Messages

16

Programming using the Ultra Hal Brain Editor / My People Putty Characters

« on: November 10, 2004, 10:42:51 am »

I've spent many years in Curious Lab's Poser (a 3D character building and posing package), and have quite a bit of experience in creating characters and textures.  I'd love to get my hands on the Haptek development tools, but the fact that they don't advertise their prices, as well as the fact that their marketing message is aimed at businesses, makes me suspect that I'd have to mortage my house to get them.  

The biggest issue I have with People Putty is the lack of ability to add additional 3D objects as accessories.  Importing a wavefront obj file with it's texture is a simple effort.  Haptek's "add-on" pack with "40 additional accessories!" contains many of the same objects with the same textures but with different colors applied.  *Very* poor man's "add-on's".  I can't even create replacement textures for the hair props (which are badly in need of replacement) because I don't have texture templates or existing textures maps, and I can't find a method for loading them even if they existed.

If anyone has Haptek's .haptar extractor, and could pull the textures out of the .htr files, I'd be happy to create some replace hair textures.  This assumes that someone also knows if there is a way to apply external textures to the objects, otherwise the .htr would have to be rebuilt with the new texture in order for it to be available.

Oh, and an LotR Elf character would not be difficult, but the only hair object that fit the "blonde" motif is the "Supermodel" hair (which can be seen on the pre-installed "Sandy" character).  People Putty could greatly benefit from having another 10 more hair models available.

Zen

17

Programming using the Ultra Hal Brain Editor / A couple skins

« on: November 08, 2004, 10:11:36 am »

Absolutely; feel free to post them.  Since it seems permissable to post haptek characters, I'd like to make use of my $60 spent in getting People Putty, and create a number of characters for UltraHal.  Would you be interested in those as well?

18

Programming using the Ultra Hal Brain Editor / A book reading question for Hal experts

« on: November 06, 2004, 06:22:37 pm »

Well, maybe it will be available in UltraHal 6.0 (wasn't a program of that name already released?).  

Your welcome for the characters.  Thanks for the offer of others, but I have to confess that my interest tends to lie in female characters.  Must the be male fixation thing.  I've pulled a number of them from the Net, but actually like the ones I created the best (I'm probably biased).

I'll probably create a few more; there isn't a lot of variety you can created with People Putty (and still stick with female characters).  Maybe I'll do a few frogs and cats for variety.

19

Ultra Hal 7.0 / Haptek chars & textures

« on: November 06, 2004, 03:14:52 pm »

Just a note that I posted links to three Haptek chars & some textures for the FullBody char in the "Brain" forum; link is:

http://www.zabaware.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1602

(scroll down a bit to find them)

20

Programming using the Ultra Hal Brain Editor / A couple skins

« on: November 06, 2004, 01:41:56 pm »

Just for fun, I've created a couple of minimalistic skins for UltraHal.  Just a border, some buttons, and a big window for the haptek characters.  Feel free to try them if you'd like.

http://home.wi.rr.com/wblair9/ZenHalSkins.zip

21

Programming using the Ultra Hal Brain Editor / My People Putty Characters

« on: November 06, 2004, 01:09:34 pm »

I was able to get my ftp working to my Internet storage.  For those of you interested, you can pull my three characters from:

http://home.wi.rr.com/wblair9/Lenore.htr
http://home.wi.rr.com/wblair9/Marion.htr
http://home.wi.rr.com/wblair9/Sarah.htr

In addition, I put up some skins for the Haptek FullBody character that I created.  Look else where in the Forums for how to apply them to the FullBody character. These skins contain nudity; do not download them if you are easily offended.  

http://home.wi.rr.com/wblair9/FullBodyTextures.zip

Knyte, feel free to pull them and host them yourself if you wish.

22

Programming using the Ultra Hal Brain Editor / My People Putty Characters

« on: November 06, 2004, 10:52:30 am »

I'll send the first one.  After you receive, email me to send you the second and third.

23

Programming using the Ultra Hal Brain Editor / My People Putty Characters

« on: November 05, 2004, 11:17:28 pm »

Thanks, Knyte; I have three, and they're about 1M each (textures are 1024X1024).  How should I get them to you?

24

Programming using the Ultra Hal Brain Editor / My People Putty Characters

« on: November 05, 2004, 05:47:52 pm »

I purchased Haptek's People Putty, and quickly generated a number of talking heads (of the female persuasion).  I happen to be a good texture creator, and since the only creative thing you can do (beyond morphing the face) in People Putty is apply a texture, the characters turned out well. (I'll start a different thread later on the limitations of People Putty and it's comparison to the Mr. Potato Head toy).

I haven't seen any people posting Haptek characters for download in these forums.  As far as I can tell, the license allows distribution of the .htr files.  Does anyone know of a reason why the characters couldn't be posted?

On a related note, I am in the process of trying to re-establish the ftp connection to my Web providers file storage area so that I can make these available.  Assuming I cannot do so quickly, is there someone who would have an interest in hosting them so that forum readers could get access?

25

Programming using the Ultra Hal Brain Editor / A book reading question for Hal experts

« on: November 05, 2004, 05:38:15 pm »

I tried UltraHal Assistant's text reading function (HalPad).  I had assumed that Hal's lips would move with the text; it seemed like an obvious addition to the program, and thought it would be cute to have a visible book reader.  I was surprised to find out that they don't.  I haven't seen any references to this in the forum; has it ever been discussed?  Has anyone tried to get Hal to read a book (text file) and have the lips move?

Zenman

26

Ultra Hal Assistant File Sharing Area / Get a new 3D body to play with

« on: October 30, 2004, 01:59:27 pm »

So having continued to read through the forum, I see this isn't that big a news.  Chalk it up to enthusiasm for a recent user.  This is a really cool program!

27

Ultra Hal Assistant File Sharing Area / Get a new 3D body to play with

« on: October 28, 2004, 11:20:03 pm »

I just recently got Ultra Hal, and have been reading through the forums.  I thought this thread was interesting.  I got the tv_girl.zip file that has the full body object in it.  It turns out you can use the animations that come with it.

What you do is:
1. Download and unzip "tv_girl.zip" from www.haptek.com into a local directory
2. Go to "tv_girl" "CharacterFiles" directory, and copy "fullBodyDef.hap" and "fullbodygirl.htr" to UltraHal "Characters" directory
3. Open up UltraHal and choose the fullBodyGirl (note that her body will not move).
4. Exit UltraHal
5. Go to UltraHal "Characters" directory
6. Create a new directory called "OldAnims"
7. Move all animation *.hap files into "OldAnims" (don't move any non-animation files if you have any (such as fulLBodyDef.hap for the tv_girl))
8. Copy the *.hap files from the "scripts" directory of "tv_girl" to the UltraHal "Characters" directory
9. Rename each tv_girl animation to an equivalent Ultrahal animation

For example:
mood-happy.hap -> Happy.hap
mood-angry.hap -> Angry.hap
anim_yawn.hap -> Sleepy.hap

When you have completed the renaming, start up UltraHal, and your full body girl with move her full body!  Major cool!  You will have to move her back to see them well.

NOTE: Most of these will only work for the tv_girl, so you will have to switch back and forth if you want to change characters.

I haven't played around with it much, but I was pretty excited about adding this cool character to my UltraHal collection.

UPDATE;I've been playing around with the files, pulling additional .htr files off the net, and I have to admit I'm seeing either inconsistant behavior (not likely), or I'm not understanding well how these files are used.  I did put the orginal anim files back in place, and the tv_girl just stood there with only her head moving.  Put the full anim files back, and she started moving again.  But all the other characters still worked.  Something here I'm not understanding...