clint, i have no doubt that its not a direct carbon copy of Ki. i dont have any friends or ex-friends that would be so stupid as to simply copy a MOR pose file and call it their own. the fact remains that in the images above, the characters are virtually identical. this isnt 'subjective' at all, its clearly visible to anyone familiar with morphing characters. she already has my product. this one was produced a couple of days after she received it, and in her own words 'examined' my MOR pose file. shes also had two days to make her 'revisions' to the product, and the original that was uploaded - the one depicted in the first image in this thread, is probably long lost. i would like to get my hands on that original MOR pose, the first one to be uploaded to the marketplace - id be able to tell right away if it was based on my character. like i said this isnt a legal issue. i dont hold the patent for a technique, for a 'look', for a morph, or for a style of character. its an issue of pure ethics. and i must admit id have been more prepared to deal with this if it came from anyone else, and not someone i considered a friend. i almost let it go, again. either way i consider this issue resolved already. i wont be posting here again. i dont care what summfox does with her 'product' - release it, give it away, i could care less. my ki package will be updated with an anime morph with the same slight modifications, and well let both products speak for themselves.

hmm.. cross-posted. myrrath, any more personal attacks or insinuations you want to add there?

BH - Ok - Thanks for the reply. If Summfox gives her permission I will get you the file you requested. Clint

I do not wish to attack or insult or anything of the like. I wish for you to see this objectively and not so hastily. Are you reading your own word? I know I am. I know I came off as rude and obnoxious. The thing is, I know for a fact that this is not a copy of your morph. You cannot claim all feminine body forms as your own. If her face looked the same, I would agree with you, but here, I cannot. I did get angry when I posted the last reply, yes. That is because you insinuated that I was Summfox. Summfox is a friend, but I am not her. If you would like to continue that vein and flame the living daylights out of me, you can get me at pookathemighty@earthlink.net. If you could examine IP addresses, you would see that I am not even connected to the same ISP, in a completely different area (I'm talking 3 states away, not next door). I have been attacked and reacted accordingly. Yes, it was childish. But I really think you're being quite silly here.

i pointed out that your words were almost identical to a message that summfox sent me over icq. they were also in the same type of punctuation, and you even CAPITALISED the exact same words as she did. i did not say you were summfox. but the identical post leads me to believe that you are in communication with her right now and are discussing what you should post. theres nothing wrong with that - i would defend a friend as well - as i did her just two nights ago in another thread here. no, i cant claim all 'female body forms as my own'. but when i create a character thats unique, and someone to whome i JUST sent the file creates one virtually identical (i dont give a fuck about the face morph - i can make it with the stock anime face dials on vicky 2 in minutes) within a couple of days, it really gets to me. i dont want her item pulled, or her discredited as a merchant - im sure she recalls that ive tried to help her for months now, and give her suggestions. i even considered working together on some items with her before the eye texture thing. i simply wanted it clear as to what the original source of the body morph was - and this has been established with the help of summfox's own comparison pic and all of the other promotional images. now im busy creating my own anime character, which will be announced soon and will be free to those who have already purchased ki, since theyre so similar. i consider this matter finished, and the only one beating a dead horse here is you. i also dont like how you attempt to divert such a simple, straighforward thread with all the personal insults and nasty little remarks. "As for the speed that Summ did her own morph and the speed that you did yours, did you think for one moment that different people work at different speeds? Summfox is gifted in art and computers. She has been fiddling around for longer than you think. So what if it took her 2 hours to create a morph where it took you 2 months. What are you? Jealouse? " hmm.. perhaps. or perhaps its simply because original products generally take longer to create. im not ashamed to admit the amount of time i put into my products - and it has nothing to do with 'skill'. it has to do with coming up with original ideas and making sure everything is done right.

and he ALREADY sent Ki to summfox. That's how summfox can use Ki's textures in the promo renders...

No one tells me what to write or what to say. I come up with those little gems myself. The thing I don't understand is, you don't want her to be discredited, but you've succeeded in just that. People are leery of this product because you have wrongly marked it as stolen property. If you would speak to her sanely and look at a comparison of the two, you would realize that she did not steal from you. She is not that spiteful.

I am gonna step in here, because Ki is also partly my product. I did all the face morphs and the makeup textures, and took all the source photos for the skin texture. So I have quite a bit invested in Ki.

Gabriel and I work very hard to make sure that our products have a unique style and feel to them. ALL of our products have involved massive scaling in the MOR poses, which is a total pain in the ass to inject for each body part. However, Ki is the first product where we describe the scaling information in the readme, so that our customers could get clothing to work better. Anyone could examine our previous MOR poses that contain scaling info and figure it out from that easily enough--and I am sure others have figured out MOR pose scaling before this and since. The scaling info is not the issue. What is the issue is that this is the SECOND time that Summfox has built off of something Blackhearted has discussed or created, and that is simply not the action of someone who is a friend. It does take us awhile to make our products.. I don't whip out face morphs in 10 minutes and sell them. I spend hours tweaking poses, morphs, and such. It doesn't mean we are idiots.. it means we care about doing quality work for our customers. Maybe others feel ok about charging money for 10 minutes of work, but I don't. Sorry.

