Does the program I am looking for exist?

[concretefire]

Hello all,
My name is Mike. Let me start out by saying I am a complete and utter newbie. I have read quite a few threads, but when I say I am a newbie, I mean, I know ZERO about this stuff. AIML? START? [?]

Now, let me also say that I am a whiz kid / (36yo) at computers and just built a new system:

Intel P45 chipset
Quad Core 6600 2.4ghz Overclocked to 3.6 ghz under water
8 gb of DDR2 Ram @ 1000mhz
Ati Radeon 4870 GPU.

The reason I tell you this is so you know which side of the fence I am on. I built this system specialy for graphics. And almost entirely around the idea of doing "graphics" work using Poser Pro and rendering scenes and animations. So to think I know nothing about computers or advanced programs would be wrong. I just know nothing about AI+computers.

Here is all I know, and so far I don't like it.
Ultra Hal seems to be the best learning software that I have found. I don't really want a bot that chats for no reason. I want something that I can use to verbalize commands to my computer. Such as "open winamp please" or "search for xyz"...etc...
Hal seems to fit the bill.
However, that's just half of it for me. Being graphics oriented, from what I have seen, the plugins/haptek/homeade/custom made skins are just not acceptable. (for me) In fact, they're just horrible.

I don't want a visable movie player or "box" on my screen. I want something like this: http://www.vrconsulting.it/vhf/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=906
***** scroll down almost the way ****

Now THAT's acceptable graphics. But I want more. I want to be able to create my own characters, high rez, like the above link. I don't think there is a way to connect a character to hal like the above. Am I wrong?

The above link seems to be the best graphical character I have seen, but Ultra Hal seems to be the best "brain AI" I have found. And I gather they don't mesh.

Are there other places I should be looking?

[One]

concretefire,
I went with the p35 chipset, you will like the q6600 and my mem is corsair at 1066MHz.

I think those characters do work with Hal when I was looking around but I went with MS Agents because I can have workspace on the screen while having Hal/Agent on the screen as well, I would like better graphical characters as well If you find something new please post it.

BTW I linked the Answerpad 3Dgile had to hal and man did it ever have bugs It took so much time to undo the damage that was done that it wasn't worth the curiosity IMO be cautious about progs from that site.

[Medeksza]

Currently, Ultra Hal supports the Haptek and MSAgent character engines (a new zabaware engine is in development also). Haptek characters are real-time 3D generated characters, MSAgent are prerendered animations. Both have their pros and cons, but the character you are pointing to is made by Guile3D, maker of many high quality MSAgents. Check out the page at http://www.guile3d.com.br/agents_page.asp  Another maker of MSAgent type characters are DesktopMates, linked from http://www.ultrahal.com/files. Both are made by a 3rd party, not officially supported by Zabaware, but they should all work just fine with Hal.

[One]

I have recieved fast, and frendly service from Desktopmates in my dealings with them and they seem to know a lot about Hal.


I also went with them because of the full body character

[concretefire]

quote:Originally posted by One

concretefire,
I went with the p35 chipset, you will like the q6600 and my mem is corsair at 1066MHz.

[] SHOWOFF [] J/K. Mine will post and run Vista x64 @ 1066 with no visable problems........but they won't pass memtest. Even with higher volts running thru them. < another thread on another forum >
And yes, I'm thrilled with the performance so far. Quad smashes everything thrown at it. Anyways...

To whom it may concern regarding SKINS, YOU may have done...that I labled "horrible". Please , please understand that comment was not directed at your abilities to make graphical skins. (I KNOW how hard it is) My comment was not about your skills, but 100% directed at the limitations of what you have/had to work with. Just didn't want to ruffle any feathers, cause that's not what I meant.

[concretefire]

quote:Originally posted by Medeksza

Currently, Ultra Hal supports the Haptek and MSAgent character engines (a new zabaware engine is in development also). Haptek characters are real-time 3D generated characters, MSAgent are prerendered animations. Both have their pros and cons

Medeksza, could you please briefly explain the pro's and con's of both?

I'm going to assume a few things here: realtime 3d = graphics suffer
Pre rendered animations = either same ol' same ol' after a while OR, a huge , HUGE data file somewhere which doesn't even exist because no one has done that many animations before. ?

I honestly wouldn't mind making my own animations, the problem though is twofold. Repetiveness for one, but the other and really the kicker for me is I have no idea how to do 2 things:

1) Get the animations to be transparent, IE not boxed in some movie player
2) then "connected" to hal to display them.

Thoughts?

[One]

SHOWOFF? j/k
I could go 1333 but i run it all at normal specs and I use 2100 rpm fans so its not too much like an Aircraft Carrier in here but, I am also running at least 10 deg C  below specs the Q6600 is pretty solid they got the stepping right.


well mike the Agent I use is free to move around the screen and the typing interface is as well and their are choices of typing interfaces
they are not transparent but you can adjust the size of the character and the type of interface for text can be chosen , personally I like showing the most text because when you start talking to hal it's nice to try to correct the mistakes.... so for me nothing is 'boxed in' but it has to go somewhere.

