Zabaware Support Forums
Zabaware Forums => Ultra Hal 7.0 => Topic started by: Baerdric on December 14, 2009, 12:17:40 am
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I'm starting work on a 3D comedy "mechwarrior" agent using PovRay (http://povray.org/) scripting to render the animations. I'm hoping to include a good number of animations, since most of the parts can be reused anyway. I'll be posting small screen shots occasionally and hope to get some comments about skits I can have the little guy do. Probably a lot of "Transformer" kinds of things where he turns into whatever the end result should be. There will probably be lots of shooting of lasers and unfortunate explosions.
Admittedly there is very little work done so far, I have just one small segment of the "Show" routine worked out and rendered where he builds himself out of an impossibly small box.
I would love to hear any suggestions at all.
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That sounds awesome... am a big fan of those kind of animation.
I can't wait to see what you come up with. [;)]
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Well, I'm having problems getting MSAgent to use my rendered images. Apparently it needs every frame to have the same palette. I've found some really old (1998) tools for regularizing palettes but they are shareware and the companies both seem to be out of business.
The example of this type of software would be "Palette Express", but I can't even register it because the company is gone.
Anyone know of any newer tools that can do batch reprocessing and extract a common palette from a selection of images?
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when i was creating character i found that PAINTSHOP Came with an additional program ANIMATION SHOP! Paintshop5 preety old. but it does the job!
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I got this and it does create a unified palette for animated gifs, but how did you then export those images for MsAgent?
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quote:
Originally posted by Baerdric
I got this and it does create a unified palette for animated gifs, but how did you then export those images for MsAgent?
I exported the animations AS HQ GIFS....
for Each Emotion / ACTION and new GIF....
Then assign it in the Microsoft ACE... here you can also Chose aCUSTOM VOICE but you also need the "SID" or CLass ID for your newley created voice
http://www.guile3d.com.br/home.asp
here they used JPEGS to construct the GIFS....
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I'll look again, but I didn't find a way to use animated gifs as a MsAgent animation, it seemed to want individual BMP frames.
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quote:
Originally posted by Baerdric
I'll look again, but I didn't find a way to use animated gifs as a MsAgent animation, it seemed to want individual BMP frames.
In the Animation shop add on to paint shop, LOL. I REMMEBER NOW!
Export GIF/animation IT will give you every frame as a BMP!
I will have to Search and download paintshop pro and take a quikie look
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OK I Downloaded the EVAL version of PSP5 I only installed the animation shop component!.. Its free!
I installed the MsACE Free TOO.
I Opened a Quality GIF on my PC and opened in the animation shop
On Each Frame I exported a Numbered BMP (for ordering)
I opened MSACE.
created a new character.
New Animation linked to STATE.
Insert Frame From Images, Selected all of the Exported BMPS
Then i saved Character and Invoked the State with a script
Completed!
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ok, I know what I'm about to say has no importance...
I have no idea what any of you are talking about.... although I do undersand the occational word...
[:D]
Keep it up... sounds good. [;)]
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We Are just speaking about HOW to create a MSAGENT CHARACTER,
REQ: Microsoft Agent Editor (ACE.exe)
REQ: PaintShop7(ANIMATION SHOP)
each character has a set of animations - assigned to a STATE
theses animations are made up of BMP's OR GIFS, The MS AGENT EDITOR
Requires EACH animation in FRAMES of BMP.
AS long as you can create your animation into frames you will be ok.
SO ANIMATION SHOP is a usefull TOOL, as it can export frames, as BMP. From A GIF.
Transparency is the USUAL PINK!
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No, I know how to make agents, I've made several insignificant ones. The problems is (and because of my reformat I have to start over) that PovRay outputs a 16m color image with it's own palette. But Character Editor wants 256 color images with a single unified palette. As frames progress, with different parts of the Robot coming into view, the frames I have develop different colors. So I need to be able to point something at a directory of many images and have it deduce a single 256 indexed pallet.
I'm still working on Animator Shop, but I had to reinstall everything this morning and I'm still not quite there.
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cooooolll!
Thanks SpyDaz for the leason. I got to try this out!
[:)]
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Urrrr..... can't find PSP version 5
I'll have to install the shareware version pretty soon.
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quote:
Originally posted by Baerdric
Urrrr..... can't find PSP version 5
I'll have to install the shareware version pretty soon.
http://www.oldversion.com/Paint-Shop-Pro.html
Here is where i quickly found it All of the previous versions
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Thanks, got it!