The sad thing is that Summfox has shown a lot of originality and talent with her male characters. She could make a killing off her incredible work with Michael. This whole thing upsets me very much, because I considered Summfox a friend.

This is going to be last thing I say in this matter, because I'm not going to waste my breath trying to defend myself when I know that it will be thrown back in my face as me just trying to 'justify' myself. I can assure you that what I say is honest and sincere.

Yayoi is an original body morph by me. End of story. ClintH has all the permission he wants to share the .pz2's with someone for comparison. I have complete faith in them. I back them totally and utterly. I will not waver in this no matter what is said, no matter how my product and I are threatened. I KNOW for sure with 100% accuracy I made them from a blank Victoria, no one else knows that one way or the other and until the .pz2's are compared, I would appreciate it if people would stop trying to crucify me. So please, ClintH... I BEG you to get someone to compare the two .pz2's side by side. The dial values will be significantly different. The only thing I ask is that it be done by an unbiased mediator.

I caught on quite a long time ago that there would not be a single thing I could do that would satisfy Blackhearted spare scraping this project all together. And I refuse to do that, because doing that is the same as admitting to doing something wrong. I maintain very firmly that this is not the case. This really is the last straw. Blackhearted can accuse Yayoi of looking 'similiar' to Ki until he is blue in the face, but he and others have MORE then accused me of not starting with a blank Victoria. I will not allow this to continue.

I will say anything else on this matter until I recieve an apology from Blackhearted, or at the least an agreement to cease and desist. It saddens me more then I can say to lose friends over this and I hope they believe me when I say that I am just as upset as they are. But it has to stop.

Bleh, typing too fast. That last paragraph should be: "I will NOT say anything else...", even. And I mean it this time. :)

I'd like to say, as a preface to anything, that for quite some times I've been friends with both Summfox and Gabriel. Close friends. I'm not going to get in the middle of this tangle, because quite frankly, I don't want to deal with the fallout from it. I will state a few things, objectively, for the record, and, as my friends, I hope neither of you take personal offense to this: 1. Summfox: You were in a chat session with Gabriel about the eye textures. In fact, I have it in a log on a backup disk, because it was at my site. If you like, I can take some time and dig up the exact logs and the date, but, really, I don't think that's the issue. People forget chats easily. At the time, you were even discussing an elf hair product, and the other site members were giving you advice on the model ( Myself, Gabriel, Valandar, ivyroses, and Kiera ). My sites have always been considered a place for people to freely discuss ideas without any fear of those ideas being stolen. I pride myself on that. If Gabriel had alerted to me to your product in late March, I probably would have banned you quick fast. He did not. The issue is now too long past for me to consider. I just wanted to set the record straight. 2. Gabriel: I think this matter should not be public. This dispute would not be at the point it is now were it handled directly through Renderosity administration. I know that it was not your intention to seek retribution against Summfox, but that's effectively the end result of your current course of action. Please quit before this gets even more bloody. You and I have both discussed the legal ramifications of MOR files insofar as copyright is concerned. The only proper recourse is to present your case to Rosity staff and let them either pull the product or leave it. If the product is pulled, then summfox's credibility is gone. This is the only effective change that could occur here. This thread will only serve to generate animosity towards all parties involved. Please stop. 3. Summfox: Yes, I am your friend. I am also Gabriel's friend. By pointing this thread out to me, you have compelled me to adress the issue. Please don't take personal umbrage at this, but I'm very disappointed at what I've been presented. As your friend, I ask you to please reconsider your current position with Gabriel, and to reopen communication in the hope of resolving this dispute away from public. Whatever the two of you decide from here, keep me the fuck out of it. As much as I'm your friend, I don't want to see anything else on this matter. I currently have my own fights to get back too... Paul

Blackhearted wrote: the image i posted above was actually rendered by summfox, not by myself. it was rendered AFTER her alterations - the 'original' yayoi posted earlier in this thread looked even MORE like ki - summfox has since lengthened the legs and added larger breasts. strange how if you leave people to their own devices, theyll do just fine at damning themselves without you having to help them along at all - * Eowyn nods. I usually prefer staying out of threads like this but I couldn't keep my nose out of this one. I showed the images to my friend who knows absolutely nothing about morphing at all and even he could spot all the similarities right away. Coincidence? I find it very hard to believe. And what does seem rather strange, like Gabriel pointed out, is the fact that the original body (seen in the first image in this thread) looks even more like Ki than what has been posted later. Why change it..? Keep your chin up, Gabriel. I am surely not the only one who is 100% behind you in this.

Putting aside the possible copying issue (which I would rather stay out of - though it is sad that issues like this arise) what I find saddening is that DAZ and others feel that making an emaciated woman with big eyes a small mouth and some funky colouredstyled hair makes an anime character. As a long standing fan of anime, Aiko et al make me cringe...Folks if you are going to make a anime character look beyond the dubbed exports sent to the USUK markets. Anime is a style, and doesnt just hinge upon the SEBM syndrome.

