[GT40]

(yes, 24/7 under the influence of Second Life  )

Just starting to play with Visual Basic and the Haptek window. Seems interesting for little skits, allowing some new effects, impossible with html/javascript.

A language from the 90's and a dying 3D technology... As always, I'm a naive newbie, at least five years late. Sure that people who program Hal's brain tried that a while ago.

You can download and unzip (anywhere) this following file:

http://gt40.chez-alice.fr/Haptek/Experiments.zip (1.15 MB)

and then just launch "move.exe".

Sorry, for now only one stuff, but 2 or 3 works-in-progress coming soon. Maybe. I hope you have the good DLLs, but don't worry if it doesn't want to work on your PC: it's totally USELESS. 

[wgb14]

Great work, by the way yes I agree Haptek is a dying 3d technology but only becuase the people that own the company are sto id***** that they have no idea what they have in their hands. Haptek engine is extremely powerful and yet so undeveloped and messy that very few people can actually use it. Have you seen what is considered the cutting edge of technology in 3d virtual humans now? take a look here, . It is denish from Guile 3d, a very impressive 3d character with amazing visuals, very good animations but not real-time 3D. All the character sequences are pre-rendered in 3d studio max or elsewhere. Most of the technologies in virtual humans are actually using similar approaches. Of course you always have the 3d engines but so far I haven't seen anything that even approaches Haptek in character design and animation. What Ia m trying to say here, is that what we consider a dying 3d technology is still (several years after it was first developed) the most powerfull technology in 3d virtual human development in the world. Now just imagine if Haptek was wise enough to keep the tools alive with regular updates.     

[Maviarab]

To be fair, if you could animate to the level of haptek anything made with 3DS, Blender, ZBrush, Poser etc etc, haptek would be dead overnight.

Its not in the technology, its in the programming...

Someone can program for me, Ill give you a character/head indistinguishable from a real human...

[GT40]

Thanks, wgb14, for testing my little joke. 

I was quite sure that writing that about Haptek might look like a provocation and I agree with you. It's amazing to see that, after resuscitating a forum for their users, the Haptek company totally abandoned them after a few months.

Yes, the Haptek engine seems to be very powerful but, as you wrote, very difficult to use. Not easy to make good-looking movements and scenes (and Duskrider is doing a great job with his haps). I hope Haptek makes some efforts for his clients. If they have clients...

I'm a fan of Second Life. Many people say it looks like an old game from the 80's. But creating characters is amazingly easy (not only the head but the whole body). And the available animations are terrific. Okay, dance and porn, just ordinary activities, isn't it? I guess programmers have much more fun at Linden Lab than at Haptek. 

Thanks for putting the link to YouTube. I still saw that video, because I follow the work made by Guile3D, on the Virtual Humans Forum. It's really great (even if the character is made of photos, lol).

Wake up Haptek! 

[wgb14]

<<To be fair, if you could animate to the level of haptek anything made with 3DS, Blender, ZBrush, Poser etc etc, haptek would be dead overnight.>>

I disagree. You can anymate anything made with 3ds or any other program in the Haptek engine. There is a tool called skinmaker that creates the skeleton for any model created in any of the standard 3d modelling packages. It is just that the tool is extremely complex to use. As for the ease of use of the engine, I am currently creating an interface for it  that takes simple tagged text as input.  Something like: Hi<anim,hello/> my name is wgb14 <anim,welcome/> welcome to my world, and produces full scripts completely automatically. I believe that this  tool makes content creation with Haptek as easy as counting 123. I've just finished a part of the tool that reads Haptek switches and extracts the total animation times from the figdef file. If you want, have a look here:

http://www.vbcity.com/forums/topic.asp?tid=156906&page=4

[GT40]

Looks interesting. I hope you'll reach your goal and make Haptek characters really alive soon.

Nice VB code, for a beginner like me. Now I go back to Second Life and treat my headache. 

[GT40]

Here is an update, with a little "tool". Hap 03 to Hap 16 are empty, so you can copy and past your favorite or new haps in them. A 1 second movement or a 5 minutes script. Nothing more than dropping haps in the Haptek player. And thanks to markofkane for Laura's skin.

You have to download the same zip again:

http://gt40.chez-alice.fr/Haptek/Experiments.zip (now 1.33 MB)

and then launch "test.exe". Not a tool, just a toy. 

[Dante]

I agree, Haptek is being silly; we do have the skills to create a beautiful virtual human; but I REALLY doubt my Geforce 4 (once the gaming card of the year) could handle it/him/her.

[GT40]

Anyone knows how to change the title of this thread? Something like:

"HAPTEK - P - K = HATE".

Or "After LOVE, HA(p)TE(k)".

Kidding. I have a GeForce4 too. Perfect.

So please Haptek, don't listen to them. DON'T CHANGE ANYTHING!! 

[Dante]

Oooh, I disagree, a lot of changes need to be made, but not with Haptek...

As was stated, Haptek (along with the bot on the ALICE foundation page) are the only real-time rendering engines for bot useage.

I can't help thinking, however, that reverse-engineering the Crazy Talk system so as to run in real-time is the best option, we can have Denise's beauty with a low useage program designed to modify the image accordingly...

[Freddy]

I think the main thing Haptek need to change is their attittude, but enough of that.

It's good to see you have figured out the Haptek component GT40, I look forward to other experiments, maybe a chatbot next ?

[GT40]

Thanks Freddy.

I guess that playing with an interface is a less noble "work" than building Hal's brain, lol. But I have a lot of fun with that. 

It's strange that some VB controls can be seen upon the Haptek window and others are hidden by it. I hope to post something using that soon.

For now, my little experiments are more Visual than Basic, but I still have tried variable parameters (x, y, z, t..) for a maybe future stuff, and it could be interesting (at least for me, lol).

I didn't think of a new chatbot but why not? Something very different from my Pandorabots. Kolossal task. I'm afraid I'm unable to do something better than Hal. 

[GT40]

AND THE WINNER IS...



Hello Freddy! After the experiments, here is a totally useless "application", lol. Just a little interactive skit, using the fact that you can put some VB controls (like here, the picture of a desk) upon the Haptek window. So the character can move BETWEEN the background and the "object". It runs fine under XP (with Vista, never sure).

If you want to play with her, you can download

http://gt40.chez-alice.fr/Haptek/Experiments.zip

and then launch "winner.exe" (you also have move.exe and test.exe in the folder). Please don't touch your arrow keys before the "movie" ends: I spend a pretty lot of time for tuning the timing! 

Many thanks to Mark for the skin and to Nige for the hair.

Apologize to the Republicans of the forum. And congrats: you have a sexy Vice President.

And sorry for the Democrats. You can make an Obama version by changing start2.hap. The other haps of this stuff are left2, center, right2, far2 and sing (yes, you MUST change the song!).

Froggies never understood anything about American politics. 

[GT40]

But if you don't like her, now you have CNN (hope it works). 

It's "cnn.exe". Thanks again to Mark and Nige. 


Edit: update (invisible, I hope so) because of a little mistake. 

[Freddy]

Nice work GT40, looks like you have found another avenue for your creativity