"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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