I find this all really sad... Since I started playing in Poser at the beginning of this year, I've found that I love morphing more than anything else. I don't think I've ever used a character straight out of the box - I always stick the textures on my own morphs to create something new. I've spent quite a bit on Blackhearted's packages, because his morphs always seemed unique - very realistic, very well thought-out and exectued. He has a signature style that just can't be denied. There are telltale signs in his work, and I find myself able to spot his morphs in renders without a second glance. Looking at the side by side comparison for a split second, I noticed the hip to waist ratio that usually alerts me to Gabriel's work, the breast shape, the toned abdomen drawing the eye down to a realistic tummy. But what struck me before any of those things was the pubic detail. It's something that all the Black morphs I own have, and that I have NEVER seen on any other morph. I'm not saying that they don't exist, just that in my stay here at Renderosity, and my experience with other vendors, I have not seeen. I guess it just strikes me as strange that this one possesses that quality, in addition to all the other remarkable coincidences. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery... If that's the case, Black should be very flattered right about now. It's sad that things had to be this way, and get ugly the way they did. But the render is damning... To me, someone who does spend hours morphing, and to an untrained eye sitting next to me, it looks like Ki shed a few pounds and had a little growth spurt.

Sorry - I don't see it. I think there is a lot more going on here. I love Blackhearteds work, and I am happy owner of "Ki" (I am using the texture, in the end I didn't like the body so much). That being said - I don't really thinkt here is much of an issue. So there are similarities... I ammissing the point/ The number of useful and attractive body shapes in Victoria are limited - and for petite volutuous charaters even moreso. Hell, I have a character here that I did after I got Ki that is also being used for Anime work (the purpose I purchased Ki for in fact) and I started with a blank viictoria as well. I am now fairly sure that if I posted her here hat it would look similar as well. Did I have the images of Ki in my mind as I worked? Yup. I also had about 25 other photgraphic and anime references in my mind. Shall I now make sure I never make a petite pretty character because somehow it is a copyright violation? Hell no. That is way, way over the top. So you mean two different artists playing with the built in morph dials made characters with similarities? I am not shocked. I know that Blackhearted is very sensative about his work, and he should be, but I think it gives him a little bit of a hair trigger on this sort of accusation (no offense intended). Someone compare the files - and if theya re different enough then thats the end of it for me... because I know I don't recognize a copyright on the concept of "short, cute and built". It will be easy enough to spot anyway - Ki's scaling and settings are fairly bizzare (though pretty) and any derived file will show them. Even if someone looked at a image of Ki and twiddled the dials of Victoria till they got one that matched I would think that was OK - the concept of "reverse engineering" is fairly well accepted. You cannot copyright a set of settings for the Vicky model any more than you can copyright a set of camera settings. The FILE can be protected, but a "clean room" reverse engineering will be legal and I think morally acceptable in most cases.

The FILE can be protected, but a "clean room" reverse engineering will be legal and I think morally acceptable in most cases. I have to agree about that statement. (I can't tell if the above is derived from Ki though, since I am not familiar enough with Vicki's body dials and don't have either character.) And though I agree about the statement, I personally wouldn't try to sell something that I reverse engineered. Play with it myself and maybe share it for free, but selling something that is too similar to someone else's idea, even if not derived, is not doing anyone a favour: The market already has one, so they don't benefit; The first vendor definitely doesn't benefit; And the copier wouldn't benefit from 100% sales either cos there's a closely competing product which is better established. Rather spend time developing something more different. What a pity such a well received item couldn't have avoided this mess. I hope you guys work it out. :)

Well I've read this whole thread and to me the similarities outweigh the differences. The main difference seems to be in the scaling of the models, such as in the hips and legs. However, the underlying morph structure looks very similar; the dimple above the navel and the line running up to the ribcage, the crease near the top of the thigh, and the "fattening" of the thigh near the knee are present in both models, just to differing degrees. Sure the breasts are different on Yayoi, but that just looks like a cleavage morph to me. These facts coupled with the very short development time make Summfox's claims hard to swallow. Just my 2p.

You know, while we are on the subject of petite characters and morphs, you don't see me moaning about the similarities of my Vicky Petite character which as been out for months, and the other recent additions to the Renderosity Marketplace which are almost identical (especially in the face morphs). Don't make me pull out my sample renders describing and illustrating similarities. I purposely keep a low profile here at Renderosity to avoid all the Political BS and EGOs that have come to exist here. I absolutely love my work and friends that I have met here at Renderosity, but these immature high-school popularity battles have to go. People need to grow up. People need to address issues discreetly with the admins and not make such a friggin public specticle of everything all the time.

care to be a little more specific there, magnet?

Do I need to be Gabe? The point is, is that witchhunting so passe. There are more descreet ways of dealing with a touchy subject like COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT. It doesn't need to be a public execution. I have seen this way too many times before. People have nothing better to do than spend the days starting gossip, and trashing people's reputations in a public forum. I choose not to participate in that venture, as I am not interested in popularity. My work speaks for itself and so long as all my customers continue to be happy... things are all good. enough said. Brandon "magnet"