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A character with MakeHuman

Create a human character with MPFB inside Blender, give it a skeleton, pose it and set a keyframe, or design it in MakeHuman II and bring it over. About 30 minutes.

beginnercharacterMPFBMakeHumanBlenderrigging

Modelling a believable human by hand takes weeks. With MPFB (in Blender) or MakeHuman II (on its own) you get one in minutes, with a skeleton for animation. See MakeHuman II and MPFB for the background.

1. Create the human#

  1. Start Blender. Delete the cube (X → Delete).
  2. Move the mouse over the 3D viewport and press N: the side panel opens on the right. Click its MPFB tab.
  3. Open the New human section, then From scratch, and click Create human.
A new MPFB human in Blender. The side panel (N) is open; its vertical tabs at the right edge are Item, Tool, View, Animation and **MPFB v2.0.18**: click MPFB.
A new MPFB human in Blender. The side panel (N) is open; its vertical tabs at the right edge are Item, Tool, View, Animation and **MPFB v2.0.18**: click MPFB.

Press Numpad . (period) to zoom to the selected human.

2. Shape the body#

Open Model in the MPFB tab. The Macrodetails sliders change the whole body: gender, age, muscle, weight, height, proportions. The other groups (head, face, torso, arms, legs) change details. Move a slider and watch the body change.

3. Skin, eyes and hair#

Open Apply assets and pick a skin, eyes, eyebrows and eyelashes from its lists. Hair and clothes come from asset packs (see the note on asset packs).

Switch the viewport to Material Preview (Z → Material Preview) to see the skin.

4. Add a skeleton#

  1. With the human selected, open Rigging → Standard rig and click Add standard rig. An armature (skeleton) appears inside the body, and the body follows it.
  2. For more animation controls use Rigify instead (Rigging → Rigify), then Generate rigify rig.

5. Pose and animate#

  1. Click the armature (in the Outliner it is called Human.rig or similar).
  2. Switch to Pose Mode: Ctrl+Tab (or the mode menu at the top left of the viewport).
  3. Click a bone, for example the upper arm, and rotate it: R, move the mouse, click.
  4. Set a keyframe: press I with the mouse in the viewport.
  5. Go to frame 24, pose the arm differently, press I again. Press Space to play.

MPFB can also load ready poses and animations (Rigging → Poses / Animation), including Mixamo-compatible animation (Rigging → Snap to Mixamo).

Way 2: design in MakeHuman II, animate in Blender#

  1. Start 3D Animation → Modellers → MakeHuman 2, keep the base mesh fantasy, and shape the character with the modelling sliders.
  2. Save it: File → Save as my-hero.mhm.
  3. In Blender's MPFB tab: New human → From save file, choose my-hero.mhm.

Or export from MakeHuman II as GLB and import it in Blender with File → Import → glTF 2.0. That brings the mesh and skeleton, but MPFB's sliders are then no longer available.

MakeHuman II.
MakeHuman II.

Tips#

  • Keep characters at real size (a person is about 1.7 m in Blender).
  • Save often: Ctrl+S.
  • For lip sync, MPFB's Face operations offer Load face shape keys and Assign Lip Sync shape keys.