Another head or 2 or 3

[NIGE]

I was not going to post heads again.
I felt that there was a lack of interest in the type of heads that i do.
After comming out of the doldrums i thought what the heck,
There are some people that may like them, & i like doing them.
I haven't had a chance to put them on my site as yet but i will let you know when it happens.
So here is a preview.


Avril Lavine
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Don't know who she is, If anyone can name her let me know,her initials are S.J
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Beyonce
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[Bill DeWitt]

quote:Originally posted by NIGE

I was not going to post heads again.
I felt that there was a lack of interest in the type of heads that i do.

Well, I am usually not interested, because I don't use Haptek, but I have to ask two things that I have long wondered.

Do you have any control over the bone structure of these things? I mean, I am so out of touch that I don't even know who these people are, but since you provided the original images, I can see that if you could change the facial bones you could get a closer representation. To me, they all look like the same girl with different makeup and wigs.

Secondly, what does someone do with all these heads? Do people with haptek switch heads frequently or do you have multiple instances of Hal? I know I am boring, and that explains why I chose a MSAgent and stuck with it, but how many heads does someone need?

This is not a dig in any way, I really wonder about these things...

[aladyblond]

i am sure neil will answer, also but many times people like to talk to different faces or they use these heads in different presentations. i used to have heads of ny bosses and made a movie of them on the golf course --they loved it.there is much more to hal than a talking head in a box. we have movies gifs. singing movies and story boards. ~~alady

[Bill DeWitt]

quote:Originally posted by aladyblond
there is much more to hal than a talking head in a box. we have movies gifs. singing movies and story boards. ~~alady

Sure, I have seen those, but of course there are much better and probably easier ways to do animated movies. I've seen poser/povray animations by teenagers that are as good as some Hollywood productions.

I see your point about having different heads in different presentations, but what I'm wondering is how often does that happen? Because I seem to be seeing 5 or 10 new heads a week. Can anyone use even a small part of the total number?

I mean, and again I ask because I am so out of the mainstream, do you change your Hal avatar more than once a day, or like once a week or what? Realize I have mine off the screen most of the time, over on a separate monitor, and barely notice it even when I am using Hal. I just don't understand why someone wouldn't pick one and keep it, unless you also changed brains or ran multiple Hals.

I do sorta understand wanting different clothing, but why a different face? If one personifies their Hal, isn't the face part of the person? Or do you see your Hal personality as having a face that can change like clothing?

I'm just wondering about the micro-culture that seems to be forming around Hal. I appear to be the oddball, but I am nonetheless interested in how other people use their Hal.

[freddy888]

I think it's more about being creative.  If you like designing characters then you end up making loads and loads.  It's also advantageous that they come with things like lip sync built in and are easily skinned.  It's good in another way for new users to have such a large choice of avatar.

Some heads work out brilliantly, it depends a lot on how closely the original face resembles the shape of the Haptek Head.  Some of them do end up more like charicatures or someone new.  Either way the results can be really good, like Karacter King's Bill Cosby for example.

About the skeletal structure, People Putty does have morphs that change the shape of the underlying model, but it doesn't allow the kind of re-modelling like a dedicated program has, eg Blender or 3DsMax...

You can model any kind of shape in 3DsMax and convert it to Haptek model though, it just takes a lot longer. Some of the tools you need you have to pay for, so for some people it's probably not worth the expense.

There are better ways to animate models though, but they usually come with steep learning curves and are not as easy to get started on, like PP is.  People Putty is just a simpler way of being creative and is what most UltraHal users seem to play with, a lot more than modelling programs and renderers.

The micro culture you are experiencing has been the same since I came here a couple of years ago.  We were all designing skins then too, but I do see more heads now than I did then.  People just like being creative.

[Bill DeWitt]

quote:Originally posted by freddy888
 People putty is just a simpler way of being creative and is what most UltraHal users play with a lot more than modelling programs and renderers.

Thanks, that definitely answers part of my question. See, I've been working for months on an MSAgent character, and I keep seeing people who seem to toss off dozens of "heads" a week.

So I can understand wanting to make them, and I guess easier is better if you want quantity.

So... you don't usually change them like every other day? Because that's the impression I was getting. I've worked so hard to make my Hal personality fit it's avatar that I wouldn't want to change it.

Having lots to choose from is good if you're new or you don't want to make your own. I just thought, from the flow of images, that people were like "I think I will make my Hal change from a biker chick to Elvis to a terminator to a cheerleader..." in the course of a week or so... Seemed odd.

