Just so people know. An announcement is up at Poserpros.com... Sans names. Sorry this had to happen.

gosh but i get tired of copyright violators... the abundance of stupidity is just appalling, the arrogance is absolutely disgusting and the deliberate theft utterly loathsome... glad that the vast depth of violation & lack of respect you've experienced to date has yet to deter you from continuing the creative processes, Gabe... i feel equally awful thinking about how many of Umutt's customers were duped & now p'raps feel even more insecure about making purchases - period...

Unfortunately, Giana, it happens all too frequently. Most times it is settled quietly and the package is updated. Other times it becomes the talk of the forums for a few days. And Other times the community goes into complete meltdown. I rank this as talk of the forums for a few days. ;)

Wow...I'm so sorry :( I was looking at his products a while ago and I made the comment to a friend that one of his Aiko ones looked alot like what I got if I applied the GND morphs to her at a .5 setting (makes her look fantastic BTW)... I'm glad now I couldn't afford to pick up the product I was going to buy. sighs I'll never understand people....

"i feel equally awful thinking about how many of Umutt's customers were duped & now p'raps feel even more insecure about making purchases - period..." oh god, please dont. then these people win. there are over 2000 honest merchants in the marketplace, and the stores will do everything in their power to make it right with the customer. ive done nothing wrong in this, yet ive volunteered my time to remorph aiko as a replacement for the aiko19 morph. renderosity is refunding all of the customers at considerable cost to itself - and it did nothing wrong. so is poserpros. not to mention the nearly a week of time that nearly half a dozen people involved have spent dealing with this godforsaken issue. myself (as the original merchant), renderosity, poserpros, and daz have lost out on this bigtime, but hopefully the inconvenience for the customer will be a small one. cheers, -gabriel

Blackhearted.

smile Chill. Its all good.

When I ask questions, it means I am curious. Not accusing anyone of anything and I whole-heartedly (Blackheartedly?) like your work.

I was merely interested in seeing EXACTLY what you put up when you added the Vickie figure to the figure transition for those of us who are not as familiar with the V3 figure. What you put up even demonstrates to my roomate and girlfriend who know NOTHING about Poser figures that your work was ripped off. It also showed it quite plainly to me, which I appreciate you going to the trouble to demonstrate. I just like seeing such things when someone's name and reputation are being called into question. The truth is, this shows without a doubt, your situation is quite valid and unmistakeable. You were ripped off.

Excellent work, by the way. You have a great eye for the female form! Once I get Vickie, I am inspired to buy your GND2. Awesome stuff.

Message edited on: 01/26/2006 22:04

i DO sincerely hear what you're saying, Gabe, but for me i see it differently... the day i stop having empathy for everyone involved other than the criminal is when i would consider 'those people winning'... that's just me :)) but now i'm curious - i've no idea what Aiko19 is [i'll assume it's one of Umutt's stolen goods], but once done, will you be putting your work on A3 up in the MP? i've a little girl-crush on the A3 model ;)

@ BH --

This might be another one of those instances where "any publicity is good publicity".

More controversy = expanded sales.

Odd how things work out sometimes.

In any case, the GND2 sells herself. But this level of noise tends to attract the notice of some who otherwise might not have noticed anything.

id just as soon have avoided the entire thing entirely xeno... jesus, you almost make this sound like a good thing. i assure you theres nothing good about it - and till the MP php fixes roll in all of our sales are pretty shriveled up anyway.

Oh, well.....

I've seen instances of other products that got involved in controversy for one reason or another. The merchants enjoyed a corresponding sudden brisk increase in sales. At least for a while. They might not have liked the way that the increase came about: but come about it did. Perhaps it'll happen here.

In any case: if people buy the GND2, then they'll be doing themselves the favor of getting a top-quality V3 character. IMO - one of the best V3 morphs that I've ever seen. Ten **********'s +, if we still had ratings in the MP.

