Creating Custom Avatar Heads

[farshizzo]

This thread will explain how to create custom heads for your Avatars. The custom heads must be created through a program called 3DMeNow. This program takes a front and side picture of a person and allows you to create a realistic 3D model of the persons head. In order to use this with Vizard you must have the Professional version of 3DMeNow.

Step 1:

Once you've created the head in 3DMeNow Professional you need to export it as a VRML object. Save the VRML object and the accompanying texture files to a directory.

Step 2:

Download the file CustomHeads.zip to your computer and extract its contents to the same directory you saved the VRML object. The zip file should contain the following files:

filterHead.py
delta_default.txt
normalizeHead.py

Step 3:

Open the file filterHead.py in Vizard and run it. When the script runs it will prompt you to choose a 3DMeNow VRML file. Browse to the directory you saved the VRML object and select it. The script will next prompt you to choose an output file to save the new custom head to. Create a name for this new file and save it in the same directory.

Step 4:

Copy the newly created output file and the accompanying textures created by 3DMeNow to the [VIZARD_PATH]/avatar directory. Notice that the directory contains two files called face_1.txt and face_2.txt. These are the two realistic heads that come with Vizard. In order to make your new head accesible rename the output file to face_3.txt. If you have more than one custom head rename the others to face_4.txt, face_5.txt, or face_6.txt. You can only have up to 6 realistic heads at a time.

Step 5:

Run the following sample code to view the custom head in Vizard.

import viz
import Avatar

viz.go()

Bob = Avatar.Person()
Bob.changeHeadType()
Bob.replaceHead(3)  #This will load face_3.txt

Have Fun!