Ai Dreams Forum
Chatbots => Haptek => Avatar Talk => .HTR Files => Topic started by: Carl2 on June 10, 2015, 12:30:39 pm
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I've worked with Haptek for ages and found you can open the character .htr and make changes, unfortunately this corrupted the .htr and it was not usable. I'd learned Haptek used a B2 compressor and looked everywhere for this compress and uncompress tool and have found one is now available. The link is http://download.cnet.com/7-Zip/3000-2250_4-10045185.html (http://download.cnet.com/7-Zip/3000-2250_4-10045185.html)
I downloaded it last night and put a htr in it and it generated an uncompressed file which I could open in wordpad. I could make a change and save it, when it was loaded in the hap player and it was worked. I just tried the same thing this morning with Sandy and got the same good results. So basically you can change backgrounds, character position, clothing on the character and quite a few other things and have it appear in the hap player. I've a lot more to experiment with but it looks promising.
Carl2
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Just a shame you can no longer share it with anyone on the net...
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A shame is right, not much happening in AI and Haptek is a thing of the past. We had some very good people working on Hal and just about all have moved on. I had very good feelings last night but who gives a dam. How are you doing with your bot?
Carl2
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I used to love Haptek but it was a calamity when it stopped working for anything higher than XP on the net.
Mitsuku is doing well. Just training her up on Winograd Schemas ready for the Loebner Prize.
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That's pretty cool though Carl, well discovered. I left Haptek a long time back, but it's sure to interest the remaining devotees over on Zabaware.
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Freddy, I surely realize you've moved on and after years I began to see some of the flaws in haptek and I can't blame you for moving on to other things. Quite a few people have visited Zabaware and showed what is possible and moved on. Just visited this site yesterday to get some info on changing the Voices for someone at Zabaware. Keep up the good work, you'll succeed at whatever you try.
Carl2
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I've been working with Haptek again, noticed I had left some notes on the earlier work I'd done with it which were helpful since its been so long. Simply I'd like to use the files generated when the haptar is uncompressed and the files show in the haptek temp folder. I've already tried this and found it will not work but I'll try it again with the simpler Sandy face haptar. I've just opened Sandy in the Hapregestry, her face is showing in the window and there are 33 files showing in the haptek temp folder. I have closed the Hapregestry which has removed the 33 files that was in the temp folder, we disregard the 24 hr grace period. I've restarted the Hapregestry and loaded Sandy the Uncompressed htr which is larger than the original compressed Sandy htr, this loads the face again , there are 33 files in the temp folder. There was no readme file during the initial trial, but during the second trial the uncompressed Sandy haptar is missing and the readme file is there. I had opened the htr in worpad and made a change in the version number, change from 1.0 to 1.00 and saved the change, it still works so further work looks like it can be done.
Carl2
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I see no problem with one sharing the resulting characters created (haptar or htr files) from the original Haptek program as has always been the case. The main People Putty program, might still be a sticky wicket especially if the copyright is still good. After than, all bets might be off as it's no longer supported or maintained to any degree.
Let your conscious be your guide. Otherwise, if anyone is still using PP and creating some new and or unique characters, do feel free to share them with the rest of us.
Thanks for playing....
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I did like haptek and try to revive it but it crashes out visual studio 2013 ... If this problem was resolved the program would still have life ...
Pity ;
I tried making actives controls but I think that the highest it worked for was visual studio 2010 ...
Worked fine in vb6 ...
It's ok to share content but not resell the content ...
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A lot of people simply used an older PC that was XP based and People Putty would run great!
For Vista (hate to even say that word), 7 and 8 one could use the Cars program for smooth operation of the Haptek characters but NOT the People Putty Program. Nope...didn't like 7 or 8 at all...just XP.
And so it goes....
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I never got into the people putty program, I went from face Sandy to the fullbody, The fleshy characters were great but there was a problem with the audio causing undesired movements in them in win 7 or vista. Amanda Interactive is still online http://www.amandainteractive.com/ (http://www.amandainteractive.com/) and has a Haptek 360 Player that looks interesting but is not released yet.
I did learn that the 7 zip download software is unable to uncompress a compressed htr file. I even changed the extension to .Bzip2 and it still would not work but the haptek player allowed it to work with that extension. Unexpected results plus the Haptek player, Hapregestry and Hal program each seem to have there own standards as to what will work and what will not work.
Carl2
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Carl2,
That's why I mentioned use of the Cars program to set the number of Cores in your processor to use when running Hal or Haptek viewer window. It made a huge difference in the overall smoothness of the character's animations.
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Art,
I do use the cars software when using the hapregestry or just the hap player, the hal program seems to have something built in and doesn't need it. There was a special issue with win 7 or vista and the audio caused problems with the fleshy characters, about the time Alactive was introduced, they went backwards and took out the fleshy portion because of the problem. Amanda Interactive has a 360 background where the background moves around but it's not released yet.
Carl2
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When using Zabaware's UltraHal program and Windows 7 without the CAR program, the character movements were so jerky and unresponsive that it wasn't worth running the Hal program at all.
The Car software made things way smoother and responsive.
Alactive while interesting simply allowed a character to stay centered in the screen and change backgrounds, clothes, music, etc. Turn right, left zoom in and out. Unfortunately, the program was practically over as soon as Windows XP was shelved (and Haptek was unsupported).
I'm sure it probably appealed to some graphic oriented people but not so much for the A.I. buffs.
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I didn't realize Alactive had been out that long, I do remember when the car program came along. I'd stayed with the head, Sandy for a while and eventually switched to the Fullbods, after quite a while she finally lost the boots. To me the character is one thing, the Hal program is the other thing. Graphics I'd put in another category and call that the bodyskin which is very dependent on lighting. Once you get into the fleshy characters you can work with the .phy and things get interesting and the .def files contain switches for animations.
