Makehuman/Blender to Babylon woes

[paulsouthport]

Hi all

 

If I export a Makehuman character to Blender as collada I can import into Babylon.

If I export to Blender as MHX I can't get blender to display it, regardless of skeleton (or none).

 

With a default human, no additional rig, export as MHX then export to .babylon I get:

 

BJS - [22:20:26]: Unable to compile effect: default

babylon.js:3 BJS - [22:20:26]: Defines: #define DIFFUSE

#define OPACITY

 

#define UV1

#define BONES

#define BonesPerMesh 264

 

babylon.js:3 BJS - [22:20:26]: Error: ERROR: too many uniforms

 

 

Additonally, export from Blender from collada to babylon happens in a flash. From mhx to babylon takes ages.....

Any ideas?

 

thanks

Paul

 

[GameMonetize]

hey

You have 264 bones per mesh

This is FAR too much (consider 40 is like the max you can afford if you want to be portable)

[paulsouthport]

Hi, thanks David. I thought that may be the issue, but can't find a rig that works from MH -> Blender -> Babylon.

I'll keep testing!

 

thanks

Paul

[joshcamas]

Is it possible to have loads of fancy bones on a rig, and then exporting only the deformation/required bones?

[gryff]

but can't find a rig that works from MH -> Blender -> Babylon.

 

Paul, I use the rig called "game.json" in MH - it has 32 bones. Works fine. I've even added a few extra bones when it is in Blender.

 

See the Blue Lady

 

cheers gryff

[paulsouthport]

Thanks Gryff

 

I tried that one and got a result I can work with, although there was a fair bit of additional deformation in Babylon. I have a long weekend now to try to hone the result. I have used BVH from Carnegie Mellon, they work great in a unboned mesh in Cinema but I suspect are a bit wobbly for this purpose.

 

Blue Lady is great, we spoke before on the Guardian a few weeks back!

 

cheers

Paul

[JCPalmer]

Is it possible to have loads of fancy bones on a rig, and then exporting only the deformation/required bones?

 

If you delete the bones that are "un-needed", and whatever you do still works on the Blender side, then think your export time should decrease, and be less taxing on the BJS side in terms of memory & GPU.  Remember, regardless of whether you are in the middle of animation or not, skeletons are a fixed GPU overhead cost.

[gryff]

I have used BVH from Carnegie Mellon, they work great in a unboned mesh in Cinema but I suspect are a bit wobbly for this purpose.

 Paul, the CMU .bvh files are recorded at 120fps -so I usually edit them before I use them in Blender. I use a free simple little tool called BVHacker that allows you to do all kinds of editing:

 

a.) Frame rate reduction

b.) Clip the frames

c.) Remove bones - such as lots of finger bones

d.) Merge bones - eg if there are excessive spine bones.

e.) Create a looped animation

f.) Lock hip bone translation

g.) Remove offsets/centre hip bone

h.) Remove rotations of specific bones

 

The Blender importer for the MH mesh and rig is not the only addon for Blender that the MH folks produce. The is another one called MakeWalk whichallows you to import bvh files and retarget them to the MH rig - works very well and better than the Blender bvh importer/retargeter. It also allows you to easily adjust trouble areas (often ankles/shoulder bones).

 

I am told that the next version of MH will also improve the MH  game rig around the shoulders.

 

we spoke before on the Guardian a few weeks back!

 

Ahh yes. Glad you decided to join the forum.   I'm watching the UK election battle heat up on the Guardian website.

 

If you need help with MH, Blender and bvh  - always happy to take a look at your files and suggest stuff that might fix a problem.

 

cheers, gryff

 

 

[paulsouthport]

Thanks for the heads up on BVHacker. I use the MakeWalk plugin, it's good, but the raw BVH from CMU is a bit jittery and over complicated. I'll try simplifying as you suggest.

 

I also have a potential  workflow via C4D, it's a bit more convoluted but I'm way more confortable in C4D than Blender.

 

cheers

 

Paul

[dbawel]

Although I guess I'm primariy a Maya guy these days - actually it doesn't really matter to me which software I use to bind skeletons as I'm usually monitoring limited bone count for BabylonJS anyway - to limit as few as possible.  I've had good luck with importing FBX from Maya/Motionbuilder into blender and using the .babylon exporter out of blender.  However, you definately want to keep your bone count to a minimal, and depending on the final render/display device, there are strict limitations in assigning the # of bones to any vertex.  As an example, when using Andriod devices, the limit is 4 bones per vertex maximum.  But primarily, I monitor my evaluation rate closely which directly translates to fps, as less bones the better.  I'll also often use Motionbuilder to quickly retarget a far more complicated skeleton and bound mesh to an optimized character and skeleton - as well as to simplify my hierarchies quickly by reparenting in MB.

 

I avoid BVH (for no really serious reason, just that I find other formats are smaller in file size, and there are legacy issues from working in this format for SO many years now.)  But again, if I need to use BVH, then I'll generally import into Motionbuilder, write out to FBX and then import/export from blender to .babylon - unless I'm working with json files (when the project requires this - which generally requires much more time and effort on my part.)  I also have far more mocap specific tools in MB, and dependancies are not much of an issue, which provide me much more freedom to generate the exact performance I need with far less limitations.

 

Cheers,

 

DBawel