Hey: look on the bright side of things, that's what I say.

Really sorry to hear about this Gabriel. And glad you're taking so well. I don't have GND but have quite a bit of your other stuff, and to be honest, I thought when I saw the Umutov morphs that it sure had the Blackhearted style to it. Anyway, sure hope you do the Aiko morph since she and Stephanie (aka Irina) are my favorite meshes right now. Sorry again, Mike K

Xeno, Given the circumstances, I'd say Blackhearted has every right to be offended by your assertions. Honestly, I think he is going above and beyond what is required of him by working on Aiko19. This is not some cheap publicity stunt. A lot of people were "injured" by yet another unscrupulous merchant. ======================================================== Giana, Aiko19 is exclusive to Poser Pros. PP is offering a line of "original" products and the Aiko figure is one of them.

ehh, xeno didnt exactly offend me, he just unknowingly hit a nerve is all.
its what umutov accused me of in an IM after i filed the reports on these with the MP - that i 'made the whole accusation up in order to increase my sales'. if only.

Honestly, I think he is going above and beyond what is required of him by working on Aiko19. This is not some cheap publicity stunt. A lot of people were "injured" by yet another unscrupulous merchant.

I never stated that it WAS a "cheap publicity stunt". Read my posts: you won't see such a statement -- nor even such a remote implication -- anywhere in them. Where that idea came from totally escapes me.

As for BH's going above and beyond what's required -- I agree with you 100%. Nor did I imply in any way, shape, or form that he wasn't. So there's no argument over that point, either.

If anything, I've stated in no uncertain terms my unstinting praise for BH's product(s).

As for the rest: things are what they are.

ehh, xeno didnt exactly offend me, he just unknowingly hit a nerve is all.
its what umutov accused me of in an IM after i filed the reports on these with the MP - that i 'made the whole accusation up in order to increase my sales'. if only.

OK. That makes sense.

Sorry to have struck that nerve, BH.

Deja vu, Gabe. Sorry, man.

"those that know me can appreciate how much self-control i am exerting at this very moment." Understatement of the century.

"its what umutov accused me of in an IM after i filed the reports on these with the MP - that i 'made the whole accusation up in order to increase my sales'. if only." ROFL... Like Gabe is ever gonna be pushed for sales.

shakes head A thief is a thief. Good riddance, sorry you got stiffed again Gabe :((

First I am very sorry about you having to deal with this time after time Blackhearted. Secondly, I can't say I'm surprised, knowing about umutovs prior copyright problems.. once a thief - always a thief.. sad but true

Chelle! waves add a second, larger dose of irony to the conversation we had a couple days ago ;)

Andi! Jen! chuckles and waves ;)

Wonderful, just wonderful walking off to check up on Aiko19 Sorry it had to happen to you again, Gabriel...

Umutov gave me his Aiko Character to do a promo image on....Good job I didn't do it!!! Jesus.......no wonder I hadn't heard from him.

Huhh, thanks for images. I see on forearm and hand and hip part mostly. On forearm shape and hand shape is totally yours. I'm glad that never bought anything from Umutov.

Blast, I'm really sory to hear, Gabe. You shouldn't have to put up with this. Sadly, I was one of the customers duped with Aiko19 -the one Skyewolf mentions above- and I bought her because of the morph. It is nice to know that you are turning your morphing abilities to Aiko, I just wish it hadn't happened like this.

Damn, I'm sorry you've had to go through all this yet again BH :( I also bought Aiko19, could someone please point me in the direction of the thread at PP? Either it's too early in the morning for me or I'm just blind and can't find it.

www.poserpros.com > forums > General Discussions DTigerwoman posted an announcement.

