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Upliner / CharMorph

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Readme & Feature Clarification #34

Open GeneralProtectionFault opened 4 weeks ago

GeneralProtectionFault commented 4 weeks ago

I noticed MB-Lab says the last-released version is the final one, and development has moved to this project. However, MB-Lab shows significantly more contributors that are not on this repo, and it doesn't look like this repo is that active, so I'm confused as to the questions of feature parity, differences, etc... and just in general why it's so quiet here if development has moved here.

I do see there are differences from MB-Lab listed, but no updates around the MB-Lab "final" update in June. I think we could use an update to clarify, a roadmap, etc... if there are still things MB-Lab does that Charmorph does not, or how to do those things if they are done, but in a different way, etc...

Also, side note, I noticed the UDIM update, but there's no release corresponding to that update. I swapped out the materials.py file in the zip, but I think it would make sense to have a release with any features added since the addon needs the assets within the zip, if I recall correctly.

Hopefullyidontgetbanned commented 4 weeks ago

Development discussion mostly takes place on discord where it is slightly more informal than github, Charmorph has most features that MB-Lab has, essentially everything that mb-lab users would typically use, I believe that the main developers want to add auto-updater and asset downloader/custom directories before the new release to make it user friendly, Currently only one character is designed to have UDIM usage, which is why the feature was needed. The assets are in a submodule and that gets zipped up as the assets, if you download the release. The developers want to change it to be more automatic and not require re-downloading an entire add-on worth of content for every new release/change to the codebase. So that's basically what's taken developer time.

animate1978 commented 4 weeks ago

To be clear is that development on MB-Lab had in fact stopped yes, there are already things in CharMorph that are already added to it similar in function OR have been added and in fact better than MB-Lab prior to my involvement here. The contributors to MB-Lab were a buildup over time, for much of it only me and another person were actively engaged at any given time, rarely was it a huge group effort at once... CharMorph development is on GitHub but communication is more on Discord due to real time interaction. I too would like to see more of a roadmap, some kind of idea of what we can do to get to where we need to be.

As mentioned the UDIM feature is added in code, however the models still need to be configured to use it properly. Antonia is the only model that supports it and AFAIK it is still only a branch so it is still not in the master branch so by default the users still won't see any change until that branch of Antonia is merged to master. Vitruvian is designed for it as well but is still in development. The MB-Lab models are being worked on to support UDIM however process is slow, and I am still getting used to the processes... the way development of character in CharMorph is different than MB-Lab if that makes sense, so it's not been easy for me to adopt the workflow at this time, but they are being worked on.

The Auto-Updater code is waiting to be merged so that is the only holdup there. I'm not sure how to add in the other idea, the Auto-Updater code is plugged in from CGCookie... hopefully we can get help here.

Hopefullyidontgetbanned commented 4 weeks ago

In terms of roadmap, the issues I've posted has provided a good enough vision for the future, and issues to fix. Having more developers and users with professional skills would allow to have better quality characters and find new issues to fix and solve. Also I don't think any characters outside vitruvian really need UDIMs unless their textures are reauthored to integrate them. Some stuff will be quite significant like easier integration of custom characters and updating them like #32

GeneralProtectionFault commented 3 weeks ago

I see. I hopped on the Discord server. So yeah that all makes sense. For my 2 cents, I think a good start would be dressing up the FAQ channel and including that in the readme, but up to y'all. I am familiar with Python and a little bit of Blender's badly documented API LOL. I will keep an eye out if I see something I think I can help with.