Hi,
I was thinking, for those who have tried to make some money by creating content using the game engine, whether it be mandatory payment of some small amount of change see how it goes, or optional donations of very small amounts. I doubt nobody used copyright images for their purchased content? I imagine it would best to avoid using anything that is since it is somebody’s else work. It seems unlikely that anywhere would pursue any individual doing so.
Thoughts?
What do you want to say?
I’m sure most of this community actually does make sure to use copyright free (CC || CopyLeft || Etc) images and resources in general. It is true that if you don’t care the risk of being sued you can of course do whatever pleases you most.
And if you think that copyleft resources are shit and hard to find, you can always buy an actual license of whatever you want to use (wich is what actual game companies do), in most cases you must contact the author in order to do that.
It wasn’t a subject I thought about relating to purchasing a game.
Selling a game with copyright images is always a risk since it is a bit of a cheat use other’s work trying to earn by taking credit, that was what I was stating. I had given it some thought for the future. If I could produce some content, I’d have to think carefully about that.
Yes I know and I responded accordingly. You don’t need to produce all content, but for content that is not yours you must make sure it’s licensed in a way that you can freely use it in your project. Go search Creativity Commons licenses.
The easy way is to make all the content yourself, which is what I do.
Otherwise, inspect the license carefully. Many creative commons licenses are “NC” (non commercial).
Some Licenses that you can use and sell etc. include:
Other than that, read the license text carefully yourself.
I’m refering to a random image via Bing search. I had created model vehicles years ago and used copyright images without permission for personal use. I even did try and enquire where one image I had used was from. I got no response from the site that hosted it.
As for optional donation or mandatory payment for a blender game, that would be of a problem. I’d have no replacement for it, since it is photo realism.
Don’t. Copyright law is a pain in the neck. If you want photorealism take the picture yourself and keep in mind that pictures of real stuff can be subject to the copyright pain too, so use those just as a starting point for some significant transformation - heavy enough to be considered original work.
For example you may take the picture of an existing car (which you can’t use as it is) and use it to create a reflection layer for your texture of a car. The physical properties of materials are not subject to copyright.
if you want real image textures, you should take them youre selves, its easy enogh and there are lots and lots of easy tutorials on how to tile them in gimp or photoshop. if not, try drawing them, i dont own a touchpad for artists such as the wacom ones, but with a old laptop i take out the touchpad and convert it to a peripherical usb touchpad, and with a stylus and all the gimp and photoshop efects on hand you can actually make some sweet hand drawn textures for your own use!
At the time my edit for a game was the only way.
It looks as if, I’d have to find somebody who could create a replacement. Or just take a risk.
Interesting points from some of the users here.
No response is still no permission. It might be that the copyright owner does not care, but you do not know. Better do not even download such content without explicit permission. This way you can use it by mistake. Ensure you can proof the permission (e.g. with a screenshot of the source). This is more work to do, but much safer.
I doubt nobody used copyright images
I have used some. But I never planned on making the games public. They are just for me, and family, and close friends of family.
Still not right. Copywrited images are still copywrited.
It’s already been said, but . . .
You should try to get permission to use someones images. If you can’t don’t use them.
The best way is take your own pictures. My wife and I will sometimes make a day of it. I’ll have a list of things I want pictures of, and we’ll go find them.
You could also hire an artist if you had the budget.
Then I can’t accomplish anything regarding film themed environments. If I had made money, I see the moral problem.
But for free use anyone can download anything and use it. Majority of the time it is only for entertainment use only.
How many sites have permission to use images I have downloaded when you see so many copies. None.
I found renders of the model ship from ‘Enterprise’. Who gave permission for somebody to host them on a wordpress blog? I saw those renders twelve years ago on a scifi message board.
If I made 50p or 50cents euro or dollar currency, and I was using copyright images without permission, I see the big problem. So If I want to create content for mandatory charge or optional donation, I’d need to make everything from scratch. Which solo would be quite a challenge, unless you know copyright free audio and images.
The moral debate is about the fact that one is using something that its creator didn’t mean to offer for free.
Then there is second degree debate about the monetary damage that behavior is causing. This one is much more interesting, you can go from “it’s actually beneficial” to “we’re all gonna die” claims.
In the end the choice is yours as it also is the responsibility.
Like I stated I know of two sites that are using renders, I have downloaded those renders and have them for personal use with the game engine, I was thinking that may be I could use it for a free released or a money earning try.
Just out of curiosity for this alone, I typed an email to the site that has a contact address. See what that person has to state in response if the renders have a copyright or not.
For solo projects both Unity and Unreal have it’s store where you can buy assets and its licenses. Othewise you can use opengameart.org, blenderswap.com and other websites with copyleft licenses that aren’t that hard to find.
Yes that is good. But I’m refering to images from themed series’s or films. You can’t find replacement for those unless a texture artist can do them.
I have a feeling if I wanted to use the renders in a donation project, I’d have to contact the company that created them for the model ship in the tv series. That would involve buying a licence for permission, so I couldn’t release a project for free due to some cost involved.
I did view one file on the open game art, notsure if the texture images used on a model car would of been copyrighted or not. Who knows.
You seem to have a misunderstanding about how copyright and licensing works.
Everything is under copyright for 75 years. (depends on your country, but close enough). During this period, you are violating copyright if you copy (even for your own personal use), the item unless permission has been granted by the creator. Permission can be granted by the creator by direct contact or licensing. Licenses outline what you can do with the item. If an item’s license is not stated, then you do not have permission to copy/download/use said item.
Now that is what copyright is, and you should respect it - paying particular attention when something is intended to be public, and even more so if it is intended to be commercial (donations are commercial).
Maybe we should all move to the Marshall Islands. There they have no copyright for personal use, but commercial use is still prohibited.
ASFAIK even CGTextures don’t want you using their images in Blender. Because Blender offers no protection. Anyone can just copy whatever they want from a Blend file. Unlike Unity and Unreal.
But you could use a copy protected image as reference. Say you wanted a monster.
So you search for images and find a monster you like. But it’s copy protected.
But you DL the image anyway and open in Blender.
You model in Blender a monster from the image and change it a little. Use the images texture for the monster skin, eyes etc.
Then bake that to another image, or even take a screenshot of the monster from several angles. open that/those image in PS or Gimp, to make your texture map, and change it up so that no one would even recognize the original image, or the monster. UV map using the new texture map.
Remove the copywrited image from the Blend file. (In UV image shift + click the X on the image, restart the Blend file)
I’m no lawyer, so I don’t know if that’s legal.
Not sure about the morality issue.
I did that a few times.
Two things to add to this discussion,
first:is we need to keep in mind that our personal morals mean jack and crap when we are in the courtroom being sued for infringement, and if you are in the states you should keep in mind that this is a federal case, it won’t be handled down at the local JP where you settle your traffic tickets.
Second: Keep in mind that search engines are getting better and better and I’m going to explain to you how I find out if the music I’m using for game making is copyrighted or not as a functionally deaf person. I make a private video and upload it to youtube and wait for 48 hours. And so far it’s worked quite well for finding out if the music I’m using is based on some other work.
Do we want to be the person 10 years from now who is standing in the room where our personal morals mean jack-n-crap and getting sued by getty images because some scan engine found something in your website/dropbox or whatever? We all have better things to do with our time.