[Freddy]

A while back Rob at Zabaware announced that they were developing a new system to render UltraHal characters here..

The work will take around a year to complete so he says, but for anyone interested in getting a head start I have started this thread so we can compare and discuss our experiences with the engine.

Ogre 3D Homepage

[GamerThom]

According to what I've read about it so far, it is capable of
using mesh character figures from Poser, Cinema and/or 3DsMax.
The Poser figure aspect would be great for those who are
working on a shoestring budget or just aren't into the more
high-end software's.

We've started a similar discussion topic on this over at Virtual Humans Forum as well.

[Freddy]

Yes it seems very flexible..from what I have gleaned from their site it can handle a whole lot more too as it's a dedicated graphics renderer.

[GamerThom]

I'l be starting to play around with it a bit after I finish building my
new PC and get all the graphics programs and content installed.
I was also thinking of giving TrueVision 3D a try since that's what
Mikmoth will be using for his Kari 3D software. I'm looking to add
a 3D character choice into one of the modified Answerpad bots
that my forum is working on, but I'd like to stay away from using
haptek if possible.

[Maviarab]

hmm..this could reignite my interest in Hal or any other bot app that could make use of this 

[Freddy]

Any particular reason for moving away from Haptek Tom ?  I was just wondering because for me I have pretty much come to the end of the road in terms of  my interest in Haptek.  It's time for me to move on to other things I am afraid, Haptek has been fun but I think something new and more powerful is needed if we want to further character development - and Ogre may be just the key.

[GamerThom]

My main reason Freddy is that Haptek is just way too proprietary (exclusive & expensive),
they are practically impossible to negotiate with, plus it's been ages since they put out anything new.
I imagine I'll still turn out the occasional head or skin for those who like to play around with it in Hal
or the haptek player, but you can only go so far with it. Besides I've seen that there are now enough
people who have joined the ranks of those making heads & skins that I can move on and leave it to them.
I've turned that part of my web sites over to Jack, and so far he's doing a bang up job for all the hap-heads. 

It will be a new challenge that I can undertake to stretch my abilities. 

[Freddy]

Yeah I do know what you mean, the lack of new things for it has been a real bugbear for the past two years and  more that I have know about it.  I also found limitations in how it handles things like keyframes and the limits on timed events.  So much so I have shelved my animation project in favour of moving on to another character engine.  I've got a couple of ideas that may see the light of day for apps that Haptek users might find useful, but for some reason my Visual Basic projects didn't migrate fully to XP from when I was using Windows 2000 and the problem is too technical for me to suss out.  I have the code still so when I have a few days spare I will see about re-writing the apps.  For me it's also a matter of ending the frustration of so many false starts lol..oh well live and learn.

[GamerThom]

Have you tried taking your original code and recompiling it using VB6 in the Windows XP environment?

You may find this interesting as well. Guile from "Guile 3D" is working on a new 2D graphics engine,
as well as a new multi-bot Universal Interface that will allow the user to connect and interact with
up to four different bots at a time - both PC based & web-based.
You can read his post's on them over at Virtual Humans Forum.

[Freddy]

Thanks for the tip but I was moving from Basic Express on 2000 to the same on XP, I haven't used VB6 for a while now.  I will just have to break it up into sections to find out where the fault is I think as it doesn't show up in the code.  Unfortunately it is some vague internal error which I have never seen before so something is amiss in an area I am unfamiliar with.

That sounds like an interesting project from Guile, I'll take a wander and have a look.

[Carl2]

Freddy,
  Thanks for pointing me here, I've been wondering what Gamer has been up to in the way of graphics and respect his opinions on these matters.  I'm very interested in other game engines but the project seems to require so much work.
It would be nice to see Hal in an enviorment with gravity that not only affects her hair, love that, much better than DeskMatesdy but  I'd like to see gravity affect her body as well.  Hal will nerer fall but may float away in space.
  I've begun working with uncompressed files so changes can be made to the characters, frist I'd like to find the scripting for the wink and try moving it into a fullbody character and move some scripting  from fullbody girl to body female to give her the animations that fullbodygirl is capable of.  I'm holding to the past to long but it has what I'm capable of working with.
  Wishing you both the best in your efforts.
Carl2
 
 
 

[GamerThom]

Thanks for the input Carl2.

Don't worry about being left in the dust in regards to this. I believe it's going to take a while, maybe a year or so
before Robert is able to fully incorporate Ogre into Hal, even at that I don't believe he has plans for completely
eliminating haptek as a graphics option. The way I understood it, he is planning to add Ogre as an additional
option while keeping the MS Agent and haptek characters included in Hal. That means that user's of UltraHal
will then have three choices as to the type of avatar they want to use.

I am just beginning with my own expiments with Ogre and it will be at least a year before the people on my forum
come up with the final release of an Answerpad descendant that may be capable of having Ogre incorporated into
it, besides the MS Agent engine it already uses.

[Freddy]

For anyone wanting to keep track of this that hasn't heard already - this thread over at Zabaware has the most up-to-date discussion on the OGRE engine being incorporated into UltraHal :

http://www.zabaware.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5678

[Data]

Hi all, thought I better join this forum so here I am

Now some thoughts on the Hal 3D engine.

Can't wait to get rid of that ancient Haptek technology, after looking at the Haptek site I see that its Direct X 6, -  I mean come on haptek that is almost 10 year old technology now. Are there any 10 year old PC's still working?

Just finished playing the game Crysis the characters in it are so real its mind blowing, shadows that look real, hair that moves like real hair, high polygon counts, awesome textures and the physics engine is simply the best I've seen.  

The technology is there to make a very close to real looking human right now.

This is what I mean



Yes it's awesome,
I hope Hal can look that good in the not too distant future.

[wgb14]

Pre-rendering animationn and modelling has gone even beyond that. It is amazing what recent tools can do. However, in real-time 3d animation things are a bit behind. In that area characters do not look that good. I think this gap has to do with only one thing. Pre-rendering is currently on demand by the cinama industry and it will continoue to evolve untill we will not be able to distinguish the real humans from the digital ones. Real-time from the other hand should have been the focus of the game industry, but there the focus seems to be the enviroment itself and not the actual characters. I recently come across the Star Trek Online promotion video and I was amazed by the quaility of their enviroments, starships, planets, etc but not from the characters. Their characters look even worse that Haptek's. So Untill a better real-time technology will come up I will keep on using Haptek as they are simply the best.

By the way you can have a look at the promo video of the star trek online here. I think it will be massive, even better than second life (sorry SL funs but ST is a way of living for me)

http://www.startrekonline.com/videos