Blender/Makehuman/MPFB2

[philipy]

Just wondering whether anyone has tried MPFB and if so how you got on?

In case anyone is wondering, MPFB is a sort of 'next generation' to Makehuman and integrates a new iteration of MH into Blender as a plugin and uses the same assets etc.
It appears to be very good and is easy to use, except that I'm having a problem which I suspect is a bug, that won't let me move limbs etc as their demo video shows, but so far can't get any response from the powers that be.

[Paul_in_Ricky]

I hadn't heard of it until this thread.

Looking at the documentation it seems it'll still suffer from MakeHuman's major drawback which is the lack of suitable clothes for our sort of use.

[philipy]

Yes I think that's true Paul, and most of the clothes that are there are for women or weirdo's . However it apparently does have a clothes generator built in although I haven't looked into that until I can get my basic problem sorted. I hadn't heard of it either until I had a look to see if there was an updated version of MH, last week, but the basic figure generator is easier than MH and, if you really wanted it, the ability to swivel eye direction or make a nose bigger or smaller, etc, is simple too.

[ge_rik]

Sounds promising. I'll let Philip get his head around the finer points and keep fingers crossed he'll produce one of his excellent tutorials.

Rik

[philipy]

Sounds promising. I'll let Philip get his head around the finer points and keep fingers crossed he'll produce one of his excellent tutorials.

Rik

Oooohh...thtop it

Seriously, after my reply to Paul I did have a quick look at the clothes thing and it's actually the same as the MH add-on but accessed internally... still as complicated and impenetrable, as far as I can see, unfortunately.

The basic MPFB2 is easy to get your head around, but as I said there seems to be a bug, either that or there is a setting somewhere that they don't actually tell you about. I've installed and uninstalled both Blender and the plug-in at least a dozen times in the last week, using the latest versions each time and on 2 different laptops, one with Win10 and one with Win11, and every time the same 'fault' occurs at the same point.

FWIW, for anyone who has followed my Bone-ifying 'How To', you will recall that you have to add an Armature to build the bones on to and after that you can move the individual bones to pose the figure.
In this latest version, you can click the Add Rig button and it installs the complete bone skeleton, you then add Helpers which allow you to, say, move the wrist to where you want it and the arm bones follow it to keep the complete arm and hand looking realistic.
According to their Getting Started video on YT, rigging should automatically insert the Armature and skeleton, but that isn't happening properly - the individual bones can be moved one at a time, but not as a group. So, there is either a bug, or a setting that needs to be switched first that they haven't told us about. I'm inclined to the bug option because otherwise their forum would be full of screams and there are none at all that I can find. The MPFB2 is admittedly still under development and there are nightly builds available to download. My suspicion is that a few weeks ago something got corrupted and went unnoticed until somebody ( me!) downloaded a nightly build from after the error, because anyone who has been running it for a while probably doesn't bother with the 'nightlies' on a regular basis, especially over the Christmas/NY period.

[Trevor Thompson]

I will let you work this out before I try it as well!

Trevor

[philipy]

Well, I'm about ready to give up on this MPFB2 thingy, but before I do I wonder if anyone can spare 5 minutes ( 5 hours?) to try to replicate what happens for me? I've tried asking for help on the MH/MPFB forums twice and got no response at all from literally hundreds of views.

So this is a basic "How to.." on how to install and get to just before where I think it goes wrong for me:

Firstly you need a version of Blender from 4.2 onwards ( currently its 4.3.2) and then you need to download the MPFB2 “nightly build” from https://files2.makehumancommunity.org/plugins/
and look for the file called mpfb2-*.zip ( the * will be the date written backwards i.e 20250116 )

Open Blender and go to "Edit" on the top line then scroll down to "Preferences" and click it.

Look for "Get extensions" on the LH panel and select it. In the top RH corner there is a down arrowhead. Click that and from the drop down that appears, click on "Install from disc".

The LH panel is now headed 'System' and you need to browse to wherever you downloaded the MPFB2 plugin - mine is in Downloads.
Click it and you will be presented with a list of the entire directory contents! At the top will be a list of folders, followed further down by individual files.
Click "Date Modified" at the top of the window and your downloaded MPFB2 plugin should be at the top of the individual file list - assuming you haven't downloaded anything else since!.

Now, off to the RHS, at the bottom, "Install from disc" should be highlighted in blue. Click that and then wait a short while. You may see a brief message at the bottom which says something like "Installed mpfb" but it flashes on and off quickly. Wait another few seconds and the main window should change to say "Installed MPFB"
That's it for now so you can close the Preferences window.