Thanks Natolii :)

so sorry this happened to you (yet again), BH... :(

I may have asked a stupid question in this thread (see post 40) but it's one I've enquired about several times at various locations and no-one has yet been able (or prepared) to supply an answer - maybe I'm just not asking the right people. What are the basics of what you can and can't sell so as to avoid copyright licence infringement? (see post 40 for the specific question I posed) As a newcomer to Poser development, if questions like this can't be answered then is it any surprise that people make mistakes or use the most straightforward approaches to hand to try and make a buck? I'd really appreciate it if someone would have a go at answering this, or at least direct me to a place where I'm likely to get a response. Sorry to be a pain.

Carodan.. firstly, there are no stupid questions. Copyright issues can be very complex, not just for "newbies".

http://www.renderosity.com/index.ez?viewLink=328 is a link for Rosity's copyright policy. I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for, but it's very informative and should be able to nudge you in the right direction :o)

Carodan, sorry I missed your question earlier. So, let me get this straight (because I am a newcomer to Poser development), are there any instances where you can you use existing morph sets to create a character to sell? If, for example, I use the Daz Vic3 head and body morphs in some unique combination, spawn the body parts and then create an FBM character morph - is that fair game? So long as the original individual morphs cannot be extracted from this? No. In cases where you're selling a character which relies solely on the Daz morphs, you would use an INJ pose to set the required morph values. There are several programs available to help you create INJ poses. Any vertex information supplied in your product/freebie zip file must be your own work only. Karen Copyright Mod

carodan there are two apps that I know of,injection magic and injection pose builder, both from Daz3d that you use to create inj/rem morph settings,so that you may distribute your custom characters,you cannot use another merchant's morph to create another character(unless ofcoarse they give you permission). if you visit Daz3d you can find more info on what you can and cannot distribute in their FAQ,or you can ask them via the forums. hope that helps a bit :0) -3dz

x-post with Karen and DSB...lol

Message edited on: 01/27/2006 05:59

LOL 3dZ ... we're the online equivalent of busses. You wait all day in the cold and then 3 come along at once :D

Thanks for your responses on that. The copyright forum looks very useful too. I'll know to ask related questions over there in future. There are so many 'grey' areas in copyright law (certainly in so far as 2d imagery is concerned) that it's just as well to ask. You've made this particular example a lot clearer. Thanks again.

Carodan, you can do the same with morphs other than Daz (example Capsces morphs), so long as you're just offering dial settings in the form of an injection file you should be ok.

LOL 3dZ ... we're the online equivalent of busses. You wait all day in the cold and then 3 come along at once :D ain't it the truth...lmao

.

Blackhearted ripped off again :( .......StefyZZ has a new texture in Store so we can wait a few days or weeks she is ripped off again. I am now over 5 years in this community and have endless dejavu dejavu feelings : P Mazak

Lucie. Part of the beauty of Apollo (including the Capsces morphset) is that he has the ADS system, so you can save ADS character poses and distribute them freely. No utilities needed - It's very easy. The problem I have (this should probably be a new thread)presently with Apollo is that I'm using a number of my own morphs in conjunction with the default, Cole and RKane_1 morphs(which have yet to be re-released and are a large set on their own). I didn't really want to produce something that ended up being so complicated and had so many requirements. The idea was it would be an option for those who don't have the time (or perhaps the skills) to wade through tons of fiddly morphs. Also, the resulting file sizes from having all those morphs intact in a figure have implications for how many characters you can have in Poser at any one time. This can be addressed but again requires some level of skill that many Poser users might not have the time or inclination to learn, especially if it's a hobby. But the copyright issue is very important and I appreciate how necessary it is for artists to be able to protect themslves. I guess it's one of the dilemmas created with Poser content being largely developed by seperate individuals as opposed to larger companies. Makes the Poser world so complicated at times, but on the other hand has developed so many fantastic ideas.

