the skin still. This needs work still but the basics are there.

The tongue shader has been worked on too. The release version was also less than great on quality.

The fingernails and toenails are getting a new shader as well, these suffer from the same tone changes that the tongue did, when changing complexion the tone changes which is not realistic at all. It will also be able to be mixed between normal and painted nails.

Mind you NONE of this has been committed yet to GitHub. I am working on the code right now so that things run correctly and will commit once testing has been completed. Plus only the Human Female has been worked on, I still need to do the same to the Male. I have no idea when this will happen, hopefully by the end of the weekend. So far I have gotten the shader appended from the development file to the production humanoid_library.blend file and some of the code has been worked on but it’s not stable at all, in it’s current state it would fail actually.

Just wanted to give a quick update on what has been going on lately.

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Great job!

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