March 6, 2000

11:53 PM

Looks like Haptek is going to give Ananova a run for her money. Haptek is working on a virtual newscaster. The difference is Ananova get's built on the server and streamed like a tv show. Haptek renders the character on your machine. Which is better? We'll see.
posted by triptych (3 comments total)

It looks to me like Haptek's woman is a cartoon manufactured out of photographs of a real woman. They've taken pictures of her with her face/mouth in various positions, and they just sequence through them as appropriate to the words she's "reading". If I were to guess, I'd guess that the frame rate is fairly slow (on the order of two to four frames per second).

Ananova is pure synthesis (and I must say I think they did a fine job on the face structure; I'd sure love to have that model).

posted by Steven Den Beste at 3:02 AM on March 7, 2000

Sorry to go off the subject but I think that bear at the bottom of the Haptek page is going to be giving me nightmares.
posted by dodgygeezer at 8:01 AM on March 7, 2000

those haptek faces have scarred me for the rest of my life. they've haunted my dreams since i was first forced to watch them 2 years ago.

they make me sad.
posted by mmanning at 10:30 AM on March 7, 2000