The Haptek Interface is a blast!

[midget1488]

The haptek plugin added to UHal is a hoot to play with. It loads the .HTR characters I created in PeoplePutty flawlessly. You do have to rename the extension to .HTR, but after that no problems.

The emotional responses the Haptars provide are controlled by the .HAP files in the character folder. These control the motion parameters for the "head" object the character is mapped-to. These files can be manipulated with your text editor the same way you manipulate .BRN files. Don't like how often your Hal blinks? change it! Need a bigger grin? You can get it!

The .HAP files appear to be selected by "emotion.brn" . I have not tried creating new emotions and loading them into emotion.brn, but I know PeoplePuttyl allows you to create new emotions, so I think it should be possible. I'll let you know.

I heartily endorse buying PeoplePutty to enhance your U-Hal experience.

Robert, You've outdone yourself!

[vonsmith]

I downloaded the People Putty demo. The user interface is not as slick as most Windows programs, but it works reasonably well. However, People Putty isn't stable on my computer. Eventually it acts a little strange and then crashes, consistently. I'm running a Windows XP system, 2.8GHz, 512MB RAM, Sapphire 9600 Pro 128MB graphics processor and 200GB HD. I have top end components, ASUS motherboard, Corsair TwinX RAM, WD hard disk, Enermax 450W power supply, etc. My system is rock solid with everything except People Putty.

Does anyone else in this group have problems with People Putty? Maybe I just got a bad download. I have a tough time with spending $55 on a program  if it is flaky.

With that said I applaud Zabaware for adding user value to Hal by providing an interesting agent interface. I just wish People Putty was a lot more stable.

Actually 3DMeNow is a similar program to People Putty with a much better interface and more accurately creates characters. Their non-Pro version 1.5 is only $15. Unfortunately it isn't compatible with Hal right out of the box. Haptek should give it a close look. Maybe they could improve their product.

See it here: http://www.biovirtual.com/3DMeNow/

[Don Ferguson]

Hello,

I bought the retail version of Haptek's People Putty and I've been reasonably happy with it.  It does crash occasionally, but not as often as you describe.  I strongly urge you send a copy of your posting to the people at Haptek and let us all know what they say about the crashing problem.

You are right, the website for 3DMeNow is impressive!  

As a registered user, you might also write to the 3DMeNow folks and urge them to contact Robert Medeksza at Zabaware, and investigate the feasibility of their product working with speech synthesis and UltraHal.  

More applications for their product would increase the demand for what the 3dMeNow people sell; therefore one would imagine that they would be interested!

Sincerely,

Don

[midget1488]

I had initial problems with PeoplePutty crashing on my Dell 2.0Ghz laptop running XP pro.

Turns out PeoplePutty is dependent on an OpenGL driver that may not be included in the 2000/ME/XP load set. I was able to solve the problem by loading something I found on the Haptek FAQ page. I still occasionally get an odd shutdown BSOD, but the program itself seems fine now.

A U-Hal plugin for 3DMeNow would be excellent. For $15, what a great program, and the interface is amazingly intuitive. All of these (Haptek, 3DMeNow, MSAgent) are Active-X controls - I'd like to see plugins for all of 'em.

[midget1488]

quote:Originally posted by midget1488

I had initial problems with PeoplePutty crashing on my Dell 2.0Ghz laptop running XP pro.

Turns out PeoplePutty is dependent on an OpenGL driver that may not be included in the 2000/ME/XP load set. I was able to solve the problem by loading something I found on the Haptek FAQ page. I still occasionally get an odd shutdown BSOD, but the program itself seems fine now.

A U-Hal plugin for 3DMeNow would be excellent. For $15, what a great program, and the interface is amazingly intuitive. All of these (Haptek, 3DMeNow, MSAgent) are Active-X controls - I'd like to see plugins for all of 'em.

Sorry, brainf*rt. It was 3DMeNow I had to fix the drivers on. Haptek stuff has been okay. Was looking for the FAQ to reference and found nothing at Haptek, then it hit me.

Sorry.

[lostbowyer]

Haptek is very cpu/graphic intensive, I've found that it doesn't "play well wih others" If you have brackground applications running from the sys tray it causes problems and crashes with haptek. For example seti at home causes aptek to freeze or crash on every system I've tested it on, the application called "weather bug" also causes the system to crash with the haptek player. If your having crashes with haptek, take a look at whats running in the background.

Glenn