[wgb14]

Hi all

A question for all visitors of the forum... How much would you pay for a full-body Haptek character with more than 2000 built-in animations with full clothing that comes with a tool capable of automatically producing scripts? I am not saying I have such a character, its just a fictional scenario....

[Art]

Heh!...I started to do the, "But wait!!...there's more!...If you act now..." thing from TV but I
just couldn't bring myself to do it! Or did I?

It's kind of like the TTS voices. Some people find $35 / voice a bit high yet to someone that
has a use for and really likes it, the price becomes secondary. Such is life.

"But! if you act now...we'll double your order!" Sorry! I've been brainwashed!!

[Maviarab]

Interesting question Wb...haptek would never allow us anyway....and if they had done this...would we pay it knowing how much it might be?

and if there were such a character...being a haptek character...would it really be any better than anything else we can currently use, just not utulised into AI yet?

[jackgephart]

WB, I would pay just about $100. I know that I can't do it right now, but I was going to at one time get a program like Nige is using over on Zabaware forum. He can do quite a bit with that program. I just about had my wife talked into it and then her health got BAD. So we aren't able to right now, but if I could I would at least pay $100.

[Duskrider]

2000 animations ? 
I'd be interested to see the list.
Pricewise ?   
Well, I don't know.
Depends on the list.
Have to be a real real good list and then maybe $70.   

[wgb14]

Haptek actually asks for a similar character around 3000 USD. It is crazy I know.... Perhaps a good price would be 20 Euros for the character 10 for the 3D clothes (actual 3D model of clothes with several morphs for increasing the realism of animations) and 10 Euros for the tool. Do you think that people would consider buying such a complex piece of 3D work for only 40 Euros?


About the animations.... ideally such a character would have:

1) Pointing gestures
2) Beat gestures
3) Emblematic gestures
4) Facial expressions modelling the 6 basic human expressions
And many more others............

So what do you think?

[Duskrider]

$3000  Dream on Haptek

40 euros,   yeah, should sell like hotcakes.

Is there a link you can show ?

[Freddy]

I keep thinking about this but find it hard to come up with a value.  I guess I am with Jack on around a $100 or so.  It would have to be better than Haptek is now though - there would definitely have to be some improvements in the renderer.  If we're talking on par with current offerings I would easily half that figure.  I spent maybe $40 on a voice for my PC, so it's in a similar vein, but yes maybe $100.

3000 USD ?  I would never pay that in a lifetime unless it was utterly amazing and I had money to burn.

[wgb14]

Yes I agree several improvements must be made in the rendering engine (e.g.. support higher quality textures), but its still the best 3D engine around. Until something new shows up, the immediate limitation of the engine, is the absence of good content. I am currently working for almost two years on a Haptek character that has all of the above characteristics and more. I will soon publish a detail list of its animations, looks, facial expressions, etc etc.

The character has extremely smooth animations that can be modified for any purpose, a range of dynamic 3D clothes (this part took my ages to make), textures for the clothes as well as the body and most importantly a tool that allows you to create scripts in a fully automatic way. These are all done through custom animation tags in the text itself. I have also experimented with automatic tag annotation of texts. In essence I am doing what haptek should have done a long time ago to ensure the domination of their technology. I initially thought to give it away for free as another contribution of my research work to the community... but ei the work that has been done is massive (almost two years) and a fee of 40-100 Euros is the minimum contribution that people can provide me for such massive 3D work. There are some complications that I need to solve first before I release my work, but it will happen... it is possible that I may not be able to sell the character after all, but at least you will get a good idea of the work that I have been doing for some time now   

[Freddy]

Wow, you have been busy.  This sounds intriguing.  I definitely think you should charge a fee for that amount of work, people shouldn't expect to get that kind of thing for free after such an individual endeavour .  I hope you manage to launch the character.  This could be the shot in the arm that Haptek so desperately needs.  Please keep us informed.

[Art]

This discussion also bring up other 3D people apps like Poser, probably the best 3D character generator.

There's also 3DS Max and it's animation with Character Studio which produces very lifelike, movable characters.

Some are trying their hand with Blender with varying degrees of success.

We're still waiting to see new characters using the OGRE engine which is to be implemented in the upcoming
release of Zabaware's UltraHal chatbot.

So while we have "options" I feel a lot of us are still searching for the elusive Holy Grail of 3D character / animation.

Good day!

[wgb14]

After some careful thought I have finally decided that the most fair thing for everyone would be to create a blog with a detailed description of my work and allow people to buy parts of it. Depending on the demand I will adjust the prices to min 40 Euros and max 100 Euros. If I will get enough interest for 40 Euros you will get a unique 3D piece of work unlike no other. Below is a brief list of the animations I currently have... I am still building more

[Art]

There's your idea!

Sell the character fairly inexpensively. Make individual modules or packets or animations
perhaps based on emotion / moods / abilities, etc.

Can't wait to catch a glimpse of the character when it's ready!

Good luck with this!

[Freddy]

Sounds good    Did you use Figure maker to do this ?

[wgb14]

Hello....

Have a look here for a complete description of the Haptek character.

http://virtual-guide-systems.blogspot.com/

The character along with the tool comes at the very small fee of 100 USD. Companies usually ask for 3-5000 USD for musch less than that.However, whether I will release it, depends on the actual number of people that will express interest. If you want it, please send me an email with the topic "Interest for 3D character" at:

virtual.guide.systems@googlemail.com