Despite Poser and Makehuman, anybody knows some other human construction kits around? Something more "advanced" with bones and muscle simulation and such? The more I was reading about anatomy the more I think the simple rig system with rotations and morphs will never produce any really satisfying output. How are the professionals doing it? Is there more "room" on the "market" to found another open source toolkit? We have so much computing power now, and I think despite during render we might be using 1% of what we actually could do. Col

If you have a rich Uncle, there is alway 3d Studio Max!

A Google search for '3D anatomy" returns many software systems with human figures.

Try also "3D Human Figure" as search terms.  

There's also iClone, if animation is what you seek.

I do not know what you are looking for, but take a deep hard look at your own bones.

Can you do something Poser9/PP2012 can not?

Even the conventional rigging system goes way beyond what is humanly possible.

i think the op is referring to programs that can model meshes and then rig them, vilters

iclone now has the genesis interface through iclone exchange, but the figures are quite low poly and quite toony from what ive seen, iclone will allow you to import fbx meshes but, unless the skeletons are based around standard 3dmax format, there is a real issue with importing any outfits with them, plus iclone likes figure meshes,clothed or unclothed under 30k.

I supppose for building and figging from scratch it is any of the better modelling apps, having said that if you look at youtube there are some excellent hexagon, silo, lower end apps that produce great output

theres always blender!! works with make human quite well, has awesome rigging with weight mapping and shape keys(morphs) but on the downside its a funky interface that dont suit everyone

No existing Poser/DAZ figure I've seen so far is even remotely realistically sculpted or rigged.

Partly because the creators simply lack the necessary skills, partly because more sophisticated rigging isn't wanted as it may interfer with easy cloth creation, partly because the time and work needed are simply wasted on the average Poser/Studio user who prefers stylized prettyness over photorealistic accuracy.

But at least in the hobbyist sector, the alternatives are even worse and tend even more heavily towards a stylized videogame aesthetic.

And apart from the actual animation tools, with weightmapping, extra bones and JCMs, Poser's rigging is just as capeable as any professional CGI rig is.

That means, if you are willing to invest the time and have the necessary skillset, a truly photorealistic rig with "working" muscles and realistically "soft" deformations would be no problem in Poser or Studio.

Of course nobody would ever support such a figure nor even remotely reimburse you for your time, but technically I see no problem as we finally have all the tools needed at our disposal.

I was wondering as any art guides begin by saying no matter what, you need to Truely understand the form. But what understanding of the form is contained in these simple meshes. Especially recent releases, its always getting worse, I wonder why this is. I have to go I will write a bit more later.

Maya has a muscles system to provide deformations under the skin of a mesh, but it requires that you build everything from scratch. On the other hand, it couldn't be more difficult than trying to create an original figure for Poser with a reasonable range of human deformations.

At some point, you have to decide what the purpose of the figure is. If you want an anatomically precise recreation of a human body rigged for accurate muscle deformations in every possible pose, Poser is not for you. At best, its figures are an approximation of realism. I empathize with the figure creators who settle for "good enough." Most people don't realize what a challenge it is to get even that far.

Of course, Poser figures could only improve if you would provide us with your system for creating “3d JCMs.” I’d buy that script.

No Weightmapping
No extra bones
Not a single JCM

No Weightmapping
No extra bones
Not a single JCM

All it takes is some time. :-)

JCMs could improve the arm bend deformations around the elbow area. Why not improve things?

There are a few of them that are free or opensource for rigging characters and animating them. All of them are free some use propritary file formats.

Blender has just about everything you would need to build, rig, animate, physics, cloth, etc. Best free one out there, huge community support.

K-3D includes basic tools for NURBS, patches, curves and animation.

SoftImage XSI, free version can't be used for comercial work. Used mostly for free games.

Anim8or.

Seamless3d, kind of crude, great for animated toonish stuff.

3D Canvas.

Bishop3D, uses POVray render engine.

Houdini Apprentice, its a trial, never expires, limited render output and water marked, does not support external render engines (full version can use tons of them), not sure what else would be turned off in it. Full version is uber expensive. Houdini is top of the line, steep learning curve as well. Standard desktops will be painfully slow with lots of sims going.

Cant think of anymore, but there probably are some.

There are more than a few that are not free as well. Most of the high end ones will do advanced character rigging for animation and life like poses.

I have two free resources but they just include the OBJ files:

DOWNLOAD PAGE: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/details.php?item_id=69645

DOWNLOAD PAGE: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/details.php?item_id=69646

NOTE: please read the text!

Thanks, especially for the google hint :). I agree that poser technology is a good thing, but is it really enough? For example the knee(cap) or elbow area, the shoulder is difficult, the muscles on the back when you move your arms. The muscles that make your neck turn, its not really that your head is rotating, its different muscles contracting to create this rotational movement, and they will emphasize when they are at work, and this should be reflected, but you cannot easily "rig" that muscle, unless you go for a JCM, no?. But I think the JCMs break too easily when you further modify the figure, e.g. like genesis changes shapes, I assume you have to redo the work all over (JCM is vertex movement, it doesnt understand why its moving, its just moving). Isn't there any figure technology that reduces this "redo of work" to a minimum, if not avoids it? I'll have to look at maya muscles, thank you paloth. Btw, I have a bit more spare time at the moment, I'll to recreate the JCM script and post it. There seem to be some very advanced kits out there. But a bit costly too :) Zygote Price: $13,995 without Textures $17,995 with Textures Didnt see if its actually rigged though. The animation download was just a rotation of the entire figure. Will research some more.

Attached Link: Genesis functionality for Michael 3

Ditto. :-)

And may I beg you for a copy of the joint-refitter instructions ?

I still have the script but only used it (successfully) twice and now I can't remember the exact steps needed to add that shape-shifter functionality.

(See link)

:-(

I'm not familiar with the high end apps, but it seems to me that someone needs to think outside the box to take the next step. Rigging based on bones is conceptually limited. Obviously, you can't normally bend in the middle of a bone (unless something has gone wrong :) ), but the actual actors in movement are muscles.

I guess movement controls based on muscles might over-complicate things, though. It would require a learning curve even to use, much less build.

joint refitter... hm... good question. i think you had to set all joints to animatable, and have to use the script while the teaching tool was runnig, when the morph was dialed to 1.0 the operations performed by the script (to adopt the joint centers) where then automatically sensed and slaved into the morph dial

Quote - Despite Poser and Makehuman, anybody knows some other human construction kits around? Something more "advanced" with bones and muscle simulation and such? The more I was reading about anatomy the more I think the simple rig system with rotations and morphs will never produce any really satisfying output. How are the professionals doing it? Is there more "room" on the "market" to found another open source toolkit? We have so much computing power now, and I think despite during render we might be using 1% of what we actually could do. Col

The best rigging systems we have so far are very expensive MoCaps for Hollywood movies.
I'll let you decide how great MoCap is at moving muscles,tendons etc etc like real Humans.
No Riggs will move mucles,tendons etc etc like real Humans.

For Stills zBrush.

The best rigging systems we have so far are very expensive MoCaps for Hollywood movies.
I'll let you decide how great MoCap is at moving muscles,tendons etc etc like real Humans.
No Riggs will move mucles,tendons etc etc like real Humans.

I suppose it would be possible to apply a MoCap animation to a Maya rig that included a muscles system, but even that would provide only an approximation of the real. The human body will produce unique surface deformations that vary with position as well as muscle tension. To make things worse, the deformations vary from person to person and defy any "one size fits all" parameter. Perhaps a system could be devised for custom positional morphs, but the changes wrought by muscle pressure are myriad and daunting