The MakeHuman site has released an update about the new non-manifold locator scripts that have been used to find non-manifold errors in the current MakeHuman base mesh. The corrected mesh allows Blender's decimator tool to create lower poly-count versions of the human models without causing errors. The corrected mesh will be used in MakeHuman 2.0 so that scaling a model to a useful polygon count for use in games will be easy.

JD: Your concern is a valid one, and the developers of MakeHuman have gone to considerable effort to make sure that the models produced by MH will be useful to both CG artists and game developers. Blender also comes with many export scripts (and some graphics/game engines come with importers for Blender's model format as well) that allow models to be used in games. In addition, because the entire MakeHuman project is Open Source and done with Python scripting, it is concievable that the model creation system used could be incorporated into a graphics engine directly to allow dynamic creation or morphing of models from within a game.

AP: To install it, you need to first download Blender here and then download MakeHuman here. Both Blender and MakeHuman come with instructions for installation, either on the website and/or in a readme file. MakeHuman 2.0 is on its way, and looks to be even more impressive than version 1.8 (the current version).

Keep in mind that MakeHuman is not entirely limited to purely human forms, but can also (as of the current version) do forms that would work well for elves (including the pointy ears), orcs, ogres, dwarves, or other fantasy humanoids. With some fiddling with the settings you could probably produce some good models for humanoid aliens for science fiction genres as well.

[Edited by - hatch22 on October 7, 2004 1:09:27 AM]