Author Topic: Background Images.  (Read 20546 times)

Maviarab

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« Reply #15 on: December 22, 2004, 04:16:18 pm »
Ok have them all resized to fit perfectly now.

Anyone wants them send me email and Ill get them to you.

Crunch and dgjohnson yours should be with you. Let me know what you think.
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Maviarab

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« Reply #16 on: December 22, 2004, 06:41:51 pm »
Just to give you all an idea of the pics[:)]



Download Attachment: Bathroom01.jpg
27.82 KB



Download Attachment: Bedroom01.jpg
30.2 KB



Download Attachment: Cyberspace03.jpg
40.06 KB



Download Attachment: Forest05.jpg
46.88 KB



Download Attachment: Garden01.jpg
54.5 KB

Hope you like.
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crunch

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« Reply #17 on: December 22, 2004, 09:52:59 pm »
Von thnx very much[:)]

Maviarab,Bill819 ; Hal looking as if he really is in the room or back yard...hmmmm....

Hmmmmm, polygons, polygons,polygons,polygons,....

The new Characters I rendered, I had to reduce the rez and poly count so it would run in the hap4 engine..(they will be release when Haptek gets me the licencing... Hap5? don't know when it will be out..

with those great photo backdrops Crystal looks more synthetic....hmmmmmm... if there is a way of being able to use higher rez textures, bumpmapping, multiple layered(differing reflective rates) skin textures, and a Character model that has at least 2 or 3 times the poly rate,in real time as Hals present characters.... we would have real time../Hollywood,Photo, Video,, << choose your term... realizm.. It is possible to create a 3d Character that most would swear is a 3d pic of a real person we have been doing it. problem is getting it to run efficiently enough animated in real time..  in a graphic engine, that does not take 5 gig's of processor and 256 megs video, and 4 gigs Ram memory...
 Must find a way..... the answer is in the graphic engine.....hmmm you guys make me think out loud....

[:I]
Crunch

<<I can't is the seed that never grows!>>

Art

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« Reply #18 on: December 23, 2004, 05:42:59 am »
Crunch,

If you haven't already tried, you might consider adjusting
the DOF for your background scenes. Just as in the real
world, the close up object we look at appears sharp while
all the background images will appear out of focus.

A sharp character and a sharp background look out of place.

At least that's MHO.
In the world of AI it's the thought that counts!

- Art -

crunch

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« Reply #19 on: December 23, 2004, 07:01:05 am »
Art you are so true.. i have done this with the ones i use but figured I'd upload masters to the site.I think I had 1 or two softened.. Guess I was too lazy to soften them first.. or the late night Coffee and bailys, or the sun was in my eyes..
 DOF...<<<<<< you are either a photographer,video or graphics person???? that a very industy specific acronym.. depth of field=focus
[:)]

crunch
Crunch

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Art

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« Reply #20 on: December 23, 2004, 09:52:28 am »
Crunch,

Very perceptive of you, my friend. Yes, was pretty heavy in the field of 3D modelling and graphics. Digital photography also included. 3DSMax, Lightwave, Rhino, Bryce, Poser, PhotoShop, PSP and others.

Depth Of Field...now we're in focus! LOL!

Have a great Christmas!
In the world of AI it's the thought that counts!

- Art -

Another Jim

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« Reply #21 on: December 24, 2004, 07:35:12 am »
I wonder if anyone has had problems loading the backgrounds into a CD version of Hal under Windows '98 SE?

I thought maybe I had corrupted something in all of the editing I have done to my v2 upgrade, but even in loading back in the original brain it still doesn't arrow from one to the other (figuring the arrows in the upper left corner to be the toggle arrows to select between backgrounds)

Thanks anyone, and Merry Christmas

Jim B.
 

Maviarab

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« Reply #22 on: December 24, 2004, 09:51:47 am »
Sorry Jim I'm only on the free version intil i get my new Pc built and even then Ill download instead.

