MakeHuman 1.1 Anime Style Custom Target Test

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MakeHuman 1.1 Anime Style Custom Target Test

This is a custom morph target for the MakeHuman character generation program. MakeHuman normally creates realistic human bodies. This target morphs the base body into an anime style female character, with proportions based on MikuMikuDance (MMD). The purpose is to allow the quick generation of rigged anime style characters.

This is an unfinished, unpolished test version. I am releasing this so that I can start to gather feedback.

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Project Maiko: Maiko version 3 complete

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Project Maiko: Maiko version 3 complete

After much time spent experimenting, and many distractions, Maiko v3 is done. I settled on a scene that would be simple, but also allow for interesting lighting. The end result is an odd mix of toon and elements normally used when trying for photorealism, such as depth of field and reflections. But that's the whole point of using Cycles in the first place!

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Project Maiko: Maiko v3 modeling complete

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Project Maiko: Maiko v3 modeling complete

Modeling on the third version of Maiko has finished (save for a few details.) The first two versions had various issues that made them tedious to work with for making actual art, such as elements that only looked good from a few angles and limitations on their rigging. I've taken everything I learned from making the first two, and several months more experimentation, to create a final version.

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MakeHuman Starting Tips

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MakeHuman Starting Tips

For those of you who have not tried it yet, MakeHuman is a lot like the character creators you see at the beginnings of most modern big budget games—think Saints Row 3 or Skyrim. You use sliders to adjust the traits and proportions of your character and have fine control over many features. Except that MakeHuman gives you a rigged character with an incredible level of anatomical accuracy ready to export in the format of your choice (I use Blender, but it supports most common file formats.) And it's open source and free. For detailed information on all the excellent things MakeHuman can do, check out their site: MakeHuman.org

In this post, I share some of the things I wish someone had told me when I started using MakeHuman.

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Project Maiko: Overview

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Project Maiko: Overview

For my first major project, I chose to experiment with a generic anime girl. The subject matter has a huge amount of references and visual memes for easy concepting and allows for diverse styles. We'll call her Maiko.

Below is a summary of the techniques used in Maiko's creation. I will be writing a post about each aspect and linking to relevant tutorials.

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