We need to fix a number of problems before we can start to pose
Ana.
This is done in the Setup panel below the Import File button. The Setup
panel is arranged in chronological order. You don't have to carry out
the tasks in exactly this order, but some steps are destructive and make
it impossible to go back. Buttons that logically belong together are
grouped into boxes, which are described in the various sections of this
document.
Corrections
- Fit Mesh To Other. Fit the active mesh to the other, selected
one. The active object must be a mesh, and the two meshes must have the
same number of vertices.
- Copy Bones. Copy the bone locations in edit mode from the selected armature to the active one. The active object must be an armature.
- Copy Poses. Copy the pose from the selected armature to the active one. The active object must be an armature.
- Apply Rest Poses. Apply the current pose as rest pose. The
active object must be an armature. The meshes that are children of this
armature are also changed.
- Extra Bones. When merging rigs, this option determines how extra bones not in the target rig are treated.
- Ignore. Extra bones are ignored.
- Merge. Extra bones are added to the target rig, but only once. This is the default and usually the best option.
- Add. Bones of the merged rigs are added to the target rigs, which thus acquires several bones with the same name.
- Extra Layer. The bone layer that extra bones are put on.
- Merge Rigs. Merge all selected armatures with the active one. The active object must be an armature.
- Merge Toes. Merge all small toe bones with the large toe
bones. This is useful if you don't intend to pose the individual toes,
e.g. if the character has shoes.
- Reparent Toes . Parent all small toe bones to the large toe
bones. With this option the toes can be posed collectively with the
large toe bones, but also individually
For more information about the intended use of these buttons, see
Corrections Section.
Materials
- New Color.
- Change Colors. For all selected meshes, change the color of all materials with textures.
- Change Skin Colors. For all selected meshes, change the color of all materials representing skin, but keep the color of other meshes.
- Change Bump Strength. For all selected meshes, change the bump strength of all materials with bump and normal textures.
- Bump Strength. The new value of the bump strength.
- Merge Materials. For all selected meshes, merge materials that are deemed identical (same textures etc.)
- Load Makeup. Load extra textures that can be turned on and off.
- Update for BLENDER_RENDER/CYCLES. Update materials for the current render engine.
For more information about the intended use of these buttons, see
Materials Section.
Morphs
The next group deals with morphs, in particular face
morphs. The word morph should be understood in a generalized sense. In
Genesis and Genesis 2 characters, face morphs are implemented as real
morphs, which translate into shapekeys in Blender. In contrast, Genesis3
has a face rig and facial posing is done with bones instead.
- Use Handlers. Due to internal Blender limitations, a
scripted driver can not be longer than 256 characters, which severely
restricts the number of morphs that can loaded. By using handlers this
limitation can be bypassed, possibly with some performance penalty.
- Add Extra Face Bones. Add an extra layer of face bones, which can be both driven by rig properties and posed directly.
- Update Facial Morphs Paths. Traverse the file system to find all available facial morphs.
- Show Units. Display a list of available face units morphs, which can be selected or deselected for loading.
- Load Face Units. Load all selected face units morphs.
- Show Expressions. Display a list of available expression morphs, which can be selected or deselected for loading.
- Load Expressions. Load all selected expression morphs.
- Show Visemes. Display a list of available viseme morphs, which can be selected or deselected for loading.
- Load Visemes. Load all selected viseme morphs.
- Import Morph(s). Import the selected morph files to the
active mesh, or the morphs from all files in the directory. The morphs
must have the same number of vertices as the active mesh. Optionally,
object properties that drive the morphs can be created, and can be
accessed from the Custom Morphs panel.
- Import Driven Pose(s). Import the selected pose files to the
active armature, or the poses from all files in the directory. Object
properties that drive the poses are created, and can be accessed from
the Custom Morphs panel.
- Add Driver to Shapekey shapekey-name. An object property that drives the active shapekey is created, and can be accessed from the Custom Morphs panel.
- Restore Drivers. Restore corrupt shapekey drivers, or change driver target.
- Remove All Morphs Remove all morphs and associated drivers.
For more information about the intended use of these buttons, see
Morphs Section.
Two more buttons
- Merge Anatomy. Join the selected meshes to the active mesh,
deleting hidden vertices and merging duplicate vertices. For more
information, see Merge Anatomy.
- Save Local Textures. Save local copies of all textures used in this blend file to the textures subdirectory. For more informatoin, see Save Local Textures.
Low-poly Versions
The next step is
to make a low-poly version of the character, which used to be called
proxy mesh in MakeHuman. The low-poly mesh can have several uses, e.g.
to speed up posing speed. The idea is to hide all the original meshes
while posing for maximum speed, and then hide the low-poly mesh and
unhide the original meshes when rendering.
- Print Statistics. For each selected mesh, print the number of vertices, edges, and faces in the terminal window.
- Apply Morphs. Quick Low-polys can only be made of meshes
without shapekeys, so this is convenient to quickly be able to apply all
shapekeys.
- Iterations. The Quick Low-poly uses Blender's Decimate
modifier, set to Unsubdivide, and this number of iterations. The default
is 2. An even number of iterations generally works better.
- Make Quick Low-poly. Make a quick low-poly versions of all selected meshes. The low-poly mesh will be called mesh name + "_Lodn", where n is the number of iterations..
- Make Faithful Low-poly. Make a faithful low-poly versions of all selected meshes. The low-poly mesh will be called mesh name + "_Lodn", where n is the number of iterations..
- Split n-gons. A faithful low-poly typically contains n-gons, which may be undesirable. This button converts all n-gons to triangles.
- Quadify Triangles. Attempt to join adjascent triangles into quadrangles.
- Keep Random Fraction.
- Select Random Strands. Useful for aggressive reduction of
hair polygon count. Select strands at random in edit mode, keeping a
fraction of the strands determined by the parameter above. The selected
strands can then be easily deleted.
- Add Push: Add a Push shapekey to the selected meshes. This shapekey move all vertices outwards 1 cm in the normal direction.
- Add Subsurf. Add a Subsurf modifier to selected meshes.
For more information about the intended use of these buttons, see the
Low-poly Section.