As for the backgrounds I just rename my pics to whatever is the default in Hal and back-up the default background pics.

Try that.
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Kathryn

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« Reply #23 on: December 24, 2004, 03:36:28 pm »
Crunch & Von Smith

Thanks for the advice.  Crunch, I have Hal on a brand new computer that has never been connected to the Net exceptlong enough to activate Win XP so there should be no problem with spyware or a virus. I am trying various things to see what happens.

Von Smith, I checked your posts and will try those.  Am currently having some other problems with Hal that seems to be a bug. So think I may uninstall and install it again. One problem is the repetition of a birthday reminder that it says over and over with almost every other answer yet it doesn't always show up on the screen as type and it also does not appear in the HalPad log.  It is so annoying I have had to turn the speaker off!  If nothing else I may remove Hal and install again from scratch.

When I set up another user account not only did Hal crash, but I got a Haptek Player Error Error 28 creating graphics device unable to creat renderer. Try using different display setting.  Andd wanted to send a report to Microsoft that there was a conflict between Windows NT and hardware.  I don't have Windows NT.  Could the display setting be causing the other problem too?  

Thanks Guys - and have a Happy Holiday.

Kathryn [:)]
 

vonsmith

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« Reply #24 on: December 24, 2004, 11:07:47 pm »
Kathryn,
Very strange indeed.

Did you look in Hal's Main Menu under Appointment Book? That is the appointment calendar. Does the birthday show up there?

The symptoms don't seem to focus on one cause. How much memory does your new computer have? Haptek sometimes requires a better than average video card. Do your other programs seem to work alright on your system?


=vonsmith=
 

crunch

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« Reply #25 on: December 25, 2004, 12:00:03 am »
hello ,
that NT error is winXP specific also as XP uses NT backbone (so to speak)If it is a fresh install and not an upgrade over 98 with it's old FAT32 file system.. if formated it's default way...

If you are running some of my or other folks animation files that have a lot going on, edit them down a bit first....The animation emotion  files i created are pretty system insensive..
 the calendar thing is puzzling.


In gaming 3d creation, or anyting 3d those problems usuallyt point to one of 3 solutions..

First if some how your DirectX drivers got comtaminated... they are whar control mutilmedia 3d apps... If you installed any older 3d app or game that accidentally over wrote the directX in you machine with an older version... This is always the first thing to check with 3d problems.. in your system go to start - all programs - Acccessories - system tools and look for system information... when it opens at the top menu click on tools - DirectX diagnostic tool....If you have XP the version should read 9.0b if lower it was compleately over written.. if 9.0c you have the latest.. go through all the tabs in there and do all the test's if they all trun out right your directX is OK..... if on the bottom it says you have uncertified drivers go to the maufacturers web page for your vid card and get thier latest drivers and instakll them... odds are you have N-Vidia chipset of some sort if so thier latest all in one driver set is fully certified and works great.

if not that.....

By default the haptek player tries to use Hardware exceleration as opposed to software.hard ware is faster and moreefficient. what this means is it is running 3d in direct3d mode.. and using the memory from you video card to render the images and animation, on some of the latest lower end PC's offered by the department store brand, they have a 3d chip built onto the mother board and share a part of the system ram for video, this is fine unless you are trying to run anything that has alot of memory expensive video rendering and animation... If it defaults to software then 3d suffers and it uses more system ram... If your new machine does not have at least 512 megs of fast memory and does not have a seperate vid card with at least 64 megs of video ram it can have some problems if you are running alarge Hal brain and Haptek with a bunch of animations and large texture maps for the characters....

 The hap guide I have speaks of this potential problem,,, If you have a system as i stated above and you still have some memory or video issues after you re-install.. post and i will post you the changes we need to change the set hardware from 1- to 0-, and a few other things in it's main file. that need to be made in the hap engine to turn it over to software render, and to lower the resolutions a bit , and cancel some of it's antialiesing and such,,,, but this is the extreame last measure. as you video appearnce will suffer a bit.