I've been looking through the CD copies I made for Hal and come across quite a few things from ages ago which may come in handy since a lot have disappeared from the internet. Lots to do, it's a matter of setting priorties as to what you would like to accomplish.
Carl2
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I agree with that observation Carl. I also did not mean to slight the work of Rich Amico who was quite a prolific poster at Zabaware for quite some time. He sort of dropped out to devote time to develop his Alactive and WinOS programs. It was he who provided a method that removed those awful boot legs from the Haptek fullbody gals so he should get a big thank you for that alone!
What I meant was that I am more into the brains / A.I. than the character although a nice looking character / avatar does add to the overall effect / experience.
Yes, it is a shame that his work met an untimely drop off when Win XP got trumped by a new version of Windows. Rich had a great understanding of the Haptek software. It would be cool if he and Chris Shaw could work together to devise a much improved, Windows 7/8/10 compliant version of the Haptek characters!
Who knows....
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I'd say we need Hal to provide the response and Haptek to provide the character we are interacting with and both need work. I'd just posted a reply which did not post so this will be brief. I'd found the clothing is converted from a jpg to a series of numbers and letters when opened in wordpad which explains what I saw in the uncompressed files. I also thought of a few things to try to make everything work together. A lot of talented people have moved on, unfortunate.
Carl2
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I figured out how to add haptek to the visual studio 2013 ....
So simple I must have been sleeping for a couple of years ....
When you open visual studio it needs to be in administrator mode ... Then when compiling just add security raised security then it works in the IDE and in the final binary .... If you don't raise the security for the compiled source code then the binary needs to be run as administrator ....
I actually made a merge module in vb6 (installer creator) that can be added to the setup when redistributing your binary.... Just containing the activex component and Sapi binary ...
Phew ... Back to putty heads as an ai interface ...
....
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It's sad that they haven't upgraded or kept up the project since ms agent was dropped .... Ogre is crap and really buggy (not working for me )
At least Microsoft will send you a updated msagent (on request) which I also merge moduled ... And still works fine(sometimes transparency issues ) only problem with msagent the agent creation software wouldn't take quality images and is limited to bmp (for their own characters they use jpegs)
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Carl ---- the haptek is good but agreeing with art ....
Brains makes the AI ... As much as we love ultrahal even that project reached an impasse and was passed by silly but still good Verbot (a pirate clone)
Ultrahal seems like it's discontinued .... Probably because we all left ...
Even my own AI surpasses ultrahal (obviously Athena does too )
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SpyDaz,
I was locked out for a few days, just got a new password sent to me. Nice to hear from you again. The brains and the Avatar, I'd say actually both need work. I've got a plugin that changes bodyskin and clothing and I've been able to expand on this by using Hals response so she can determine the clothing and background, introduces an unknown which make it more interesting for me. I should give credit to VR who's Haptek plugin makes it possible, lots of great features in his plugin. I've also been looking in the Haptek .def file that uses a state machine giving the character animation certain features, be nice to use a state machine in the brain.
Currently I've been spending time with Daz studio with the hopes of getting a higher poly count wire mesh for the Haptek character. The Daz characters seem a little primitive compared to the haptek characters in some respects so I'm not sure this is a good idea.
I remember the verbot, if I say this then you say that, good in certain applications.
Carl2
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Nice to hear ... I actually have a silver surfer haptek head made with my face by iam bennu off the ultrahal forum .. So I'm glad that I was able to get it working again... But the problem with people putty is that if you uninstall it then activating it is a problem ....
I used to like Hal but it got stuck .. So I started creating my own (reverse engineering) then all of the functions I used to use got binned ... As the process of reverse engineering taught me so much ..
Building your own AI is not that hard and you will soon make it to the same place Hal reached ....
Just choose your programming language and stick to it
http://www.spydazweb.co.uk/spydazweb-ai/ai_tutorials
I created a basic tutorial on building the basic interface here
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I have used daz studio ... A bit complex but i know its a heavy resource ...
The building of characters is a concern ... How and how to implement is always the factors to be considered ... People putty is good
But always needs to be reactivated by contacting jack wiley ... The creator ...
So anything that can be created by another product is worth trying ... Msagent has limitations on the image quality so keep at it !!
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If you work with Daz Studio then there is a quite straightforward way to get models into Unity.
You export them in FBX format and then import them into Unity.
Then you use Unity to map the Daz figure skeleton to it's own native limb hierarchy.
After that it's pretty easy to add animations to the figure, for example with free motion capture files.
Here's a Daz model I did walking in Unity...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qD1YV7t2E6k (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qD1YV7t2E6k)
One thing though - Daz models have a lot of polys - I think Victoria 6 was something like 50K polys, don't quote me though, it's been a while since I was doing it.
But a lot of games these days use high poly central characters - so we're not far off using these out of the box. The place where you start to run into problems (depending on your PC) is doing things like animating the mouth/head. That's a lot of numbers to crunch. But like I say these days as PCs move on it's less of a worry.
Anyway, Daz make this product called a Decimator and that basically reduces the number of polygons in a given model. So I used this in my projects to dramatically reduce polygons but was also able to retain model quality. It's a matter of experimentation.
You've probably seen this before, but this is my bot Jess in her own world. She has evolved from a Daz Victoria 6 model - polys were reduced and I used the mouth shapes (visemes) already built into Daz models.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reSdHa3sCyU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reSdHa3sCyU)
The main thing is working out your method or work flow - it took me ages to find out what did and what did not work, many weeks infact. I went through probably ten or more engines before I settled on Unity.
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hi have updates of this HAPTEK using VB6 ? cheers!