Quote - People tend to push terms to their limits, promotional renders are commercial usage, even though it is just a render, the usage is a means to make money/more money and you are using it as part of your business.

To me, commercial renders ARE commercial use, but I see commercial renders as different, really.  Some examples using a free dress someone has created

1-You are advertising a house and you use a picture advertising it, which contains a person wearing the dress.

2-You are selling a hairstyle at Renderosity and use an image advertising it, where the woman is wearing the dress

3-You create a scene for a rendering contest, of a person in a ball room, and they are wearing the dress

In those circumstances, the free item is just one of many many parts of something else, and it is not going to be the thing that makes you money.  You could do the same scenes in 1, 2 and 3 with ANY dress.  But maybe you happen to like the particular free one a lot so want to use that.

Personally, I see this as VERY different than these commercial uses:

1-Creating textures for the dress and selling them

2-Making tubes of the dress or a brush from the dress and selling it.

These, to me, are DIRECTLY making money from the free item.

I certainly agree that it's up to the creator to set terms.  And they may not want either type of usage (which again is up to them) but it's nice if they specify exactly what they mean by commercial use.

Cheers,
Alisa

RETIRED HiveWire 3D QAV Director