So I checked out the Mixamo site. One thing that creates an issue is that the downloads are in FBX or DAE format, not BVH which is what MB-Lab reads. This is why they do not work in Blender, the MB-Lab code relies on the BVH format for re-targetting the armature. In order to use the Mixamo animations out of the box would require a huge code re-structure, something I am not able to do at this time.
There is plans to change the armature slightly, there were some conversations in this thread regarding that. This would need to have some code rework too since it works hand in hand with the JSON files associated with the project.
We are planning on more base models, the problem is that we need to reverse engineer the JSON files and the code first, then build tools to write the same information for the new base model. We are not there yet but we are researching this.
One of our programmers has successfully back ported the most recent version of MB-Lab to work in Blender 2.79! Everything except the facial rig and the EEVEE shaders function as it does in Blender 2.80.
Thanks a lot for looking into this - and yes some of the tutorials on this say that you should delete the armature, before exporting FBX. When I have the workflow down I will be sure to post here!
I do not know exactly what the armature does, but it worked for me. (I am wondering, as programmer, what about the source for the MB-Lab. I thought that it went out as public-domain and now your working on on thatā¦ but that may not be the case.)
To use Mixamo with MB-Lab is easy, just download dae, or whatever, open it in Blender, rename the bones, delete the hat and eyes bones, as well as the last thumb and toe bones, export as BVH, and voila !
Here is a male walk I just converted, the whole thing could easily be scripted if need be. walk.bvh (95.1 KB)
Okay, I rendered a quick test, all looks good except for the fingers, seems to be due to funky rotations in the BVH, the problem seems to go away if I import FBX instead of DAE.
I am a little confused about the license. If I were to say generate a model and use it in a game made by unreal for instance, what would I have to do to make sure I am not in breach of the license. I would also edit it, particularly the face mesh and the materials but I assume that makes no difference.
I made a script that automates the whole Mixamo to MB-Lab process, it is very basic but it does most of the job, you may need to make manual adjustments, basic instructions are in the text file.
I might work some more on it if time permits, comments and suggestions are more than welcome !
EDIT: The BVH files look really good, but when imported to MB-Lab, defects are introduced, I havenāt found anything wrong with the BVH files per say, maybe I made a mistake in the process, or maybe MB-Lab has problems importing BVH files that are properly named, hard to tell.
Maybe someone with more experience in scripting armatures could have a look at the whole thing ?
Is it working well on Linux for you?
I have downloaded the addon from Git master. When I try to enable the addon by checking the box in Blender 2.8 add-ons preferences (blender compiled by myself), I get the following error: http://pasteall.org/1509173
Edit:
It works well with Blender downloaded from buildbot builds. Perhaps this is a problem with the versions of the installed dependencies to compile blender.
Something is wrong with NumPy on your end, if you say that you are building Blender from source you might want to check that. MB-Lab uses numpy in the material engine for a variety of things. Your log is filled with errors related to that.
Thanks - this looks very promising! Such scripts would enable us to move seamlessly between UR4/Mixamo/Blenderā¦ i Wonder if you could export the actual skeleton re-targeting source from UR4?
As such any of these tools should be able to hold multiple rigs with more/less bones - just as long as there is some level of correspondence - i do not quite know if the armature deform goes 1:1 into the FBX,daeā¦ then you would want to preserve the original valuesā¦ clearly not just a trivial task.
There are only a few differences in name structure between DAE and FBX, at the moment I am working on a version 1.1 that will combine the extra bones with their parents instead of just deleting them (except for the hat and eyes bones which have no use), this gives an armature that matches much more closely to the original.
I am also working on bone rotations, so they better match MB-Lab, I want to get rid of all the distortions as much as possible, plus I plan on scripting a better bone connect than the one that comes with the import scripts, they kinda suck !
I havenāt done any Python in a while, but I am getting there !
As for UE4, sure, why not, its only a matter of renaming bones and deleting/merging the unneeded bones, and fixing rotation/roll problems.
I woluld also try to research what existing add-ons there are, perhaps Rigify or some other tools can do this. Iām still exploring and I fund that I spend a lot of time finding tools/add-onsā¦ and then I find that others have better solutions for the same problemsā¦ no need to reinvent the wheel, while protptyping is neat. (you probably know this much better than meā¦)
So I can, somehow, run python you scripts from within Blender!? (I also found you need to check off some ārun pythonā checkbox - that could possebly be the reason why some add-ons do not workā¦
Now, Where to get a better overview of the addonsā¦
EDIT: Okay, this is only transferring weight map to posed characters, not sure if this could be useful to create a library of model that can be reused ?