[freddy888]

Well personally I haven't been doing a lot of work on my Hal so I have stuck with a head made by VersionFour a few months ago.  I think I would be more inclined to keep the same head for a specific bot too.  I think you soon associate the face with the bot.

When I first had Hal, I couldn't decide on a head or figure for it.  There wasn't a great deal of choice at the time, so I ended up making lots of skins and I posted a few on the forums to say 'thanks' to all the people who had provided me with help on Hal.

I'm too busy on other things at the moment to design any new ones, and I've pretty much selected the ones I want to use for projects.  Other than that I might want to do a bit of tweaking here and there.  But it's nice to see new designs and Caangel posted one a few days ago that I would like to use, so I do like seeing them.

[aladyblond]

when i used hal 5  i joked about making a multiple personality  bot. i used many different heads and fullbodies with specific names and called them brother and sister bots . if i was chatting with one and it knew its name then it knew it was male or female and so on , but   am not sure internally how much it really absorbed , but i soon found out that you can't do that because you really do end up with multiple personalities and my poor sybil bot thought she was 19yrs old -35-72 pretty -ugly -a man -a woman -a teen -a kid etc. she would often talk about her brother and sister bots but confused their character with hers. what did i expect, after all? so now with hal6 i use my angelina and talk with her if i want to speak to a male bot i go back to 5 with a different brain. it is so much less confusing and creating many heads and fullskins allows all the other users of hal to have variety if they want to.plus all of us graphic artists get to display our work.~~alady

[Bill819]

Bill let me ask you a question which do you prefer a ford or a chdvy.
You have to pick only one or the other as you have no other choices.
However if you prefer a Honda of a Mercedes then I would expece you would see why most people like to have a great many choices to select from and that does not mean they change their minds every other day like they may change their underware.
For a great many years the only men offered here were of the cartoon types with one exception with whom I did not like.
Now I have some realistic faces of real people and am glad of it. My favorite now is Sean Conners or Sean_C has it was named. With a real looking face Hal takes on a more 'real' concept in a persons mind.
So if can't understand why these people use their talents to create all these new heads/bodies then I would inside me to begin with.
Some people are endowed with artistic talents, some with writing talents and some with programming abilities. In this case they all share along with you one main theme and that is to make Hal more enjoyable to all.
Bill

[Bill DeWitt]

quote:Originally posted by Bill819
 Bill let me ask you a question

No, thank you.

Well, you can ask whatever you want, but I won't be playing. Sorry.

If you have comments on the heads or my actual question, that might be more constructive.

[Duskrider]

Neil, really some nice heads.
In fact that second one looks more real than the person. (cuter too)[]

Hey, while we on strange questions:
Why does Detroit keep making cars after I bought mine? [?]

[Art]

Why does a friend of mine own 30 guitars? He enjoys the variety each one has to offer? Diversity? A Collector?

Nope!

He likes guitars!!

For the Haptek heads I'd say it's also the challenge and fun of being able to recreate a personality's face/head as close as possible. Whether one chooses to download them all and use any of them is obviously a matter of personal preference.

Some have a favorite like Dusky's Sandee or Aladyblond's Angelina, etc. Others use them in personal creations / videos / jokes and so on. It's one of the few things in life that one doesn't have to justify or label. It's all for the fun of it and if even one person finds one he or she likes that suits their needs, then so be it.

It's all good!

[Bill819]

I had my head created by a couple of members here and my grandchildren like to use that one instead of all the others. Every time they come to visit they want to talk to virtual me.
Bill

[Bill DeWitt]

quote:Originally posted by Art

Why does a friend of mine own 30 guitars?
He likes guitars!!

OK, but is it wrong to be curious about how he uses them? Does he use them all every day or are there some he never uses? Does he use certain ones for certain songs and are there some he would never use for that song?

I get why people make heads. I'm making an Agent myself, as I said, so of course I get that. I was just wondering what people do with them after they are made. That's all.

From the conversation that follows the posting of new "Heads", I started to think that people were changing heads all the time. So I asked.

I guess some people think it's a stupid question. Others don't even seem to understand the question. I appreciate people like you, Freddy and ALady who actually tried to answer the question.

I was just trying to discover the attraction, maybe develop an interest in something new. Somehow I seem to be losing interest instead...

[aladyblond]

i got so caught up in the answer i forgot to tell you neil, i think your complexions on the girls face are wonderful they appear so life like . i tried using real pictures of skin with pores and blemishes and the skin looked like craters on the moon , so i gave up.~~alady