Mb Lab Blender

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Kinector

This is my first C# project! I'm a fan of Blender and the ManuelbastioniLAB add-on and I wanted to be able to animate it using motion capture. I discovered NI-Mate and a nice Blender-addon, which allows Blender to receive the OSC messages sent from NI-Mate.

I found the retargeting rather complex and was wondering, if there's an easier way around this...

I test MB-Lab on Blender 2.83.4 LTS, it can run normally, so I think that there are some changes in Blender 2.90 Beta. Copy link OBI-Ron commented Sep 4, 2020. This rig controls various expressions of a MB-Lab character by using the controls shown above. To add the rig, just click on the Add Face Rig button for your finalized character. To delete the rig, you need to select your finalized character first, then click the Delete Face Rig button. MB-Lab (previously ManuelbastioniLAB) is a free and open-source plug-in for Blender for the parametric 3D modeling of photorealistic humanoid characters. It was developed by the artist and programmer Manuel Bastioni., and was based on his over 15 year experience of 3D graphic projects.

Searching the web revealed that I was at least 2 years behind everyone else in the quest for easy motion capture! I ended up buying a Kinect 2 for Windows and with the help of the real pioneers was able to create Kinector.

Usage

Kinector:

  1. Attach Kinect 2 with PC adapter, if not done already
  2. Install Kinect for Windows Runtime 2.0, if not done already
  3. Download Kinector and extract all files
  4. Run Kinector and do funny things until you see a red face

Blender:

  1. Install the Kinector.py Blender add-on
  2. Create a ManuelbastioniLAB,MB-Lab, Makehuman or Rigify model
  3. Move that model to kinector slot 1
  4. Uncomment the desired mode in kinector.ini and start Kinector.exe
  5. Click 'Start' in the Kinector add-on and have fun
  6. Enable auto-keyframing and hit Alt-a to record all the fun
  • Face Smooth sets the size of the smoothing queue for the facial expressions
  • Joint Smooth does the same for the body
  • Face Strength magnifies (or reduces) expressions
  • Minimum Delta sets a threshold for sending OSC data to Blender (to reduce keyframes and jitter)
  • Position scale allows to match the character movement to it's size
  • Calibrate puts the character to 0,0,0 (3 seconds after click)

Waring Lab Blender

Known issues

  • Arms don't always do what you'd expect (works best if you're facing Kinect straight-on)
  • Legs go haywire if you turn body
Mb Lab Blender

Mb Lab Clothes

FaceOSC Kinector

  1. Download FaceOSC
  2. Edit settings.xml in the data folder (set host to 127.0.0.1 and port to 7000)
  3. Download and install the updated Kinector add-on for Blender
  4. Download and install the MB-Lab add-on for Blender
  5. Create and finalize a chracter
  6. Change the head joint rotation to Euler XYZ
  7. Select the object and move it to slot 1 in Kinector
  8. Start FaceOSC and have fun!

If you find it useful, save or make tons of money using it...

Thanks to

Tutorial

Mb Lab Blender Tutorial

  • NI-Mate for their GPL2 Blender plugin
  • Vangos Pterneas for his great tutorials
  • Rumen Filkov for helping me with joint orientations
  • Valdemar Örn Erlingsson for the OSC library
  • Patrick W. Crawford for helping with Blender 2.8 adaption