I kept looking for "Vintage" in the name, I knew there was something like that but I couldn't remember the name.
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don't let that snowman fool you he's a super genious too !![:D]
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Hi Baerdric,
I know that Ulead GIF animator allows you to save each frame of a GIF animation as a BMP and does it easily in one step. It also permits you to do the same with AVIs and other such movie files.
Roy.
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Thanks Roy!
I used to own some Ulead Products including the Gif Animator... I wonder if my license is still good...
Good to see you around.
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quote:
Good to see you around.
I thought I'd drop in and see what was happening here and maybe get back into script writing again, now that I have got some time on my hands.
Roy.
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Yeah, nothing wastes... I means fills... the time, like banging away at code. I'm afraid I've got too many projects started right onw, I don't seem to be making much progress on any of them, plus I have to refresh myself on VBS and Povray scene description language as I go.
It's starting to come back to me, but slowly.
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quote:
It's starting to come back to me, but slowly
It's like riding a bike, once you get into it, it all comes back to you.
I was thinking, maybe you could make a MSAGENT of a real person by using the frames from movie files.
Roy.
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I've seen that done, but usually in a pornographic way. I bet that stop motion photography of a small model might be a good way to get some nice animations. Like an action figure or something.
Hmm... I'll have to try that.
Well, now I'm up to five projects that are each to big for me....
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quote:
Well, now I'm up to five projects that are each to big for me....
I know you, you'll breeze through them all. You like a challenge.
What are the other 4 projects that you are toying around with at the moment? Something ingenius and thought provoking, I reckon.
Roy.
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1) Still trying to rig up a good shopping list plugin.
2) Making the Mech MsAgent as per this thread
3) Learning "Carol of the Bells" on ukulele like this guy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7eCz8SC86U ... before Christmas!
4) Figuring out how to program for Mobile Phones in VB
5) Stop motion animation green screen studio in my hall closet.
BTW, am I the only one having trouble making the formatting tags work on this forum?
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I was impressed by the youtube video (but I reckon that guy needs a bigger instrument with those chunky fingers of his) and a couple of other versions that was in the list that followed. Do you consider that you will be able to perform it before Christmas? (4 days to go) You'll have to film yourself and youtube it so I can see how well you had accomplished your goal. Is it planned as some special xmas perfomance? (a big get together in the town square)
Roy.
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I've got it about 90%, if Christmas were in 6 weeks I would be fine. I'll play it slower and my Church group is more forgiving of my playing than I am...
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Phew!!! Lucky it's a church group you're playing to .... They're so polite and you know there'll not be a bad word mentioned. It's always much better when your debute performance is to an agreeable audience .... There'll not be one dry eye in the parish hall that evening.
Roy.
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Yeah, but meanwhile I am so scattered with different projects that I rarely get any real progress on any of them.
I should be working in Povray right now, but instead I have been playing with "Pencil" 2D animator.
I need to focus.
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When you're a jack of all trades, it's hard to specialize in one.
I've just read up and downloaded this Povray program, I'd never heard of it, until you just mentioned it in your post. It's sounds interesting a re-release of Ray Trace. That was once an industry standard in the printing world as I recall.
I'll have to give it a try. I've been using Blender for altering the meshes of game characters (I've become a Fallout 3 fan), which is also free and see which I like the most.
Roy.
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Povray is a whole different thing, and it's real strength is in rendering. It has a bunch of features that I will never use, radiosity, atmospheres and such. Sort of like using Photoshop to remove redeye... that's where I'm at.
The reason I use it is that you can script movement and such right into the scene using geometry and math, then walk away while it renders your series of images. There are probably better solutions now, but I've used it for about 12 years and I'm kinda used to it.
The script will be familiar to you beyond the actual objects, if/then/else etc. etc.
If you load up some of the "Basic scenes" and render them you can see most of it, although they do throw in all the options even when not used and make a unreadable mess of some of it.
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It appears a very interesting application. I decided after opening it to read the more indepth desciption (it always helps), as I was expecting something different.
The images in the Hall of Fame are excellent, especially the one that took four and a half days to render. This is one application to become more familiar with.
There's plenty of stuff appearing now to fill my empty time with ... there will be no idle hands here to make work for the devil after all ... hahaha.
Roy.
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I've been playing around with it, like I said, for a while. It's been a couple of years since I really used it so I'm having to refresh my skills again. As a result I have rendered many images without moving forward on my Agent at all.
I used to know a guy who did a lot of mech renderings, I should look him up.
