The basemesh and its helpers

The “Basemesh” is the core of MPFB. This is the human body, and some extra geometry. The basemesh is what you get when you create a human “from scratch”:

The basemesh always contains exactly the same number of vertices and faces, independently of the shape of the human. When you reshape the human, you move the position of the vertices, but the geometry is otherwise the same.

Helpers

What you don’t usually see is the helper geometry. If you toggle the mask modifier for hiding the helper geometry, you can see there is a lot of extra hidden stuff:

This extra stuff (“helpers”) is there to assist with the logic in MPFB. It comes roughly in two categories:

• “Joint cubes”: These are the positions of the heads and tails for bones. For example, there’s a joint cube for the knee and for the ankle. A bone in a rig will stretch from exactly the knee joint cube to the ankle joint cube.
• “Helper geometry”: These are vertices assisting in fitting clothes and body parts. For example there is a geometry “helper-skirt” to which skirt and gown type of clothes will be attached.

About the Basemesh

The current version of the Basemesh (“hm08”) has remained the same for more than a decade, and it is shared between MakeHuman and MPFB (as is most other assets). All other assets related to this.