MPFB is MakeHuman rebuilt as a Blender add-on. You get the same hm08 base mesh and the same target system driving it, but the sliders, the assets and the rigging all happen inside Blender instead of in a separate application. It replaces two workflows: sculpting a human from scratch then retopologising, unwrapping and weight-painting it, or modelling in standalone MakeHuman and round-tripping through an exported file, repairing materials and rigs on arrival.
What It Does
- Generates a human from macro sliders plus detailed per-feature targets, with optional automatic symmetry
- Keeps topology fixed at 13,380 body vertices however far you push the sliders — only positions move, so UVs and weights survive
- Adds one of four standard rigs — default, GameEngine, CMU mocap or Mixamo — or generates a Rigify meta-rig
- Fits clothes, hair, eyes, teeth and lashes from installed asset packs, refitting when the body changes
- Offers several skin material models, from a plain export-safe GameEngine shader to a heavily procedural layered skin
- Reads MakeHuman MHM character files, so work started in the standalone app continues here
Good To Know
- Free and open source, GPL-3.0-or-later for the code; the core assets and base mesh are CC0, so models you make are yours to sell or ship in closed-source games
- Version 2.0.17, Blender 4.2 LTS and newer, 43 MB; 152,000+ downloads, rated 5.0 from 35 reviews
- The 43 MB is not the whole product. Create Human gives you an untextured mesh — skins, eyes and teeth come from the separate system assets pack, clothes and hair from further packs, and installing one may need a restart
- Only the core assets are CC0. Asset packs mix CC0 and CC-BY, and community assets can be anything, so a commercial ship needs a per-asset licence check
- Clothes stop fitting when you move a slider. You refit manually, or enable auto-refit and accept the performance cost on complex garments
- With a proxy applied the sliders still work, but the change is hidden underneath it — which reads as a bug and is not one
- Baking shape keys is one-way — it strips helpers and properties, after which sliders and clothes fitting stop working
- The layered skin targets single Cycles stills. For animation or engine export, switch skin and eye materials to MakeSkin or GameEngine yourself
- No facial rig ships with it, and user data does not carry between Blender versions unless you set an explicit user-data path first
Where It Fits
This is for people who need varied human base meshes with unambiguous commercial rights and no EULA to read — crowds, background characters, a rigged body to build on. It is not a one-download tool: budget an evening for the extension, the system assets, the packs and the user-data path. Anyone wanting photoreal output with a curated wardrobe, or a facial rig today, is better served elsewhere.