Blender export and MHX

MakeHuman is a great program, but it does not exist in isolation. After designing your character in MakeHuman, you probably want to export it to some other 3D package for posing, animation, or rendering. There are currently three possibilities.
  • OBJ. This is a very simple format to export the mesh, with vertices, faces and UV coordinates. Originally invented by Alias/Wavefront, all major 3D packages have OBJ importers, so this format allows you to export to the greatest range of applications. However, the character is not rigged but rather a static prop.
  • MHX. MakeHuman eXchange format is a Blender-specific format invented by the MakeHuman team. It allows a fully rigged and textured character with shapekeys to be imported into Blender by the custom MHX importer. It does not work for any other 3D application except Blender.
  • DAE. Collada is a comprehensive scene description language understood by many 3D applications. It also exports a rigged and textured character.
A rigged character can be imported into Blender using both the MHX and DAE formats. However, the MHX rig is much more advanced. It is very difficult for a cross-platform format like Collada to handle advanced rigs, since constraints, drivers, material settings, etc. are implemented very differently on different platforms. The rigs exported with Collada are therefore of a very straightforward kind without any constraints. On the other hand, this may be desirable e.g. for games or motion capture, and it is your only option if you are not using Blender. In contrast, the MHX format allows access to almost every setting in Blender.

Export from MakeHuman

Describes how to design a character in MakeHuman and how to export her as an OBJ, MHX or DAE file.
http://www.makehuman.org/node/167

Configuration of clothes and proxy export

Apart from the high-poly mesh itself, MakeHuman can export several other things: low-poly versions of the character, clothes, or a cage intended for the meshdeform modifier. This page describes how to configure your export to include only the objects you want.
http://www.makehuman.org/node/167

MHX import into Blender 2.49

The Blender 2.4 series is becoming obsolete and development has stopped. This page describes how to import the mhx file into Blender 2.49 and earlier.
http://www.makehuman.org/node/168

MHX import into Blender 2.5x

Describes how to import an MHX file into Blender 2.5x.
http://www.makehuman.org/node/241

Posing with the MHX rig

Describes the rig in the MHX files and how to use it.
http://www.makehuman.org/node/245

Rigify

As an alternative to the original MHX rig, MakeHuman characters can be rigged with Nathan Vegdahl's Rigify system, which is becoming the de facto Blender standard rig.

Old mocap tool

Development of the old mocap tool has been discontinued, but it should still work. Future work is done on the new tool below.

Describes how to use the old mocap tool to load BVH animations onto the MHX or DAE rigs.
https://sites.google.com/site/makehumandocs/blender-export-and-mhx/mocap-tool

The old mocap tool was originally created for the MHX rig, and it only worked with BVH files of a few recognized types. The tool has now been opened up for custom rigs, both source rigs (defined in the BVH file) and target rigs. The mocap tool itself is the same for custom rigs as for the native MHX rig, but some extra steps must be taken to make the tool work.
 https://sites.google.com/site/makehumandocs/blender-export-and-mhx/mocap-tool/custom-rigs.

New mocap tool


https://sites.google.com/site/makehumandocs/blender-export-and-mhx/new-mocap-tool

Pose tool

Describes how to control the rig modes, like FK/IK switching.
https://sites.google.com/site/makehumandocs/blender-export-and-mhx/pose-tool
Lipsyncing and expressions are included in the same python file.

Lipsync tool

Describes how to use the lipsync tool to make an MHX character speak. Expressions can also be manipulated with this tool.
http://www.makehuman.org/node/247

Expressions

Describes how facial expressions are exported from MakeHuman, imported into Blender, and manipulated with the lipsync tool
http://www.makehuman.org/node/248

Clothes

Describes how to put on clothes in MakeHuman and how to use them in Blender.

http://sites.google.com/site/makehumandocs/blender-export-and-mhx/clothes


Making clothes

If you are bored with the clothes that come with MakeHuman and want to design your own, this is the page for you.
http://www.makehuman.org/node/228

Tutorial

This tutorial is outdated, both on the MakeHuman and Blender sides.

There is a tutorial which describes how to use MakeHuman and Blender to make a short movie. Apart from a description of the MakeHuman tools, which is largely identical to the content in these pages, this book contains some general discussions relevant for film-making in Blender, e.g. asset linking, rendering issues, and video editing.


The book can be downloaded from http://download.tuxfamily.org/makehuman/books-and-articles/Making_a_short_movie_with_MakeHuman_and_Blender25_in_two_weeks_2010_11_24.pdf

The resulting movie, with all its faults, can be watched at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfWSSCUOjIA