http://www.makehuman.org/blog/index.php?post=s1210866244

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Wouldn't that be "pre alpha"? 1.0 is likely a year away.

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On Mon, 02 Mar 2009 08:34:03 -0700, somebody wrote:

> Wouldn't that be "pre alpha"? 1.0 is likely a year away.

I was thinking that as well - it's prerelease and far from feature 
complete.

Jim

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"somebody" <x### [at] ycom> wrote in message news:49abfc3f$1@news.povray.org...
> Wouldn't that be "pre alpha"? 1.0 is likely a year away.
>

As somebody says it's only a Pre-Alpha. There's a release roadmap at 
http://makehuman.wiki.sourceforge.net/Release_RoadMap which places the full 
release about 8 months away. On the other hand, as Greg pointed out, the 
POV-Ray export already works and should enable you to use new features as 
they get rolled out. The main one IMO being the ability to pose figures 
which is currently timetabled for May.

I've been using the POV-Ray export to help with the documentation and used 
it to generate the body part browser here: 
http://makehuman.sourceforge.net/FaceGroups/BodyBrowser.html and the 
ethnicity turntable tool here: 
http://makehuman.sourceforge.net/Ethnic_Groups/ethnicity.html?GroupName=Pigmy,Khiosan.

I'm still enhancing the POV-Ray export functionality, so if anyone has any 
spiffing ideas, or wants to help, let me know.

Regards,
Chris B.

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"Chris B" <nom### [at] nomailcom> wrote:
>
> As somebody says it's only a Pre-Alpha.
> ...
> I'm still enhancing the POV-Ray export functionality, so if anyone has any
> spiffing ideas, or wants to help, let me know.
>

Okay, from my ignorance, I was imagining the next step in pre-alpha-hood would
have a name of 1.0.1.  Thus, 1.0.0 is here.

Here are two more examples of what you can do now with the software:

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"Chris B" <nom### [at] nomailcom> wrote:
> I'm still enhancing the POV-Ray export functionality, so if anyone has any
> spiffing ideas, or wants to help, let me know.
>

Here's a view of the X-ray texturing option from the povray export.  It's really
cool.  I'm assuming the diamond-shaped artifacts are patches with their normals
flipped? Is that in makehuman itself or the generated pov export?

Chris, I have a question about the way it handles weight.  Right now, all it
does is create grotesque folds of fat around the belly.  In actual humans,
there are other parts of the body that get rounder, jollier, and
more-interesting-looking as one's weight increases.  I had a very brief
conversation with the project lead guy at the mh forum.  Would it provide any
help at all to get the mesh and ask a community (like blenderforums) to
collaborate on making more jolly-looking heavy people?   From what you know of
the project, would it actually be a needed help, or just antagonize folks, or
be hopelessly impractical due to IP or file format issues?

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Hi.  I was looking at the makehumanhair.inc.  Some of the text suggests that
this include itself will make hair, but I thought I saw hair development being
on the roadmap for mh itself.

Can you help me understand?

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"gregjohn" <pte### [at] yahoocom> wrote in message 
news:web.49ac63bdfea29af834d207310@news.povray.org...
> "Chris B" <nom### [at] nomailcom> wrote:
>> I'm still enhancing the POV-Ray export functionality, so if anyone has 
>> any
>> spiffing ideas, or wants to help, let me know.
>>
>
> Here's a view of the X-ray texturing option from the povray export.  It's 
> really
> cool.  I'm assuming the diamond-shaped artifacts are patches with their 
> normals
> flipped? Is that in makehuman itself or the generated pov export?

No. The exported mesh normals are fine. These diamond shaped markers are 
inside the humanoid object and indicate the positions of the joints. You can 
optionally generate an image without these markers by using the accompany 
groupings file. Adding the following two lines to example 4 (before 
generating the mesh2) tells the macro to just use the anatomical face 
groups, which is basically everything but these markers.