Now the next bit fooled me for quite a while, so, in the main Blender window, at the top RH corner is the 3 coloured global view selector and to right of that is the edge of the window and an Options drop down on the top. Ignore those (!) but on the edge of the window is a tiny horizontal facing grey arrowhead, Click that and a new window pops out. Written vertically it will say "Tool , View , MPFB v2" on 3 tabs. Click the MPFB2 one and select "New Human". ( If you want to get rid of this dropdown later, just simply press "n" on your keyboard.)

Now from here on I'm not going to add any more instructions because it is only a few steps further until I get to my problem and I don't want to influence you. Suffice it to say that we haven't downloaded/added the basic assets pack yet but that isn't necessary for these purposes, my problem occurs with or without fancy facial expressions and clothes!

There is a YT video "Getting started" which is quite good - it's a bit fast but slow it down and then stop/start and it's followable.

The first bit is basically what I've said here. Then at 7:40 is what I would like to achieve to allow us to pose figures as, say, a driver, or whatever, but can't get it do so - if you can please let me know!

In the meanwhile, by creating a complete figure I can then use Blender to manually insert bones and pose it, but that is really no different to creating in MH and importing it as we've done before.

[Paul_in_Ricky]

I'd like to be able to help, but it's all beyond my Blender skills. I've never found it an intuitive program for the simplest of tasks. It's not often that a program makes Fusion 360 seem simple, but Blender does it.

It doesn't help that the tutorial is based on an older version of Blender and, crucially, expects users to have a decent working knowledge of the program.

Before investing many hours in getting to speed with this I'd like to be reassured that it's actually possible to create something useful. My experience so far is that it's design targets a different end user to us real world modellers.

[philipy]

Paul, I agree that Blender is impossible, but for what we want it doesn't require a great knowledge of Blender, just the ability to position the model and spin it/zoom it to view it.
If it did what I think the video shows, it would require no real Blender knowledge other than that. The figure is built by selecting from various optional parameters and from the assets in their library, by simply clicking the appropriate buttons. The problem I have is that having followed the instructions, at one point I don't get the result I expect and I cannot practically proceed further, but I'm not sure if it is just me not doing something right or if it is a bug. I'm hoping that somebody else doing it will either have the same results, in which case it is a bug in the software, or get a different result in which case it is a bug in me!
As for the end result, yes it is aimed at fantasy/cartoon users but all we want are 3D models to print and don't need fancy 3 headed monsters and fur or scales.
I knocked this driver up in half an hour yesterday to fit in my F & B loco. It still needs some work but mostly that is just tweaking the size and probably slight adjustment to his arm positions.

IMG_0981.jpg (386.28 KiB) Viewed 61011 times

[Trevor Thompson]

I will give it a go.

It might take me a few days but I will try tonight.

As to whether these programs are useful - my answer is a clear YES. That does assume you are printing your own figures on a resin printer of course. I have used make human and blender (and I also struggle with blender) to make figures to fit in a variety of my models. The problem I have is the same as everyone else - the limited range of appropriate "clothes". I have even tried modifying clothes in blender with slight success!

Trevor

[Paul_in_Ricky]

I've just had another try with this and posing is no more of an issue with MPFB than basic Blender. In other words you can make some hideous un-natural distortions very easily.
Watching the video carefully, at 7:40 when posing is discussed, they select the 'helper' by clicking, but just after that the cursor changes. This seems to be done by hitting 'g' (as you've mentioned in previous posts about re-posing) although that isn't actually mentioned. Then the 'helper' and part can be moved.

<later>
I've spent an hour playing with this now and getting a realistic pose isn't too difficult. Faces seem pretty good, but clothing is dire. Very little detail and rounded off edges often make the output bland and poor.
Maybe some sculpting might help (another set of functions to learn)

[philipy]

Paul, you are a genius. Thank you!

At the beginning I suspected that there could be a missing instruction, but it simply never occurred to me to press the g key! I'm quite aware of using it to shift the entire character and also using the r key to rotate, of course. Then I got myself stuck in a loop going round and round the same old circle.
Using the g does exactly what I was expecting but couldn't find.
Thanks again.

Making clothes is a whole different ball game.
There is a complete thumbnail gallery of assets for MH at http://www.makehumancommunity.org/clothesgallery.html

More tahn in the MPFB asset packs. Some of them are crisper looking than the packs but so many of them are female.

[Paul_in_Ricky]

Glad to be of help.

That gallery is a worry, you have to wonder what the figures generated are being used for.
As discussed earlier, the lack of useful clothing makes this program/plugin of rather limited use for railway modelling.

[Trevor Thompson]

I am glad you got it sorted out.

I can't download the latest versions of Blender - they won't work on my (not exactly new) iMac.

Trevor

[philipy]

Ahhh... sorry, can't help with that Trevor.