:( I am very sorry to hear about what happened. The product in question looked suspiciously familiar to me but I thought, maybe it is just inspired by popular trend in morphing?

sigh

kitty5

ive been debating that for future morphs, i could actually modify the mesh. currently, a custom morph like GND, can be injected into basic free V3 and used even if the customer doesnt have any of the V3 morph packs. if they do, however, they can inject the retail morphs overtop of GND for further tweaking (different heads, larger breasts, other details, etc). the drawback of this is that copyright thieves can just inject it into V3 at varying strengths and use it as a base point for their own morphs. what if i were to do this: id actually like to modify V3 on the mesh level. somewhat like jimB did with supermodel vicky. there are areas where i could add a lot of really neat detail if i could go in there and make a few cuts here and there. by modifying the mesh i would have to distribute it with PCF encoding, which adds an extra step for the customer (downloading the small free utility and extracting the .obj). in the parts of the body that i altered, the V3 morphs wouldnt work. so for example, if i remodeled her abdomen area you wouldnt be able to inject any of V3's abdomen morphs there. however if i leave areas such as her head, hands, feet, etc alone then morphs for those areas should still work no problem. the advantage of the above is that i could do things with the V3 body that are currently impossible even with very extensive custom morphing. ie: a mesh-edited/morphed vicky would be to GND like GND is to vicky's base body. since it is being distributed encoded based on the original V3 object, i could do some tricks with the CR2 as well. the cons would be that it would add an extra step for the customer (encoded obj), and that it would not be able to accept many of V3's torso/leg morphs from her retail morph packs. it would also be virtually impossible to steal. cheers, -gabriel

What would that do to clothing? i.e. for what I know, if you're adding tricks into the CR2 -depending on what you do- it might be very difficult if not impossible to fit existing clothing to the new morph, and then we'd be in a situation where we would have to clothe a full new figure, or spend some time with a clothing converting utility to solve this. Wich is great for you, but puts us customers in quite a pickle. Personally, that is one of the main reasons why I haven't got any of Jim's models, and why I find your morphs attractive: I can always add the morph through the Tailor, or approximate things with magnets, to be able to use all the wardrobe that I currently have for V3, without having to start duplicating library items.

im not referring to moving joint centres or anything that would alter how clothing would fit. i could, however, add JCMs and such for parts of the body. this could affect how clothing fits, however i could simply include a 'JCM Off' pose for when she is clothed in converted clothing. much of my upcoming clothing will be dynamic, so fitting will be much less of a problem. i used to swear by connforming clothing (ad actually hated dynnamic) but the more i use dynamic the more i see that its a far superior solution to many of the problems many types of conforming clothinng face. i dont like to reveal much about what im working on but youll see in my next product what i mean. cheers, -gabriel

I, for one, would go absolutely insane over a V3/BH/GND model if in modifying you could do something about the shoulders/arms/elbow situation. I mean, GND is a total homerun knockout (you did a great job making her feel like a REAL, sexy woman) EXCEPT for the ridiculous MilFigure arms, etc. Now, such a change would be in the bones/rigging, not just in the mesh. I would not care a fig if I had to encode the obj. I'd bet you could overcome user resistence to it, also. Any hope Gabriel? ::::: Opera :::::

Thanks for clarifying that, Gabe. You're right, converting clothing into dynamic might be the way to go for this, I'm just wanting to kick myself for not thinking of it :) I'll wait to see what you have up your sleeve; I've purchased quite a few of your products in the past, and I trust the quality will only keep improving.