The thing about choices of types of characters is 'lip sync' so it looks like your character is talking to you.
MS Agents ,,I do believe can have movements added to them look up MS Agents on the developers pages at MS

Im not sure how guile3D renders their Agents but they don't have full body characters that work with hal and I do believe their are Agents for free.

Maybe somebody will step in and describe the 'SAPI' and other things needed to produce characters but I think the Agent and Haptek engines are the only ones compatable right now (Mr. Robert is working on another engine as well)

BTW XP Kicks a** with the component specs I have

[One]

and yes sometimes I just type and do not spell or have proper grammar

Welcome to the forum!
[8D]

[tedathome]

Welcome to the forum concretefire. I grew up in Concrete, Wa. I knew a lot of North Carolinans there, 1st, 2'nd and third generation. I was just wondering if you'd ever been there?
Yes I do some of those graphics of skins and making heads. It will get better I hope when we get the new Hal with a modified version of the Ogre engine. I suppose it may have quite a learning curve to it, but I'm assuming we will see some better graphics and physics in the near future.
 I think that most, if not all of us Haptekies will be watching and wanting to learn from the quicker picker-uppers.[]
 

[NIGE]

Hi concretefire & welcome to the forum.

 

quote:concretefire.
To whom it may concern regarding SKINS, YOU may have done...that I labled "horrible". Please , please understand that comment was not directed at your abilities to make graphical skins. (I KNOW how hard it is) My comment was not about your skills, but 100% directed at the limitations of what you have/had to work with. Just didn't want to ruffle any feathers, cause that's not what I meant.

I'm glad that you added that because I have been thinking up all the things to say ever so nicely to you.

Haptek is dead I think, no changes in over a decade now.
I give them one thing though, their lip-sync editor is the best around
but only works with their product.
Can't wait to see what Robert comes up with & what we can do with it.
It will have to be quite good if it is to replace Haptek?

[freddy888]

Nige, you took the words right out of my mouth.

[Art]

Welcome Concretefire!

If anyone has ever spent a fair amount of time with a program like POSER and the smooth, detailed skin, rendered and used in an animation, then it's easy to understand the "horrible" statement. I would certainly have to agree! If Haptek is the best we can hope for, we've taken an evolutionary step backward!

Poser and Hal would be a great marriage, if only it were possible.

Sure,  faster processor = smoother graphics = more realism = more fun.

Here's hoping the Ogre Engine will allow for a more detailed character.

[freddy888]

Yes, oddly enough I have spent the past few days with the new DAZ3D Studio (like Poser) and was blown away.  I was wishing we could get those characters into Hal.  Ogre is a step in the right direction though, we are blessed that it is open source.  No more will we have to rely on propriety solutions (good as they were) like Haptek.

I'm hoping we can get the Poser characters to work in Hal too, this is one of the things I am highly anticipating.  So I think my advice would be to stick around and see what happens, or at least visit every now and then to see.  I hope you find what you are looking for in the end.

[concretefire]

quote:Originally posted by freddy888

Yes, oddly enough I have spent the past few days with the new DAZ3D Studio (like Poser) and was blown away.  I was wishing we could get those characters into Hal.  Ogre is a step in the right direction though, we are blessed that it is open source.  No more will we have to rely on propriety solutions (good as they were) like Haptek.

I'm hoping we can get the Poser characters to work in Hal too, this is one of the things I am highly anticipating.  So I think my advice would be to stick around and see what happens, or at least visit every now and then to see.  I hope you find what you are looking for in the end.

Well yeah freddy, that's what I mean. When you work with Poser or Daz3d, and you Have Victoria 4 and "elite" textures, and then you come to another program like MS AGENT, or Haptek you get kind of dissapointed and think "is this it?"

Now Freddy, think about this for a second. You've been messing around with Daz3d. You can do facial animations and voices with it. Ok, so you do a 5 second animation of a character saying "hello, blah,blah,blah"..etc...

Then I do a 5 second animation saying "whatever". In theory we could quickly develop a library of just the raw MODEL <victoria 4> doing various animations. Once you have that, in theory, you could apply any texture you wanted. (I'm biased towards a Jessica Simpson texture myself [:I])
But it could be whatever you wanted. A shared library of animations would be the starting point.

Then we would just need a way to attach the renderings to an AI, like Hal. We already share files of brain attachments so to speak....now we need the library of character animations to go with it.

[lightspeed]

i would love to see a character that hal could use that would look like daze3 or poser characters those are great programs in detail etc. as i said would love to see the day our hal could become something like that !!![]