User Dalmatiner at ShareCG had all these wonderful vehicles uploaded. Now his account has been removed, because he had apparently passed off a Meshbox creation as his own and Meshbox rightly reported it. And who knows how many other items? There is no listing of what his uploads were, so we can't even avoid using them, or know what to remove from our systems. I just discovered that a building I had very happily included in one of the scenes for my story had been uploaded by Dalmatiner. The set didn't have a readme file, but after much searching Google revealed that it had been in his account. So did he make it or not? I have no way of knowing. I removed it from my scene and am making a building of my own.

It seems that a lot of the vehicles on my system were from Dalmatiner. Fortunately I still have the vehicles from Poserworld and they have kindly offered to make me a minibus. But it seems I shall have to learn to make cars. I just can't buy all the cars I need!

Never heard of him/her fortunately. google 3D warehouse has a ton of cars, albeit in varying quality and in SketchUp format. Whether it's worth it to get the demo (or the free version and a plugin) to convert them to obj I don't know. Probably OK for background at least. I assume you've seen the ones at http://www.dmi-3d.net/

excellent quality in lightwave format that can be easily converted to .obj with PoseRay if Poser can't import them. https://sites.google.com/site/poseray/ 

Edit: Just came to me you may need commercial use - don't know about either of those sources terms.

Dalmatiner never made anything. At least if he did I couldn't identify it. Everything he posted came from someone/somewhere else and I tracked lots of his stuff down to the original source. 

And it wasn't just Meshbox that reported him.

You have to be very careful about items you find on Google Warehouse as well.

Try using the wayback machine. So did he make it or not? Probably not, Dorsch, Despana/digimation, DMI, meshbox, and many smaller poser artists got hit. Dang crook is still in operation as well:(

"You have to be very careful about items you find on Google Warehouse as well."

why...? getting models into sketchup is hard work.. and trust me. 99% of the models will need a total rebuild when you do, since you'll have faces missing, textures screwed up, faces reversed... and thats on a good day! the OBJ importer's still beta, the DAE support is.... strange in it's results. so I'm puzzled.. how many models in there are stolen?

Some of Dalmatiner's models had very verbose descriptions, and I googled a couple and discovered the models were avaliable from Google 3D Warehouse.  Models there are free to use and freely redistribute without any restrictions nor attribution requirements, so I suspect he was downloading them from there and Pozerizing them.  Unfortunately for he and his fans, some must have been there that shouldn't have been there...

Many of his models came from a Russian 3D site along with other ... uh... "free" sites. And many of "his" models appeared the exact same day that they showed up on the Russian sites. He "made" 3 models every other day. He was a pet project of mine.

I'm not going to get into my "generalizations" of Google Warehouse, Russian 3D sites, or my long history of battling Dalmatiner.

Take the info... don't take the info. Be careful, don't be careful. It's a YMMV scenario.

so. you generalized and are not giving any information?

sorry, I take it with a huge pinch of salt then, since I have no evidence to go on, other than my own experience of using Sketchup and importing my own models into it. knowing how much of a bleep that is, I doubt there are to many stolen models.

Well, I'll hold up my hand and say I was one of the people who shopped him for passing off stolen things as his own creations.  Sheer luck, really.  Or his bad luck - stupidity actually - if you think about it.  

By sheer coincidence, I did a project some time ago which featured a very distinctive model of a boat.  I was doing some visuals for a company who'd bought some stuff from Meshbox or Dosch (I forget which), then lo and behold, the boat I'd used was sitting there on ShareCG.  I downloaded it and looked at the mesh; he'd not even bothered to retop it, so I blew the whistle.

There is - or was - at least one other "modeller" on there who'd taken Questor's Terminator model and subdivided it (which is insane because it's a poly heavy model to start with) and passed it off as his own work.  So I contacted Questor about it.

I don't go hunting for these things but if I find 'em I consider it right and proper to report it.  Piracy is bad enough but claiming someone else's work as your own is, IMO, totally disgraceful. 

Quote - so. you generalized and are not giving any information?

sorry, I take it with a huge pinch of salt then, since I have no evidence to go on, other than my own experience of using Sketchup and importing my own models into it. knowing how much of a bleep that is, I doubt there are to many stolen models.

Salt away. I have no idea how many are borrowed. I found 3.

Like I said.... I don't care one way or another what you do. Just telling you to be careful. 

Quote - ...So did he make it or not? I have no way of knowing. I removed it from my scene and am making a building of my own.

