MPFB 2.0-next

These are the release notes of what is to become MPFB 2.0.18, which has not been released yet. The following are changes since 2.0.17.

General

This is a feature release with:

  • New user UX with a “start here” panel
  • A new category “asym” with assymetry targets
  • Topology proxies can now be unequipped

There is also a set of bug fixes:

  • An ink layer using the “full body” focus could no longer be saved, since MPFB looked for a UV map file for a focus which does not have one. The full body focus is simply the basemesh’s default UV map, and no lookup is needed in that case.
  • A .target file in the user data whose name was long enough to produce a blender property identifier of 64 characters or more would abort the entire addon registration, so that MPFB did not start at all. Over-long targets and expressions are now skipped with an explanatory warning in the log naming the offending file, rather than taking the addon down with them.
  • MPFB could no longer recognize a generated rigify rig or find its meta rig on current versions of rigify, which for example made it refuse to refit a character whose meta rig was hidden (which is what MPFB’s own panel recommends). Rigify has moved several of its properties from ID-properties to RNA properties, and MPFB now checks both, so that older blender and rigify versions keep working too.
  • A randomization preset saved before a target section existed would fail to load in its entirety. Sections which a preset predates are now restored as disabled rather than raising an error, which reproduces exactly the character the preset gave before.
  • Hair editor updated to work with blender 5.2 (see below)

There have also been a few updates for consistency and correctness of the system documentation.

Downloads

MPFB is available from the extension platform, and the preferred way of installation is to use the extension platform functionality inside blender.

Start here panel

The first time a user opens up this version of MPFB, a panel at the top will list some introductory text and buttons for opening relevant places in the docs etc. This panel can be dismissed with a button, and then be re-opened via preferences.

The background is that there are recurring complaints along the lines of “there are no tutorials for MPFB” and “there aren’t any assets for MPFB”, although both in fact exist. The panel is an attempt at fixing the discoverability rather than the contents: it says what to click first, links the getting started guide and the video tutorials, states plainly whether an asset library is installed (and what to do if it is not), and points at the community forum and the issue tracker.

The panel introduces no new functionality. Every button in it invokes an operator which is available elsewhere in the UI too.

Asymmetry targets

An entire section of bundled targets, the 62 files under data/targets/asym, has been unreachable since they were added: no section in target.json pointed at them, so no panel was ever built for them. How this went unnoticed for five years remains unexplained.

The section has now been added, and the 62 files pair up into 31 sliders under a new “asym” category in the model panel, each running from full left asymmetry at -1 to full right at +1. The same sliders are also available in the randomization panel.

The sliders also have icons. Since these targets typically move the mesh only a millimeter or two, which is invisible at icon size, the deformation in the icons is deliberately exaggerated: the icon shows the place and the direction of the asymmetry, not its magnitude.

Both of these were contributed by GitHub user ashledombos.

Unequipping topology proxies

Clicking the button for an already loaded topology proxy did not unequip it, but instead attempted to load it again and failed with an error about a missing file. Proxies now behave the same way as clothes and body parts: an equipped proxy shows an “Unequip” button, which removes the proxy and also removes the mask modifier which was hiding the base mesh underneath it.

As a part of this, a proxy loaded without rigging is now parented to the basemesh. Without that parenting MPFB did not consider the proxy an equipped asset at all, and it could thus never be unequipped.

Hair editor Blender 5.2 compatibility

Blender 5.2 changed how the inputs of a geometry nodes modifier are accessed. Up to 5.1 they are ID-properties on the modifier itself, and as of 5.2 reading them that way raises an exception. This broke the entire hair editor, since applying hair failed outright.

Reading and writing node group inputs has been moved into ModifierService, which tries the old form first and falls back on the new one, so the hair editor works on 4.2 through 5.2.

In the same area, hair did not render in EEVEE on blender 5.x, because the strip setting was only applied when the render engine identified itself as BLENDER_EEVEE_NEXT. In 5.x the identifier is BLENDER_EEVEE again, and both names are now accepted.

Both of these were contributed by GitHub user ashledombos.

Documentation

As GitHub user Shatur has noted, the target metadata documentation as well as a few other pieces of documentation are confusing and in some cases outright wrong. A spirited attempt at finding and fixing these and similar problems have been made.

This is quite far off from being able to promise that everything in the docs is correct (it is most likely not). Help with proof reading and suggesting changes is very welcome.