ive been debating that for future morphs, i could actually modify the mesh. currently, a custom morph like GND, can be injected into basic free V3 and used even if the customer doesnt have any of the V3 morph packs. if they do, however, they can inject the retail morphs overtop of GND for further tweaking (different heads, larger breasts, other details, etc). the drawback of this is that copyright thieves can just inject it into V3 at varying strengths and use it as a base point for their own morphs. what if i were to do this: id actually like to modify V3 on the mesh level. somewhat like jimB did with supermodel vicky. there are areas where i could add a lot of really neat detail if i could go in there and make a few cuts here and there. by modifying the mesh i would have to distribute it with PCF encoding, which adds an extra step for the customer (downloading the small free utility and extracting the .obj). in the parts of the body that i altered, the V3 morphs wouldnt work. so for example, if i remodeled her abdomen area you wouldnt be able to inject any of V3's abdomen morphs there. however if i leave areas such as her head, hands, feet, etc alone then morphs for those areas should still work no problem. the advantage of the above is that i could do things with the V3 body that are currently impossible even with very extensive custom morphing. ie: a mesh-edited/morphed vicky would be to GND like GND is to vicky's base body. since it is being distributed encoded based on the original V3 object, i could do some tricks with the CR2 as well. the cons would be that it would add an extra step for the customer (encoded obj), and that it would not be able to accept many of V3's torso/leg morphs from her retail morph packs. it would also be virtually impossible to steal. cheers, -gabriel Yeah, encoded files are a major problem, I was spending a lot of time on supporting Glamorous Jessi just sorting out the encoding problems until we final converted her to a serial number matching protection. DAZ takes care of the GV and IV protection with their installers, but I gather you wouldn't want to sell at DAZ. ;-) I feel native mesh figures work better than highly morphed ones though, they bend better (as the bending doesn't actually take the morphs into account). The files are much smaller, too, of course.

Gabe, don't say impossible. As soon as you do you'll regret it. Yes it'd mean more work for a rip off artist But if it can be done by you it can be undone by someone else. It makes no sense to me why they'd rather rip than let their work stand on its own merits. Oh yeah, their own work doesn't have years of satisfied customers standing behind it. I really am sorry that this happened to you, yet again. That other innocent parties were pulled into it too. That time and resources had to be eaten up by all those concerned by something so easily avoided. I am pleasantly surprised that there's no pitchforks visible yet. I can't wait to see how Aiko19 looks once you get done with her ;) We may not always see eye to eye but your work speaks for itself. Who knows, maybe a Blackhearted morph job on her will get me using her.

Sorry to hear this, Blackhearted. I know it is very disconcerting to see one's own creations being sold by someone else. :(

" Gabe, don't say impossible. As soon as you do you'll regret it. Yes it'd mean more work for a rip off artist But if it can be done by you it can be undone by someone else. It makes no sense to me why they'd rather rip than let their work stand on its own merits. Oh yeah, their own work doesn't have years of satisfied customers standing behind it. " well, by 'impossible' i mean in relation to the current system of distributing custom morphs. look at it this way: right now there is one person distributing mesh-level modified 'morphs' for V3 - Jim Burton. currently with a morph of the existing mesh, no matter how complex, all a thief has to do is inject it into V3 at any of millions of possible strengths and start disguising away with V3 morphs or magnets. (im not saying this wont be spotted, so noone get any ideas, hehe). but if i modified the mesh, it would have to be encoded, and the alterations to the mesh would be highly unique. someone could no longer 'inject' the morph into their own creation, and anything they did with it would also have to be distributed as a PCF-encoded object. since there are very few (read: 1) merchants currently distributing characters like this, you can bet your ass that if a new one released such a character i would be examining it under a microscope to see if they had used my material. just ask jim - how many copyright violations has he had with his SMV character? and that was pretty much the first non-daz 'morph' (im calling it a morph to simplify things here) of V3 on the market and is still around over 5 years later. "I can't wait to see how Aiko19 looks once you get done with her ;)" ack, you guys really need to stop making such a big deal out of this, hehe. i already have an Aiko morph ready (a la GND) for the past year, but daz isnt getting that one. i just need to figure out what to do with her head - there are so many different anime melon styles that i havent picked one yet to suit the body. i started working on the PP one this morning, and it will be a remorph of the Aiko body such as the one included in the aiko19 pack. the people at poserpros are doing the INJ and textures and such. i shouldnt be in the spotlight for that, its a case of the poserpros admins getting together and rectifying a situation for the customers. cheers, -gabriel