MacMyers is right. There is not so much you can do if you only want to use original objects. If you find a car model somewhere, you essentially do not know where it comes from. You can search with google for "car model" and look at the first three million images to check if they look similar, but if you do not find something, it will still be unclear if yours is a genuine model or not.
As a result, most people (like me) are not willing to spend too much time on checking the source of the models, and will just go ahead and use it. Legally you are relatively save when it comes to using models with unknown origin, i.e. you are not obliged to make sure you are not buying/downloading stolen stuff, except in the most obvious cases (when the descripton says "ripped from ...."), so it is basically a question of how much time your good conscience is worth to you. If you want to make money with it, things can get more complicated, though.
If you do not want to spend so much time, but have buckloads of money, there are lawyers/private investigators/registration agencies (i do not exactly know how they are called), who specialize in those things. Perhaps you can also try to hire MacMyers for it :-)

Quote - ... But it seems I shall have to learn to make cars. I just can't buy all the cars I need!

This is probably the main reason why professionals tend to make everything themselves. Essentially this is the safest way to only use models you are allowed to. And even then, if making models of real existing cars or objects, they are walking on thin ice.

I'm able to use some of Google Sketchup models in Poser.  No rebuild.  Just export to obj or 3DS and you're fine.

Come in real handy for some add-ons to sets, like garage scene stuff, etc, but you need to watch out so you don't get your "YOU ARE OUT OF MEMORY" message from Poser.  Happens to me a few times using sketchup stuff mixed.

Fortunately Content Paradise has some very nice car and SUV models by VanishingPoint at a discount right now. Two SUVs, a minivan, large and small sedan and a delivery van. With that and the "Romero" vehicles from Poserworld, I should be able to populate my streets fairly well. No small hatchback, but I'll keep my eyes open.

Shucky (SP?) just posted a very nice sedan on sharecg, detailed, opening doors, hood, trunk.  Most of Dalmatiners early stuff came from DMI, he just converted format, maybe corrected colors and rescaled, inaccurately.  I've avoided him from day one.

D.

quote :

No small hatchback, but I'll keep my eyes open.

If you are looking for a small hatchback I have 2 Poser models for you. Somewhat outdated but considering the models some of these must still be driving around.

VW Golf I GTI (1974-1983), left-and right-hand drive. 12$.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=87501&AID=912

Ford Fiesta 3rd generation (1989-1996) :

http://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/obj-vehicle-car-fiesta/271076

Yes, at Turbosquid for only 10$ ! I've bought it and it's a fine model. Left-hand drive only.

Since both models have to be paid for you should be able to use them for commercial purposes.

Heh.  I had the sports version of that Fiesta in black, some time ago.  Nice car until my (ex) wife drove it into a wall.

No, that's not why we divorced. 

Also, just in case you don't have the link to DMI (mentioned above) it's here :) The only catch is that they are for non-commercial use only.

Actually, it is possible to contact the creators of the models to inquire about commercial use.

Thankfully I had a folder with all of his uploads in it that I just deleted.

Me too. I had a folder named "Dalmancraptor" where I kept all of his stuff while I tried to figure out where he got it.

Thank you for the helpful links. My current project is not for commercial gain at all, but in future I may need to produce renders that could be for commercial purposes.

I wish there was a list of the offending items so that I could purge them... can't remember if I downloaded his freebies or not...

Hello all,

Michael and several others were instrumental in discovering Dalmatiner's piracy of one of our Fedoraville cars. We sent DMCA takedown notices to ShareCG and Lynn also had a long discussion with the folks at ShareCG, going over, step by step, what needs to be done to comply with the takedown notice process in order to maintain ShareCG's network provider safe harbor. You may have noticed a "Report Abuse" link appearing on the top page of ShareCG about that time. During the time it was up, there were over 300 downloads.

It was great to see the public support over on their forums (which you can see there now still), sticking up for us.

Meshbox Design employs full time artists, and we make everything in house. Every product we make comes with a license. Meshbox is a division of an Oregon based company that's been in business since 1997.

We aren't a huge business, and we are dependent on our content licensing to pay the bills. This sort of thing really hurts.

I hope Dalmatiner has given up on pirating models. I know he had an account here for a short time after being booted from ShareCG, but I can no longer find it. I know it was the same guy because when he set up his account, he used his same photo (which is pulled down a few days later).

I like free stuff too, but unless you have business-level trust in the provider, it pays to make sure its properly licensed.