  #include "makehuman_groupings.inc"
  #declare MakeHuman_SelectedGroups = MakeHuman_WholeAnatomyGroup;


> Chris, I have a question about the way it handles weight.  Right now, all 
> it
> does is create grotesque folds of fat around the belly.  In actual humans,
> there are other parts of the body that get rounder, jollier, and
> more-interesting-looking as one's weight increases.

There are separate tools/controls for the fatness/portliness and for the 
muscularity/fitness. At the moment the muscularity deformations do seem to 
get a little overwhelmed by the fatness deformations. That sort of feedback 
on the application though is probably best channlled directly through the MH 
forums.


> I had a very brief
> conversation with the project lead guy at the mh forum.  Would it provide 
> any
> help at all to get the mesh and ask a community (like blenderforums) to
> collaborate on making more jolly-looking heavy people?

I believe that the artists modelling the ethnicity, age, gender, muscularity 
and portliness morph targets are largely drawn from the Blender community. 
The Blender modelling involves deforming elements of the mesh in a 
consistent manner (without altering the mesh topology) so that the different 
deformations can be cleanly combined within the MH application.


> From what you know of
> the project, would it actually be a needed help, or just antagonize folks, 
> or
> be hopelessly impractical due to IP or file format issues?

I think the project lead is always looking for new Blender artists with 
appropriate credentials to assist with developing the large number of morph 
target groups required. It's a bit of a balancing act though as it takes a 
while for experienced MH artists to bring new artists up to speed on the 
techniques and constraints involved. New artists need to be quite committed 
and diligent otherwise the time lost by the experienced artists outweighs 
the gains.

I don't think there are any particular Intellectual Property issues as the 
licensing is very liberal. The current team of artists is regularly 
exchanging meshes and morph targets between MH and Blender. The process 
involves using Blender scripts to generate and validate the morph target 
files. The most important thing is to make sure that any such work is 
coordinated through the project lead to avoid duplication of effort and to 
make sure that all effort is invested in a way that can be efficiently 
integrated back into the project.


Regards,
Chris B.

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"gregjohn" <pte### [at] yahoocom> wrote in message 
news:web.49ac9c52fea29af834d207310@news.povray.org...
> Hi.  I was looking at the makehumanhair.inc.  Some of the text suggests 
> that
> this include itself will make hair, but I thought I saw hair development 
> being
> on the roadmap for mh itself.
>
> Can you help me understand?
>

Yes. Correct on both counts.

Some sort of hair is planned for MakeHuman, though I haven't yet seen 
anything indicating which approach will be taken for implementing that.

The POV-Ray export incorporates a groupings file that enables you to 
separately identify various parts of the anatomy by name and to generate 
separate meshes. This is a generic approach that should enable clothing and 
other props generated in POV-Ray to be fitted to the MH figure. One example 
that I've been playing with to explore this possibility is the hairline. At 
the bottom of the makehuman_groupings.inc file I've created a distinct group 
of mesh elements that cover the parts of the top back and sides of the head 
that hair normally grows out of. POV-Ray users can do the same in a scene 
file to add their own groupings.

The makehuman_hair.inc file contains a macro to generate a mesh from this 
group of elements and cuts bits away with CSG to leave a clean hairline 
shaped object from which hairs can be grown.  I'll probably leave this in 
the MakeHuman export as it serves as an example of how to manipulate 
separate components of the generated model, including using the 'skeleton' 
to determine the location and orientation of body parts.

I have an old hair growth macro that tracks individual hairs, following the 
contours of an anatomy and responding to gravity. If I can get it to work 
properly with the generated mesh objects then my plan is to load it onto the 
Object Collection so that it can be used in conjunction with any generated 
MakeHuman models. This may be rendered a little redundant if the MH hair 
solution is really good, but might still give POV-Ray users some interesting 
options. For example it should work with any body part (hands, face etc.), 
whereas I suspect that the MakeHuman hair generator is likely (at least in 
the early releases) to only work with the head.

Regards,
Chris B.

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Looks like someone put the slider halfway between "male" and "female."

Regards,
John

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