The good news about about having to scrap and rework everything you have just done is that, eventually, you get fairly quick at whatever you are doing.  In this case, I have gotten much quicker at creating a model in Makehuman, exporting/importing to Blender and posing. :)  This week, I was able to create initial clothing and re-pose each of the characters.  Some mistakes I made were part of the learning curve; others still have me scratching my head.  As someone once said, 'All movement is progress!'

Lessons Learned

When I reopened my file with all the figures in rough poses and awaiting clothing, I realized my Rest Pose and rigify controls for each character did not save.  I'm sure it is due to operator error, but still haven't figured out how to avoid that.  As a work-around, I exported each figure with the generic Makehuman rig and re-Posed.  As far as I can tell, this is working even after multiple file open/closings.  In the process of recreating each pose, I am now much more adept at creating and posing figures!

This re-posing process also taught me to clothe my figures before I spent any time posing them.  1)  The clothes are easier to create on a Rest Pose, and 2) the automatic weighting for the clothing is much simpler when started from a Rest Pose.  I have a feeling that I will need to sculpt the clothes to add some detail and that will (probably) be easiest in the Rest Pose. 

From a work-flow perspective, I've decided that several iterations will be less time-consuming than perfection at each step.  For example, on the first positioning pass, I spent entirely too much time matching the 3D body with the 2D reference image for things like body twist, shoulder droops, etc.  Once I thought I was 'done' with the first character, I inserted the next character only to discover the body position I labored over didn't work.  For example, Character 1's hand on Character 2's shoulder was easier to position once they were both roughly positioned, particularly when reaching around Character 4, 6 and 8.   The end result is, it would have been quicker to position all the bodies first by roughly arranging the various bodies, then go through a pass to get the neck/shoulders roughly in place, then position the hands and heads.

I still struggle with weighting the clothing so it behaves naturally when the wrist and forearm are rotated.  I have not figured out how to make one setup work for all poses.  I will probably end up using a setup that gets close for the intended pose and then applying the deformation/tweaking individual vertices to get to a finished product.

Next Steps

Based on the multiple pass aproach to posing/clothing, my next step will be to create hair particle systems for each character and begin initial styling.  I could spend years getting everything just right.  The challange for me will be to see how quickly I can get to 'close enough'.  After that, a 'final' pass at both the clothing and hair should finish up the characters.  The final steps will be to complete the room and add lighting.  Hopefully, that will be the easy part!

Comments are always welcome, especially if you have ways to simplify this workflow.

Thanks!