[Sigma X]

I was looking around and I ran across this
http://www.daz3d.com/i/software/daz_studio3?_m=d
I'll let the forum experts check it out and see is this worthy of being here
but from the short time i've seen it looks great to use I can't really explain
what all you can do but I think it's an answer to making good avatars

[Art]

Daz 3D has been around for many years and basically uses POSER as the source of / for a character from which one can "tweak" as desired.

Poser has been around much longer and while the overall character has improved with things like dynamics, poly counts, morph objects, etc., it still can not handle "on-the-fly" animation in real time.

It can do lip sync when scripted to do so but it would not work with say, UltraHal as a 3D emotive character.

[Maviarab]

Posers animations are actually very very good, when you start to understand how it does them and take the time undertsand how you go about it hehe....

Have messed with posers animations myself, but never had good results, but then I've not taken the time to lok into it properly.

Daz isvery good though Sigma, actually better than Poser in many regards, though depending on what you want to do, Bryce, Carrara and Vue are all much better.

[Sigma X]

well I really didn't know if it would be able to work with hal but I thought it'll be a good start for 3d characters to work with
sorry about that i'll try to find a better character maker that can work with hal

[Freddy]

You can actually use the Poser characters to make MS Agents, that is what some people have done.  Here's an example site that sells these :

http://www.guile3d.com.br/

I hear it is a very time consuming process as you have to create animations for each action the Agent makes.  But at least it is a possibility.

[Art]

You're right Freddy, however, Win 7 and Microsoft no longer support the older MS Agent characters nor the technology. Personally, I wouldn't want to invest all my time in an outdated, unsupported technology with little
to no chance for gain or reward.

Just my thoughts.

I know plenty of people have "put their money" on Ogre3D as the next best thing to come down the pike!
Uhh...where is it?
What does it look like?
How does it compare to Haptek (which by most accounts shouldn't take much).

3D Studio Max, Lightwave, Blender...etc...all have potential but the real task is how to interface?!

[Maviarab]

Imo Art, Blender is years ahead of Ogre, (no need to tell you so is lightwave and max lol)...

But yes, its all in the application. Poser would work wonderfully for what we want to do, IF someone can command/code/program the characters to do so.

As you say, thats the cookie.

[Freddy]

Yeah, you have to remember though that Blender is a modeller/renderer whilst Ogre is a graphics engine - two very different things.

The thing about Ogre is that you should be able to use it to display the models created in Blender et al.  So with a common file format such as .obj it could actually be done; meaning finally you could get those Poser models working with Hal.... and we know it's probably been about two years at least since Ogre for Hal was announced... so don't expect anything soon.

[Sigma X]

I never really thought about asking till today I know hal and DAZ cannot work but why not I mean it's free good models and it could be quite a addon seeing that it's free and this can give people to make great virtual humans
please forgive me for asking such a dumb question but I just got curious when reading this forum

[Freddy]

please forgive me for asking such a dumb question but I just got curious when reading this forum

They're not dumb questions Sigma, we all have to start somewhere, that's why we're here - so that we can help each other