Urgent! Manuel Bastioni is stopping development for lack of support (makehuman evolved plugin)

This is urgent and very important for Blender artists and Open Source community:

http://www.manuelbastioni.com/lab_stopped.php

I’ve been away of te community for a while and just found out this is happening

This awesome project is going to die for lack of support of the community

We are going to loose this incredible human creation, modeling and rigging tool that have more than 18 years of athropological, technical and artistic knowledge

Please make some noise here and the entire Blender community and show our support

4 Likes

I saw a similar thread via twitter or facebook and it was the first I heard about it. Seemed a bit of an overreaction as it looks like he tried to sell some items for a week and then gave up.

I would think just moving this to gumroad or blender market for all future versions would have been a simpler and more effective approach.

3 Likes

I’m also very sad to read this new.
I really can’t understand why Manuel decided to stop his project when he didn’t ask about support on BA where I think a majority of the Blender community is.
This project was awesome and nobody (or nearly) was aware of his founding campain.
That’s a nonsense.
But perhaps there is another reason for that…

I hope he will reconsider his decision, or I will have to cancel one of my current project too…

I didnt knew about the funding until today
May be if enough people show up here, we can show him that the community is here and also do cares.
I also understand how he must feel after almos 3 years of keeping the project just by himself.

1 Like

Bad news, i am very sad.

Noooo feelsrip

F

He really should try more monetization strategies, or just start selling the addon outright for new versions. It’s really good.

1 Like

No((…I didnt knew about the funding!

I had no idea he finally got the donate page up, until today when I read his “I quit” message.

I actually had been waiting for a long time to be able to sponsor him a bit, but he never put up the donation button. And now I find out he did a week ago…

He expected too much in such a short time. A good patron crowd takes much longer to grow than a mere week. If only he had had a little more patience, I would have supported him. I mean, that what I was waiting for.

A real shame.

1 Like

I only just discovered The Manuel Bastioni addon but I love it! This is horrible news!

Why does this keep happening? First i discover the BGE just in time to see it be killed and now this?

I wish if he reads this, that he reconsiders.

Anyone else reading this that hasnt used this add-on before, try it out! You literally can make any human you want and even import mocaps right in through the addon and they work great! No retargetting hell.

Just days ago I used a bundled pose to create a walk cycle quickly from, it blew me away.

Maybe us fans need to make some art related posts with a focus on this add-on and see if we can’t get some awareness to it?

Very bad news(

It’s sad to see a project abandoned, but are people really that enamored with MBLab? The output quality has always lagged way behind commercial human generators, so you can’t be super shocked when people aren’t willing to donate.

What are the commercial alternatives? Anyone specific to blender, with armatures and posing right out of the box?

Besides, I’ve only toyed with it a few times, as humans isn’t what is normally required for what I do. And if they were, I wouldn’t have time to create clothing for them anyway. I truly enjoyed it though, and was fun to show it off to colleges (that are also unaware of commercial alternatives for Blender). So for those reasons, I don’t go visit the site every week or month.

I did not know aout this but what I can tell him is that selling models/assets takes a long long time (sometime years) and a lot of patience if that was what he tried to do.

This topic is the first I heard he was looking for monetary support – went to the website, there’s a link “DISCOVER HOW TO SUPPORT THE LAB !”. Clicked on it, the page essentially says don’t bother.

Sorry to see the project shut down, but . . . :roll_eyes:

Edited to add: I’m subscribed to his YouTube channel – no call for support there, nothing there about it at all.

I think the love for MBLab came down to it being an open-source alternative. As you state, there are several generally superior human figure generators on the market already. DAZ and the like also have a large ecosystem around their commercial variants.

Naked anime guy morphs only go so far before you need to dress them, give them props, backgrounds, etc… all of which the other figure generators had you covered for.

I do think it’s sad MBLabs is ending (as I said in the other thread), I just am not surprised by it. :frowning:

MANUEL - PLS DONT SHUT IT DOWN

i want to help you and the lab to get a good community-communication -
and with this comes constant financial income!! is not that hard, i have
some good experience in this field! pls, dont feel sad… what you done
with tubosquid could not work out. i exactly know why… really. let it
behind we can do better!

blenderhilfe.de
is my tutorial-site (for 8 years now) i am a successful and totally
independent german tutorialmaker, 3D-Artist and hardcore-blenderlover totally community based full time working!!! works great if you do it right.

so, a week of turbosquid-selling some props is a really bad idea to
begin with… let me tell you that. dont be sad that this didn’t work out!
thats not the way… ask yourself… would you buy it to donate to a dev?
no?

best solution imo:

all you really need is proper paypal-donate-button and also sell the lab-addon (as is) on blendermarket.

facebook & twitter & website is very bad communication… for reasons… i wont go into here.

youtubes, tutorials and blendernews-sites is the way to go - to get a large community involved.

also you need some tutorial-makers (like myself) that do free
lab-tutorials regulary and get people to donate/buy. Also a
Lab-Tutorial-DVD would sell great, i can guarantee that!!! really!

ITS REALLY NO BIG DEAL IF YOU KNOW HOW ITS DONE.

please get in contact with me, i would love to help you to get
permanent connection to the users & with that comes constant money
for years…

the lab is just one of the most popular addons i have ever made
tutorials for… its huge… the blenderusers love it so much. if i tell my
german blenderhilfe-community (many many thousand of people) to donate
for theyre beloved lab addon, they will do that. and for years this will
be like that. (YT-videos get constantly new users in)

also for sure you need an english-tutorial-maker that do the same for
english userbase (i could do that too for your channel btw)

so PLEASE YOUR HEAD UP AGAIN & GET IN TOUCH with me… you find a
KONTAKT-Form in the menu of my website or write me a msg here on BA or
skype:blenderhilfe

i would love to hear from you and help you get up & running … to
connect you to the community in a strong way - with the knowledge from
past 8 years of my blender-journey.

!!! PLEASE DONT SHUT DOWN YOUR DREAM !!! dont be sad and just end it, what a waste of talent & time !!!

we are a HUGE pile of people & love your work, so pls consider - you
& the lab have a huge fanbase - lot of us will also pay/donate if
we have a good chance and the right infos.

Tobi blenderhilfe.de

7 Likes

This is horrible news! I’ve been following MBL avidly but sporadically. I just hadn’t gotten around to actually trying it yet. I certainly hadn’t heard about any donation drive. I really hope he reconsiders, because, yeah, it really wasn’t publicized enough for him to give up on it yet. Me, I suck at that sort of thing, but maybe someone who’s got a great social media game would be willing to help him out with marketing?

Just as a note: There is a new patreon for the MakeHuman Community, the other open source people generator - and I do hope that at the very least that project does continue with help from supporters :slight_smile:

They just thre days ago published an alpha version of the next release!

For the Manuel Bastioni Lab - I also hope it comes back and we get a chance to support the developers there as well!

4 Likes

Thanks for sharing the Make Human fundraiser. I always used MH and was sort of confused over whether there was a link between MB and MH (I guess not?).

Sad to see MB shut down, but if we read between the lines it seems like the creator just didn’t want to do it anymore, which might explain the anemic effort at fundraising. Wish him the best.

2 Likes