Hello users of MB-Lab!

This add-on has come far since we as a community took over the development. We have 230 posts here and already 100+ users on the Discord channel (https://discordapp.com/invite/FuJGcVN 1)! Many users have asked on how they can contribute, so I thought it would be nice if we can aggregate everyone’s view and usage of this add-on. With those insights, we can understand this community better and increase motivation ^-^

Therefore, I made a Google forms with brainstorm-like questions, please fill it out!: Google Form link

Results will be shared here and on the Discord channel from 2019-06-02 (you can still fill it out later as well). The reason to not share it directly, is that seeing other people’s answers might influence your answers. That can reduce the variety of the answers given, the opposite of what we want to achieve here.

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And here are the results of the survey (2019-06-02)!

• Full results (archived - prevent modification): https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdbNPtwosFh-kWdXHsTJNQ1ab0xNAazqSiixpeomNPvbGZu_g/viewanalytics
• New survey (always open): https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdMiy6ow2Mr6IzqLuHx1b63GaXtXSjj3cASn4btQMLz7q4AQg/viewform

It is very interesting to see that almost everyone of the 13 respondends had different use-cases.

Purpose

• Research / Human-Agent interaction
• Entertainment / movie making
• Illustration / comic book art / concept art
• Real human --> 3D model
• Procedural character generation
• Facial expressions
• Anime characters
• Game characters

Workflow

• Adjustments: Changing shaders, fix materials for real-time rendering, add armature bones/blend shapes
• Scene population
• Control of verts (gravity, human rotation, ragdoll)
• IK rig / pose
• Clothes fitting
• Real human reference
• Unity3D
• Overpaint (in photoshop)

Requirements for add-on

• Realistic human characters (5x)
• Facial expressions (in real-time)
• Genitals
• More fine grained control of mesh/texture generation
• Games (UE4 / Unity3D): exportable material settings / textures / skeleton, lower polycount
• Muscle system
• Swap parts of model with other model
• Better fitting functions
• Scripted modfication of body
• Improved anime characters (variety)
• Skeleton Rigify

Additional functionality

• Automatic foot placement
• Match reference image
• Hair styles / creator
• Clothes creators
• Common actions (run, walk, swim, etc)
• Blemishes (scars)
• Model from reference pictures

Similar add-ons

• MakeHuman: http://www.makehumancommunity.org/
• Adobe Fuse: https://www.adobe.com/products/fuse.html
• Character Creator 3: https://www.reallusion.com/character-creator/production.html
• Keentools Facebuilder: https://www.keentools.io/facebuilder
• Sorcar (node based mesh modifcation in real-time): https://github.com/aachman98/Sorcar
• BY-GEN (non-destructive mesh modifier): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwfSlPpBfbw
• VRoid: https://studio.vroid.com/
• UMA 2 (Unity3D): https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/characters/uma-2-unity-multipurpose-avatar-35611
• Daz3D: https://www.daz3d.com/genesis8

The How Might We (HMW)'s can be found in the full results link:

• HMW procedurally generate the character mesh? What kind of sliders / buttons / nodes?
• HMW deal with texture (images/procedural/etc)?
• HMW quickly create many models and what properties should we share with them?
• HMW modify the character after the first setup (do we really need a creation phase / finished phase)?
• HMW the code modular, so people only have to understand a part if they want to improve / tweak something?
• HMW make it easily extendable to prevent the core part of the add-on from becoming huge?
• HMW manage this as a community? How does someone become a contributor?
• HMW we promote this add-on?

Communication channels: GitHub (9), blenderartist (7), Discord (5), Reddit (1) Biggest 2 group of time spend are: 2-5 hours & 0-2 hours Most people are from Europe and then North America

Other comments:

• Happy it's still alive and great work! (11x)
• License MPL / AGPL / CC-BY