MakeHuman: Open Source Character Creation/Rigging tool

I have recently spent some time using the program  MakeHuman. This is a free tool for creating very realistic human models for computer games and 3D movies. The software is extremely advanced, with options to create male and female characters of all body types. Tall, short, overweight, underweight, muscular, and characters of all ages can be represented.

The fact that this software exists is a huge boon to the creative community, the fact that it’s free is even more amazing!

Not only that, but the software also has the ability to easily create a variety of bones rigs with just the click of a button. After exporting the model from the software, it automatically imports into the modelling tool with the bones rig, skin modifier, and skin weights all set up and ready to go.

All you need to do is finish the customisation of the model, since MakeHuman only produces the base “Human” mesh, and has only basic options for hair, clothing, and texturing.  However, this makes sense, since every character is unique, and hair, clothing, and texturing will of course need to be created individually for each character.

Using a MakeHuman base mesh allows for very rapid character creation, while still maintaining the ability to create custom characters, something you would not get by purchasing 3D assets. In most computer games, even modern big-budget games, assets are reused as much as possible, so using the same base model with different hair, clothing, equipment (weapons, armour, etc) and textures is an acceptable practice which can be nearly invisible to the player if done correctly.

Creating realistic Human characters is always difficult, since you have to deal with the “uncanny valley”, something which doesn’t exist for most other types of art assets. My work is primarily in programming, and I have only intermediate modelling skills, and I have fallen into the trap of creating characters with helmets, heavy armoured suits, or other “tricks” in order to avoid creating human characters that just dont look “quite right”.

The people who made this software could likely have made a lot of money from it, especially since there doesn’t seem to be anything like it out there, so this is truly a great asset to the creative community.