Long-time users of MakeHuman will remember a time when the nightly builds were the go-to place to get the most stable and functional code. After the first stable release of the 1.1.x branch, the nightly builds have been in a hiatus, since there were not enough code changes to warrant the whole build procedure. 

Now, however, we have a new code branch of MakeHuman: the python 3 port which is currently being built nightly for the Windows platform. A new branch has the potential to introduce lots of unintended bugs, glitches and crashes that need testing before final relaese, so we will need help to catch them all. 

Why Python 3?

Quite aside from the fact that all new development on python is for the 3.x code base, python 2 is rapidly approaching end of life. It might sound as if 2020 is still a long way off, but we have already gotten a few initial scares such as Linux distributions considering setting python 3 as default and only offering python 2 as an optional package. This hasn't happened yet for any mainstream distro, but it will not be far off. 

About the new branch

The new set of releases include several changes: 

• The code is ported to python3
• Since Riverside has deprecated PyQT4 and no longer offers it for download, we've had to introduce support for PySide (another python Qt wrapper) as an alternative. This is currently the only option on Windows
• To emphasize our focus on supporting the community, we are now bundling MHX2, MHAPI and the asset downloader with the community builds.  This should provide community members with an “upside” for enduring any bugs that they may encounter.

So far there are no real feature additions in the MakeHuman community codebase. All focus is on getting this branch up and running flawlessly.

Current status

The current status of the build is that it starts and works decently on the build machine.  It tends to work well on machines containing a discrete nVidia graphics card. The binary FBX export may or may not work (we still have to investigate this fully). But when MH starts at all it is reasonably functional. 

As of now, only windows nightly builds are being made. Until further notice, we'll recommend that Linux users run from source instead, and we will have to get back to you about Mac builds. 

More information

To get more information about the nightly builds, please refer to the new FAQ section on nightly builds: http://www.makehumancommunity.org/wiki/FAQ:Index#Nightly_builds

There you will also find download links and further instruction.