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6) I forgot my new interest in Mouse Breeding Genetics
http://www.fancymice.info/links2.htm
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I used to breed hamsters when I was a kid and sell the excess youngers to the local pet shop.
I remember learning how to cross breed different species of rodent from the experience and books. I accomplished crossing a hamster with a rat.
It was done by taking one of the young from either the rat or the hamsters' litter and putting it into the other species nest with their young. Take away the parent from the nest your putting it into, before hand for a couple of hours so the inserted youngster would aquire the scent and then replace the mother to nurture it. She will bring it up as a hamster or a rat, depending on which litter you put it into.
When the young rat/hamster grew to maturity, it thought it was from that species so it mated, producing a cross species.
I've never done it with mice but I have heard of people crossing them with gerbols.
Roy.
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Other than for your individual use, I wouldn't focus on MS Agents as they will NOT be supported nor used in Windows 7 and any future versions of MS Windows.
WOT!
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Hi Art,
It appears we have been side tracked a bit on this thread.
Thanks for the information on Windows 7. It's a shame, they've been a part of windows for so long but I rather have a good system than the agents, I suppose.
Roy.
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Robert posted a link to a third party support system for MsAgent which works on Win7.
I'm glad that someone has taken this out of MS hands, it may not be the most useful technology, but it has features that other systems haven't implemented yet.
Besides, I really don't like the Haptek stuff I see. If it's not real enough to fool me I would just as soon look at a cartoon. And with cartoons you're only limited by your imagination.
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quote:
Besides, I really don't like the Haptek stuff I see
You're right, it's so limited and unsupported by it's creators.
Roy.
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I made a few agents a few years back using a tutorial on
the web, but it is gone. I was wanting to try again.
I use Poser to make my image. I was wondering if I use
the same background color in Poser and then export the
image as a gif, then open it up in PSP7 or PSP10, and
convert it to a 256 bit image, will this give me the
same background color (or pallette) each time?
I barely remember saving a pallette the last time I
made a agent.
Or anyone know of a good tutorial for this?
Thanks,
Bill
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quote:
Originally posted by Art
Other than for your individual use, I wouldn't focus on MS Agents as they will NOT be supported nor used in Windows 7 and any future versions of MS Windows.
WOT!
MSAGENT doesnot really need support! As long as you have the MSAGENT files available to download, which microsoft still say they will keep available..... your fine
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quote:
Originally posted by ramccoid
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Besides, I really don't like the Haptek stuff I see
You're right, it's so limited and unsupported by it's creators.
Well, truthfully, all I can go by is what I see here. I know you can script movements but most of them seem blocky and they can't leave their box. And nothing compares to what you can do with cartoons as far as additional effects.
Maybe it's time for a fuller integration of AI and Graphics, so that Hal can tell the actor to move up to the exit button and push it or walk over to the Start Menu and click on the program you wanted, or display it's own window that has the information you asked for.
Maybe when Robert embeds Double Agent we will get some of that.
http://www.zabaware.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=6815
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I like It Baerdric, Im an agent guy, Even after its death.....
Im looking into this double agent.... I will probably have to remove msagent on my main pc.... just to test it as im sure it only comes into action when msagent is not installed....
wayneout I think the background needs to be The normal HIGH CONTRAST PINK, as when windows has a problem with the agent(badly installed) it shows up as this color... it also seems to be the AGreed... transparency color in MOST Skinning Applications, although there are only 2 tempetures generally used the HIGH and the one BELOW IT in the pallet... (standard 256)
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As far as I can tell, the palette needs to be the same color in every index location for every image frame (unless you like color shifting). The first indexed color is usually the background color and I've been using hot green with no ill effect, but any unused color will work.
There is a button for changing which indexed color you want to use for transparency. It goes by index number, not shade, so it has to be the same number in every frame. But you can change it to something other than "0" if you want.
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Thanks for all the help. I am working on it now to see
what happens.
Bill
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I know that it is Christmas, so maybe sometimes after
Christmas, somebody will have time to look at this and
tell me what I am doing wrong. I did my work in Poser with
a green background. Imported the image as a jpg and then
opened it in PSP7. Changed the colors to 256. In one case, I
clicked on the image and set palette transparency to a certain
number. Seems like it was 132. I did this for all images.
And in another case I did not set palette transparency. Didn't
matter because after I built my agent, the background was still
green. (I know something was said about a mask, but in PSP7,
all masks are grayed out.) I have done this about ten times.
When it shows the transparency color, the default is a dark brown.
