Hi everyone,

If I may please; as I am new to creating "my own" character models; I have a couple questions about the process before I begin so that I get things right sooner instead of later :)

1: When modeling clothes and gadgets from scratch; is there a particularly accepted method for attaching them to a character's rig so that the character's underlyning skin doesn't pierce through during animation or kinematic changes? ( if it helps to visualize; imagine a small team where: Artist_A does animation, Artist_B creates the character models in MH, and Artist_C is responcible for combining everything together so that motion capture specialits can bring them to life )

2: if memory serves; iPi uses a specific rig for their animiation software. Does anybody have experience in bringing that TRS animation data and applying to a MakeHuman rig? ( this would be my first time and I'm willing to wager that the two Rigs are very different in design )

3: Facial animation; I truely haven't ever done this before in my career and I would love to get started if someone could point me to a tutorial or forum topic, I would much appreciate it





I didn't find the right solution from the internet.
References:
http://www.makehumancommunity.org/forum ... =7&t=11434

whiteboard animation

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What will you be using for your main 3D package for final compositing all the components together?

Being new to character modeling, you will have to do a lot of your own research, watch tutorials on YouTube and a lot of trial and error, as there is no one answer to your questions.

I would imagine Artist-C to be responsible for the cloth weighting to the character, or the use of mesh colliders, fairly tedious process to get right, many times you can just hide, or mask parts of the character mesh to alleviate break through.

I have never tried using a MH model to import as a target character inside iPi for retargeting, maybe someone else here has, I believe only Blender has the plugin for importing MH models, but then you may be able to export it as an FBX of the character made, it has to have a skeleton of course, see if it will retarget properly inside iPi Studio, if so, then re-export it back out of iPi as an FBX, then in your 3D package you may be able to import it with all animations you set to export, try it and post the results if you would for others.

May want to download Autodesk FBX Reviewer, much faster to check your exported FBX file in it to make needed adjustments inside iPi again if needed.

Here is a link for a fairly new facial capture software: Free trial download @ http://www.f-clone.com

Sample tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DM3_dT9HYA

The model has to have face morphs, or a facial bone structure for any facial capture software to work though.

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I'm replying a bit late, but hopefully you'll read this.

I've experimented with all three character creation programs to use with maya to create custom characters to use with IPI motion data. Make human, Adobe Fusion and Daz. (I haven't tried iclone). And I ended up with Daz. make human models weren't working well for me. the facial morphs aren't there and the shape weren't quite realistic. mixamo is annoying since you have to upload to web everytime you want to rig the character and also the shape of the model waren't realistic enough for you. Daz genesis models are very realistic and high quality (Genensis 3 is good) and it comes with facial morphs that you can use even if you alter the face and body of the characters.

Applying clothing is not a simple procedure. Simplest way is to use wrap deformer. I use Marvelous Designer to create clothing with imported daz custome models then export the MD clothiing to maya as obj, then apply the clothing with wrap deformer to my character mesh. This works fine for simple movements without any weight painting (since weight painting is tedious and takes a lot of time to get it right and you also have to make custom corrective blendshapes to compensate for weird deformities for extended rotations).

So my pipeline is this (after many attempts I arrived at this):

-make a general default model made form exported genesis 3 model from DAZ (fbx export, not dae)
-this base model is what you will use to make custom characters by scaling and moving bones (height, size or arms, head, legs..etc). Make sure you change the mesh skin cluster type to classic (dual quternial won't work when scaling). save each model(scene) with different name.
-once satisfied, apply HIK to your custom model (make a hik definition template by assigning appropriate bone to it's corresponding bones)
-export model in t-pose as obj
-bring it to MD as avatar (choose cm)
-make your clothing and quadriangle it. export as obj (thin, welded)(export as daz, cm)
-import to maya, and then apply wrap deformer to your clothing to your character mesh.


This should work okay for simple movements without any fuss. there are some details that you must try and test, but it all works fine for me with method.

You can also apply wrinkle normal maps to your model from zbrush sculpting. multiple wrinklemaps also can be applied to your facial animations triggered with blend shape set driven keys.

Also, depending on your renderer, you must reassign textures using your renderer's textures (find and appy diffuse and transparency maps to your corresponding parts of the mesh: face, arm, torso, and also a heck of a lot of parts just for eyes and eyelashes). Took me days to get it right.

xgen hair can be applied to it as well, here's a sample of a youngmans character made from the default genesis model and a simple jump suit created in MD and applied with wrap deformer (no weight painting).
you can also see some expressions that are from Daz facial morphs.

contact me if you need more detailed explanations.