Fork of makehuman-js — a JavaScript library that builds 3D human models in the browser — kept buildable on current Node.js.

The original project by wassname hasn't been updated since 2017.

The figure above is the real MakeHuman base mesh — 19 158 vertices, 138 MB of morph targets, and fitted garments from makehuman-data — running in a browser, not a procedural stand-in.

npm ci
npm run build      # bundles dist/makehuman.js
npm run example    # serves http://127.0.0.1:8080/example/

example/ is a ~250-line page with no dependencies beyond what this repo already ships: three r82 from node_modules, the bundle from dist/, and the meshes, morph targets and clothing from node_modules/makehuman-data. Sliders (gender, age, height, weight, muscle, proportions) reshape the mesh live; the wardrobe buttons swap outfits, hair and eyebrows.

The upstream makehuman-js-example needs six CDN libraries and an npm install that fails on node-gyp in 2026, which is why this one lives in-tree.

This fork is a working baseline, not a rewrite. The source and the toolchain are still the original 2017 ones; what this repo adds is a verified answer to "does it still build?" and a demo that proves the library still renders.

Planned, in rough order: Webpack 5 + Babel 7 (mechanical), ESLint 9 flat config, then Three.js r1xx — the last one is the expensive step, because everything after r125 removed Geometry and reworked the material and loader APIs this code is built on. Until that lands, the README will not claim it.

Found while building the demo; all of them are upstream behaviour, not regressions of this fork:

• Poses tear the hands apart. setPose() writes each pose quaternion into bone.parent (src/js/human/human.js), and along the wrist/finger chain the result is wrists and fingers stretched into long ribbons. Every pose in makehuman-data is affected, so the demo starts in rest pose; picking a pose in the UI reproduces it. The body, clothing and face are unaffected.
• Loading a clothing proxy corrupts unrelated scene geometry. A THREE.GridHelper added to the same scene came back with the garment's 50 016 vertices in its buffer and rendered as a white wireframe shirt under the model. The demo keeps the scene minimal because of it.
• setPose() logs couldnt find bone metatarsal* — the poses reference foot bones the skeleton does not carry. Harmless, but noisy.

• Repo: makehuman-js/makehuman-js
• Author: Mike Clark (wassname)
• Original demo: mhwebui.wassname.com
• Example: makehuman-js-example

git clone https://github.com/HippocampusEvolve/makehuman-js-new.git
cd makehuman-js-new
npm ci
npm run build    # bundle to dist/makehuman.js
npm start        # dev server with hot reload
npm test         # opens a browser with the mocha suite

npm run build is the path covered by CI. npm start and npm test both rely on webpack-dev-server@2.1.0-beta and open a browser, so they are not run there.

This project is based on makehuman-js by wassname, which was inspired by the desktop Python software makehuman.org. Data and models are provided by the MakeHuman project — thanks to all contributors listed here.

AGPL-3.0 — same as the original project.

Code outputs are CC0. Data/models remain under the MakeHuman project license.