I can change it to a green, but it still has the same results.
I didn't see how to find a number like the 132 that I set. I will
go back and check it. Finally, I tried white and it worked fairly
well except when you move the agent, the white is not completely
transparent. Any suggestions in the next few days. I going to
take a break because the grandkids will be over soon.
Thanks,
Bill
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quote:
Originally posted by wayneout
I know that it is Christmas, so maybe sometimes after
Christmas, somebody will have time to look at this and
tell me what I am doing wrong. I did my work in Poser with
a green background. Imported the image as a jpg and then
opened it in PSP7. Changed the colors to 256. In one case, I
clicked on the image and set palette transparency to a certain
number. Seems like it was 132. I did this for all images.
And in another case I did not set palette transparency. Didn't
matter because after I built my agent, the background was still
green. (I know something was said about a mask, but in PSP7,
all masks are grayed out.) I have done this about ten times.
When it shows the transparency color, the default is a dark brown.
I can change it to a green, but it still has the same results.
I didn't see how to find a number like the 132 that I set. I will
go back and check it. Finally, I tried white and it worked fairly
well except when you move the agent, the white is not completely
transparent. Any suggestions in the next few days. I going to
take a break because the grandkids will be over soon.
Thanks,
Bill
After doing it many times PINK is the transparency color, that the agent control uses?????
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I tried working on it this morning before everyone gets up
and it becomes hectic. I exported my image from Poser as a
PNG. I then created a new image in PSP7 with a solid color.
I pasted the png to the new image, merged, reduced colors,
and then set the background color as the transparent color.
I checked where the color was on the palette. This worked.
I know that I didn't have to go thru this much trouble a
few years ago, but if it works, it works.
Happy Holidays,
Bill
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Glad you got it working!
I'll be rather busy until the 3rd of January, I hope everyone enjoys the holidays.
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The palette can be about the hardest and most daunting part of creating an MS Agent character, and is probably the main reason that not very many people create MS Agent characters, they typically give up or quit creating characters after doing several of them, they feel it's just too tedious and time consuming.
The key is in choosing an appropriate color for the background which will be transparent. It can be just about any color you wish, but it's important that none of the character or prop colors be remotely close to the transparent background color you've chosen to use, or you can run into a multitude of problems.
There's many factors that must be considered in choosing the correct transparency color for your project. For example, the higher the resolution and color complexity of the character you're rendering, the harder it will be to choose the right transparency color and create a quality palette where the character has relatively smooth edges. It really requires proper pre-planning before you even start creating and rendering a character.
The palette creation and batching can all be done in most good paint programs such as Corel or Photoshop.
The max number of colors that can used in a GIF is 256, but your palette doesn't necessarily have to include that many, it can be any number of colors up to 256.
It's a very complex process especially if you're wanting to try and create MS Agent characters from high resolution Poser characters.
I'm sure you were hoping for a simple tutorial or a reference to some special palette tool that would make the process relatively easy. Unfortunately, that's just not the case. We were probably the first to create an MS Agent character using Poser nearly 13 years ago, and it took us a along time to master the techniques we use. Even though we now can almost create a character in our sleep, it still typically takes us well over 100 man hours to develop a character. No matter how good you get at creating characters, it's still a tedious time consuming process.
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Yes, I bought a desktopmate a month ago which
works fine for me. My grandkids think the program
is cool and I was wanting to make an agent that
was closer to their age. You don't find many agents
like that. I am going to keep working on the palette
thing. My main problem right now is around the hair.
I have psp7 and pspx.
Bill
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Hi wayneout;
Yes, hair props in poser can often be a real nightmare when it comes to creating the palette transparency. Many hair props will cause bleeding on the edges which creates a halo effect, or a very rough ragged edge. About the only way to deal with it is doing tedious post work in your paint program.
Here's a few tips that will help in reducing the problem.
*Avoid using light hair colors such as blonde. Opt for medium to dark colors instead. Blonde characters really should only be used if you're very skilled at creating MS Agent characters and working with palettes.
* Use a hair prop that has consistent edges such as a short bob style. Wild or frizzy styles, or ones with a lot of loose strands are going to cause bleeding, this is because the edges and strands on the hair prop are semi transparent in poser.
* Choose a transparency color that's bit closer to the shade of your hair. For example, if you're using a medium brown or darker hair color, choose a medium shade for your transparency, such as a medium green.
It can often require a lot of experimenting and testing prior to rendering all your animation frames to find the right transparency color to use for your project.