[Tessa]

Hello everyone!
I am new on this forum and first of all I would like to say that many of your past posts and tutorials have provided very useful information for me, thanks a lot! I am a student working on a research project and I have encountered a problem with my Haptek avatar for which I cannot find the answer.

The problem is that I want to use switches that are not among the standard Haptek switches and have been created with Figure Maker in the past. I can only create my avatar with People Putty (since I don't have the Figure Maker tool), which (if I am correct) creates the figure definition file for my avatar while only allowing the standard switches.

Is there a way to alter or manipulate the figure definition file of an avatar without using Figure maker?

Thanks in advance!

[Maviarab]

Welcome along Tessa and glad you found some useful information within our hallowed pages

Can't help you myself as I was more in graphical work but sure one of our other members can sort you out on this who have more experience with Haptek

[Freddy]

Hi Tessa and welcome.

You can play with a Figure Defintion file directly in the hap_temp folder.  Say you have a Haptek head running and it has dumped all of it's associated files into the hap_temp folder - from there you can copy the figure defintion file and ammend it how you like.  Then you can overwrite the original file and reload your character by using whatever 'start-up' (hap) file that comes with it, which should also be found in hap_temp.  This makes the Haptek figure use your altered files instead and should also make any switches you put in available.

This is what I have done in the past, but I never found a practical use for it that didn't get really messy and I soon gave up on that idea.

The other option, which involves some expense is to buy HapTargh from Haptek.  This allows you to decompress HTR files and recompress them.  So you can see you would be able to ammend figure definition files to your hearts content and is probably the more preferable method.

Carl (forum member) was working with decompressed files and may have a better idea if he's around.

[Tessa]

Hi!

Thank you very much, this is definitely useful information! I will try the hap_temp folder method first and if that is too inconvenient I assume that the HapTargh would be less expensive than buying the Figure Maker, so that would be a great solution too!

Thanks again! Tessa

[Carl2]

Tessa,
   I did some work using the uncompressed Haptek folders as mentioned.  I worked with body_female, my favorite since it used physics for breast movement, I was able to change the amount of effect gravity would have on the breasts.  I loaded the character with changes to one of the files by making a htr in notepad which had it load the hap files.  In the past I had come across information saying Haptek had used  BZip2, the name is similar, to compress and uncompress the files but after downloading the file I found it would not work for me.  More reciently I found an employee or former employee who gave a link to what he said was the compresser, not tried yet.  This would allow you to modify files and compress them making it easier to work with them.
  Wish you luck and hope you'll keep us informed on your work.
Carl2