Haptek Characters

[Carl2]

  Something that has been in the back of my mind for ages Is the haptek characters need a place to live.  Frist Haptek seems to be long dead, not sure if it will come back to life and second Zabaware is working on developing it's open source character.  It seems the frog will be frist but I haven't played with frogs since I was young.  I think I'd stay with the haptek characters. 
  I've been influenced quite a lot by Duskriders pictures and poses and would like to be able to provide a background that allows the character to move around in a room, lean against something, sit, maybe move into another room.   Haptek is aways from being perfect, but it is what we have to work with at this time. 
  Any ideas or thoughts on this?
Carl2
 

[tedathome]

I hope I have understood correctly what you are saying. That's sounds like a tall order Carl. We do have 3D and moving backgrounds. There are a lot of pose haps and movement haps. Not much in random movements other than some head movement and for the singer hand movements while talking or singing. A random movement hap for moving around the room would be a bit beyond what I can do. Nige and Duskrider have the talent and I think something like that may be doable, but very complicated probably. As for moving into another room, that's a whole new set of parameters. Building.haptar may be where to start on that.

[Carl2]

  I've looked into the panoramic view photos and downloaded a few, you realy need a viewer for these to work, if put as a background in Haptek it just tries to fit into the screen with bad results so I dropped this idea.  At this time I have pictures of the computer room and kitchen and the nearby park which I use as backgrounds.  I got involved with the Active backgrounds which I really like and while looking for pictures to use for the active backgrounds I looked for backgrounds that would allow the character to move around, lean on things sit, ect.  I got some usable Ideas but no usable pictures. 
  I'm not thinking of random movement, I'm thinking of a turn left (timed), walk (timed), stop walk. Simplified it's move from A to B, B to C, then C back to A.  Always have to get back to the original location.  Haps  are easy enough to trigger so that shouldn't be a problem.  I have the Autohapgenerator which I've been able to make some haps with, thanks to Nige.  Haven't heard from Duskrider in quite a while but he inspires me with his work.
Carl2

[lightspeed]

hello carl2 , yes i had the same idea a while back , among many idea's in posting about a head and shoulders character and or a full character to do times walks and movements as you now mentioned , their some things that others are better at then me i haven't gotten in (yet) so much on the hapteck movent's like others on here and so can't create a plug in for that . But as i mentioned the first time i do believe it would really add to a hapteck character walking or appearing to in front of a living room etc. background , maybe someone will see this post again  and who has the ability to create it and make a plug in that will do it .!!!
I hope, i hope , i hope !

[Carl2]

  As I've said triggering a hap is fairly easy to do.  The basics are:
If InStr(UserSentence, " ANGRYMODE ") > 0 Then
        HalCommands = "<HAPFILE>Angry.hap</HAPFILE>"
        GetResponse = "Angry mode set." & vbCrLf
This is to trigger the angry hap with the last line being the response, if the last line is left out Hal will find a response.
So using :
If InStr(UserSentence, " TURN LEFT ") > 0 Then
        HalCommands = "<HAPFILE>TurnLeft.hap</HAPFILE>"
  This causes you saying " turn left " to trigger the TurnLeft.hap

  The vr Haptek has quite a few haps that it can trigger for movement, (opens in notepad) if you want to look at it.  It's a bit old, made for the fullbody and I know it works because I use it.
  As far as walking 1, walking means she moves her legs and arms, 2, she has to move which means changing her position so she moves from a to b. 
Carl2

[mendicott]

> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llAH4GJ7WVA

I've been talking to Chris Shaw http://chrisshorts.com lately, one of the former principals of Haptek.  He is now involved in a new venture called Xprevo http://xprevo.com (see their early demo video above).  He claims that Xprevo is going to be the new Haptek; however, I'm skeptical, and told him that I was disappointed that no one has stepped into the void left by Haptek, of making a versatile, user-friendly avatar platform for AI. 

I did come across this new avatar system from the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), EMBR: A Realtime Animation Engine for Interactive Embodied Agents....

> http://embots.dfki.de/EMBR/

[Art]

I liked the YouTube demo...quite nicely done!

The bottom one...embots, wasn't too bad but software like RealIllusion and Poser are far better according to realism.

It would be nice if this Xprevo group could bring some "life" into or otherwise resurrect an otherwise failing "Haptek" product.

Good find. Thanks for sharing!

[Carl2]

  I checked the Youtube link and the embots link, The haptek character was good but on my screen its about the same as the existing Sandy. Embots I'd say is behind the existing Haptek.  I tried Haptek.com and the happlayer seemed to cause problems.
  My frist project was to get Fullbody sandy to walk to a dorway.  Sounds rather simple.  Not finding a picture of a room with a doorway I drew one.  Ended up with something that reminded me of Alice in wonderland.  The sizes with distance ect seem crazy and the door has to be the correct heigth.  She can walk through walls and remain visible.  I think my next try will be to put her in a room with grid marks to see how tall she is at different parts of the room. 
  Thought about Tedathome's post about a building.htr,  Interesting a character.htr inside a building.htr.  I know from playing with the characters you can view the insides of them.  Allow more freedom In moving the room to change sizes as the character walks away.
Carl2

[RonG]

My passion has been to get my Hal to reflect the image of Albert Eistein.  It's just what I want to do.  So I've started, as many of us do, with reading the boards, going to defunct sites for possible solutions, and looking at some of the new products.  The best I've been able to come up with is using Reallusions' CrazyTalk6 or CrazyTalk Animator to develop the characters.  You can make all the movements, create separate backgrounds etc. then cut them up so that the existing Haptek engine can process them.  Anyone else go down this path? 

[Art]

With the Haptek / People Putty software one could easily create an image using Einstein or practically anyone else by simply mapping a photo or image file over the basic head shape.

We used to have several members who were especially skilled at transforming or creating custom "faced" characters. Moderate practice with the People Putty program could produce some pretty nice results. One member who was really skilled was a gentleman named Jack Gephart and there was practically no one that he couldn't create. Quite skilled and a very nice person and friend, he left for some reason unknown to me and has not been heard from since. If you do a search you might find some of his work still here.

That might still be a better option because the resultant images became a unique Haptek character that one could use as their Hal Avatar.

Good luck either way!!

[RonG]

I've looked at People Putty a number of times but never plunked down the $50 for it.  Thought that since things are 'slow' for Haptek.com it may not be worth the effort, and the fact that the sale of Putty is *as-is* with no support.  But you are right, that mapping a photo or image over the basic head shape may be the quickest and easiest path to at least get up an running.  I'll take the plunge today and see how it goes.  Thanks.