One of Blendermarket’s new figures is just a Daz base mesh that looks like it was rigged with rigify. Nothing wrong with using Daz, Rigify, or Rigify on Daz, but it’s always been my understanding you can’t legally redistribute Daz base meshes as your own product. I’m pretty sure their “interactive license” for use in games is non transferrable…
Behold unmodified Daz Studio Genesis 3 Female in Blender:
Depends how you define “old”. Genesis 8 came out right after Genesis 3 (to avoid confusion with their Generation 4 product line, as Genesis 3 is the Generation 7 product line), and uses more or less the exact same toplogy for the body. I think maybe the eyes were changed a bit, and Genesis 8 is in A-Pose. The current generation is 8.1, which seems to mostly be rigging and maybe UV changes to G8, plus they have their fancy new PBR shader everyone seems to hate. A lot of users still favor G3, due to the lack of meaningful improvement between G3 and G8.1, they don’t want to re-buy all the essential products to make the base figure usable if it’s basically identical.
Daz and I aren’t on speaking terms since they started maliciously flagging the anti-NFT crowd for trumped up forum rule violations to shut us up (turns out anything can be an “accusation of illegal or improper behavior” and any suggestion that moderators have moderated is also totally against the rules now), so while I hate that yet another hack is trying to make money reselling Daz meshes, I’m not going to contact Daz again. I did notify the Blendermarket folks.
I notified Blendermarket. The seller has removed the product since I also notified them (Sketchfab has so many uncredited Daz basemeshes that hacks will tell you they totally made themselves in Blender/Maya/C4D and illegally list them as CC-BY that who knows, maybe they fell for one of those and chose to knowingly violate the CC-BY licensing by also claiming to have made it themselves in Blender?).
However, their entire product library is Daz exports, and they haven’t removed the rest yet, even though they now know it’s against the Daz EULA.
Why do people do this?
Come on now, you’re not seriously ignorant about the possible motivations?
Some people are assholes and try to test the waters with how much they can get away with.
If they had an ounce of talent and brain they would retopologize and change it, but that is probably too much to ask.
This is a good demonstration of criminal energy without intelligence.
At least they did something with it (rig it). This kind of behaviour is common, people are shamefully ripping off others and then sell it somewhere and sadly many get away with it.
Stuff like this is why the industry has blacklists, people that do this shit should be blocked from ever working in the industry, or from market places that sell stuff.
Out of curiosity, which figure did DAZ put into the public domain a few years back, anyone know?
At least I think it was DAZ, might have been Poser, I don’t know but I know one of them did.
That depends, when were Genesis 3 and Genesis 8 released again?
Either way, this is (was? I mean got taken down by the guy) pretty blatant copyright infringement and more importantly, asset stealing. How anyone is able to get away with this, even for a short period of time is quite puzzling to me. Moreover why they’d do something like this in the first place.
I believe that was Dawn, which was released by the Hivewire site for Poser, though a Daz version exists (but isn’t widely used). Daz definitely wouldn’t public domain the G3/G8 bases.
DAZ is popular. There is a good chance someone discovers this theft.
I am more concerned about people, who try their best and still are not popular.
There is a sad situation for many artists, who commit for years and try their best. But without money to pay a lawyer, and essentially being invisible and lacking protection of popularity.
I also worry about the people who fall for the scam though. People who think they’re supporting a legitimate artist with their purchase or believe they’re purchasing a legitimate asset they can use in their games according to the licensing selected on CGTrader/BlenderMarket/other digital marketplace.
Or worse, on sketchfab these models are listed as CC-BY most of the time (either for attention, or to cheat around the one free non-DL upload a month rule). That’s a FAR more permissive license, and the victims are a lot likelier to get caught using Daz models if they engage in the creative commons spirit themselves and share their derivative model to give back to the community, because as far as they know as long as they credit the “creator” who scammed them, it’s they’re not doing anything wrong. The overall legal risk to the victims is probably low, but still unfair.
The prevalence of Daz models on Sketchfab makes downloading even non-human models from that site seem slightly risky. I’ve also seen people sell Daz models there, and frankly given the pervasiveness of the problem among the free downloads there, Sketchfab moderators should be checking if models are daz before approving it for sale, at a minimum.
I am naive. Sometimes, if I saw a well made figure, I tend to believe that there is a skilled artist I can learn from. Until somehow someone revealed that this is a 3D-Scan or something ‘borrowed’ and sold as something own.
There is also the other way around.
Since technologies are on the rise, like 3D-Scanners, AI or figure-tools (daz3d, IClone, poser, and so on) …
how would you convince someone that your works are yours?
Selling other achievements as one’s own also hurt honest artists.
Maybe you know situation, where you meet someone who actual does not believe that you are the creator of things you honestly crafted.
What is the use of sharing your works for serious critique if people are more busy suspecting you and trying to find out if you are a cheater instead of looking at the arts and give useful critique? I guess, no response is a good response in that case, but that is not the kind of art-culture I like to be a part of.
Most people don’t tend to be too suspicious, I think. Even I don’t tend to be as suspicious as I sound (well, except on sketchfab but only because it’s out of control there), I just get frustrated and sometimes things have recognizable patterns or features, especially when you study lots of 3D models (and I’ve been in a hyper-analyst study mode for a while).
I think most people only make accusations when something is highly recognizable, but if you’re worried about being accused of art theft, a wireframe render will probably be sufficient to prove it’s yours (and I do apologize if my complaints about people trying to pass off Daz and MB-Lab models in the other thread as custom work has caused you any anxiety about your own work). Still, honestly I wouldn’t worry about it too much. For character models, it’s usually the same small bunch that get stolen, and even if you referenced other models’ topology, chances are your creation won’t look perfectly identical.
And really, there’s nothing wrong with using pre-made assets (I’ve used Daz for years, before trying to learn modeling myself), it’s really lying about it that’s the problem, particularly when they put other artists at risk by lying about the licensing and legality of a model they’re redistributing.
It is true that I am worried. More than once I observed - and experienced - how quickly some people jump to conclusions, without caring about the consequences.
Your concerns are legitimate. Please, you do not need to apologize to me. It is not your fault that I feel that way.
Out of curiosity, does anyone know what data DAZ put in the public domain a few years ago?
At least I thought it was DAZ, maybe Poser, I don’t know but I know one of them did. I’m using DAZ Studio PRO from last 2 years!
They have an open source addon for exporting to Blender, as well as some other applications. The Dawn figure is Creative Commons I think, but she’s not produced by Daz. Various Daz figures have been free at various times, but nothing open source, creative commons, or otherwise public domain as far as I know.
When i had to deal with people who get suspicious , i provided details and info about my process, so they can judge by themselves. If they still believe i am malicious or dishonest, it is their problem now.
This happened to me sometimes, when doing administrative tasks which involved money, i can’t fault people when they believe they are being scammed, as there is always incompetent or dishonest people in any profession (not sure about gravediggers yet, maybe because dead people never complain about anything).