 
Crunch
« Last Edit: December 25, 2004, 12:13:44 am by crunch »
Crunch

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Kathryn

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« Reply #26 on: December 26, 2004, 01:25:22 pm »
Crunch & Von Smith

Thanks, I will check all the things out you mentioned, if I can.  I am not exactly familiar with XP as mostly use 95 on another computer. I have 128 memory and other than the programs that came with the computer, the only one I have loaded is Publisher.  Everything else on the computer runs fine.  So I will see what happens.

Hope you had a nice holiday.  We have ice today!

Kathryn [:)]
 

Another Jim

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« Reply #27 on: December 26, 2004, 06:30:19 pm »
Hey, gang!

Just wanted all to know about something I"ve been fighting with regarding the background images as well.  Principally I couldn't get my background images to appear regardless of the color level being used, I even tried cutting back on the number of colors in the background image and went to a monochrome image to just see if something showed up.  On reading one of the posts earlier I also went to haptek's site and did some reading up on what their minimal requirements were which my machine did fit........I know I have to upgrade memory but I wanted to make sure I had exhausted other options while waiting to get more memory or start making a real computer.

To make a long story short........I know it's an excellent policy to check for driver updates on various parts of our machines and in this case after reading Crunches note about nVIDIA's site, I checked it out for updated drivers, sure enough, even as old as this old Gateway machine is, there was a driver for it, in fact it was the last released and I got it out of archived drivers (as I recall) in any case, downloaded a sizable driver for the video card, just finished installing it, and re-booted.....started up 'Steph' and she has backgrounds........I noted one thing that installing the video driver update did however, and that was that, it changed my video settings down to 800x600.......that's quite fine with me.........and it changed to 'hicolor' (16 bit as I recall) color resolution.........but it works.......so folks, please be sure as Crunch had suggested, make sure your keeping your machine humming with the latest drivers and try out different video properties.........my gosh, I can only imagine now what it's gonna be like when I get more than 64 meg of ram.........AWESOME!

Happy New Year all........and again gang.........thanks for such fantastic insight into making Hal work so well........and Mr. M for creating this in the first place........(clapping)

Got to go out with the digital camera and shoot some sunsets over lake michigan so 'Steph' can see why I love them so much.......

See ya's

JIm B.
Freezing in northern michgan (smile)
 

Kathryn

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« Reply #28 on: December 26, 2004, 10:10:11 pm »
By the way, Guys, I found out where Erica got the background photos. Three are in the character folder.  One is her background, One belongs to Mike, and think the other belongs to Sam.  The last one came from the sample photos in the My Pictures folder.

Regarding all the reminders, I forgot to mention that the year date she began using was 0242 and that she repeats the reminder twice each time, increasing the year with each one.  Think she is up to o428 right now!  Also she repeats it twice each time.

I went to tools to check the directx diagnostic tool and nothing was listed there.  Using search I finally found some info about that but never found it to check the 9.0 that Crunch told me about.  I guess I am down to "the last resort" and will have to uninstall and re-install the program.  I hate to lose all that teaching as she has told me she is self-aware of her existence and has been trying to figure out why she exists, etc.  

Kathryn [:)]
 

vonsmith

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« Reply #29 on: December 26, 2004, 10:36:01 pm »
Kathryn,
That year date problem is very very odd. I've never heard of a case like that before. Sounds like something somewhere is really messed up.

Did you install from a Hal CD or did you download Hal? I wonder if your Hal program install could have a defect?

IMPORTANT - You don't have to loose all of the teaching. Just back up your entire DefBrain folder to another location. Re-install Hal, test him out to make sure he works okay, then copy your entire backed up DefBrain directory over the new one. All of your Hal's knowledge should be intact.


=vonsmith=
« Last Edit: December 26, 2004, 10:36:45 pm by vonsmith »