So I think we can all agree that Digital Humans are hard to get right and they often fail.
Customizable solutions like Daz and Makehuman have existed since the early 2000s but they have often played catch up and have unrealistic standards of what is possible in design.
Metahuman has promised high quality digital humans however it is for Unreal Engine only, and by extension doesn’t allow the user to own the character.
Lets agree on some basics on what is possible to deliver in a customizable solution without needing to rely on additional work from users.
- A Broad range of sliders called morphs that represent Perceptible traits that can be modeled, (ex. Bicep Size, Jaw Width)
- A Basic range of Skin Variation, (Wrinkles/Aging, Various Skin tones, Skin Bumpiness)
- A Fully functional rig (Blendshapes, IK/FK)
- Basic forms of Hair (Eyelashes, Eyebrows)
What is NOT Possible in a Customizable solution:
- A Full range of Human traits, perceptible or not (the Human Genome is vast and even if we account for only perceptible traits we will be working for decades)
- Fully Customizable skin, Skin is a multi layered translucent material faked with subsurface scattering.
- Fully featured library of hair, Curve data especially hair can get very expensive and balloons file sizes
- Cloth library, Same as hair but paired with full texture sets and vertex paints, even more expensive file size wise.
Q. Well, if there’s so many restrictions on what is possible in a customizable solution, what’s the point?!
A. The point is: You don’t have to do the generic hard work that comes in making a character, only just what makes the character unique.
Q. What is ‘Vitruvian Project’
A. The Vitruvian project aims to create a digital human solution that is Creative Commons Zero, effectively Public Domain, that way we can make a no strings attached solution to Character creation Woes.
Q. This Mesh looks familiar?.. Is it all original?
A. No, The majority of the mesh’s topology was created by Olaf Delgado-Friedrichs (ODF) on Renderosity in 2011
̶H̶o̶w̶e̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶I̶ ̶h̶a̶d̶ ̶g̶o̶t̶t̶e̶n̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶p̶e̶r̶m̶i̶s̶s̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶r̶e̶l̶i̶c̶e̶n̶s̶e̶ ̶u̶n̶d̶e̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶d̶i̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶m̶e̶s̶h̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶s̶u̶f̶f̶i̶c̶i̶e̶n̶t̶l̶y̶ ̶d̶i̶f̶f̶e̶r̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶o̶u̶r̶c̶e̶ ̶m̶a̶t̶e̶r̶i̶a̶l̶.̶ ̶W̶h̶i̶c̶h̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶s̶i̶d̶e̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶h̶o̶w̶ ̶m̶u̶c̶h̶ ̶h̶a̶s̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶n̶g̶e̶d̶,̶ ̶I̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶k̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶a̶p̶p̶r̶o̶p̶r̶i̶a̶t̶e̶.̶
Odf has released the original Antonia Mesh as Creative Commons Zero, allowing completely free use, meaning that Vitruvian as an offshoot of Antonia Polygon can freely distribute itself without any strings attached, meaning you can use it for whatever you’d like.
Q. Why is it in the Work In Progress page?
A. The Project rides on Community Support, So I need people to give advice
Q. Why ACES? Isn’t this supposed to be Blender Centric?
A. ACES was chosen because it’s a Color Managment standard that is most agreed upon, ACES is quite messy in blender so I use ACES-Helper for using textures, Unreal Engine uses ACES, Unity uses ACES, It just makes sense to go with an Open Source standard.
Q. Some parameters are broken, Is this normal?
A. Yes, Some Parameters have unintentional effects when paired with others, please report any unintentional behavior.
Features:
- FACS Rig (100+ Blendshapes)
- 100+ Morphs
- 4K textures
- Texturing.XYZ VFace Support
- 3D Scan Store Face Texture Support
- Ultra Dense Texel UVs
- Volume Preserving Rig
Requirements:
- Rigify Add-on Enabled (The rig is based on Rigify)
- Blender 3.4 + (Could be as early as 3.0 but needs testing)
- Screen Space Refractions enabled (EEVEE requires this for the iris to be visible.)
Technical Recommendations
- 12GB or more VRAM (Downscaling textures is possible)
- ACEScg (Filmic will wash out textures, and ACES is standard in Game Engines/Maya)
One can download Vitruvian as I release versions on Github through the CharMorph Add-on which you can access in the links below.
Links:
Download:
https://blendercharacterproject.org/
Discord:
