waves hands and jumps up and down Me! Me! Send it to me, Snow! ;] whoulps Ahem. Well, there went my professionalism, shot all to hell. grin "And as long as I mentioned it, and since I don't seem to understand, would someone please explain to my the reason(s) they have for restricting it? " I can think of a number of reasons, Chuck. Snow mentioned one... it may be a derivative work based on someone elses design who doesn't mind if it's altered and given for free, but they DO mind if it's used for profit. 2) Fan art. I can make any numer of comics characters, gaming inspired characters etc for poser, do renders of them as "fan fic", and post the poser versions at the 3D-CC, and the odds are real good that Marvel, DC, Image, Id and/or Eidos isn't going to care - as long as I'm not making money with their creations or lisencing them for other people to do so. If you DL a Spiderman character from animotions and make "Spidey Memorabilia" images with it, open up a web site and start selling them without the permission of Marvel Comics to do merchandise for profit with their lisenced trademark and lisenced character... Marvel WILL have their lawyer send you a cease and desist. Likewise for Lara Croft, Spawn or other similar things. THAT's why the "no commercial use" on those, including renders. For me or Doug Sturk to make them and provide them as freebies for personal use is fan art, and it's a labor of love on our part. He likes making superhereos, I like making Wing Commander starships. If we post them, it's to share them with other people who'll appreciate them and enjoy them... not for someone to turn a buck making spiderman memorabilia, or wing commander artwork for T-Shirts to sell. 3) Anime and movie based/inspired characters fall under the same heading. In a lot of cases, you can't use them commercially because they're lisenced - the "No commercial use" restriction is to cover ME legally. I have a deep aversion to lawsuits, can't speak for anyone else. In the case of the Japanese models and anime/characters, there is also the issue of "face" as hauksdottir mentioned. I respect that. I come from a culture, on one side of my family, that takes points of honor with deadly seriousness. Except through absolute ignorace, I wouldn't trample on someone elses notions of honor - like Billy-t's for instance - if I could avoid it. I wouldn't want him to do it to me. Or SnowSultan or Traveler or a lot of other people I respect. Simple courtesy - I choose to not do to you the things I would prefer to not do to me. 4) Personal prefference: We have a character set in freestuff now that has 13,000+ downloads here, and over 25,000 total downloads at the various sites they've been available. That's a LOT of downloads for one character set. I have ONE restriction in that package, aside from the usual "don't sell or repost them without asking". That restriction is simple: NO hard core pornographic imagery or animations etc done with them for posting. Softcore, centerfolds, nude studies, do commercial renders with them... no problems. But no hardcore or bondage or torture mutilation stuff, please. Why? Simple... I learned poser making those characters. I learned morph design doing the faces and the body sculpting on them. I spent almost a year learning the ins and outs of poser 4, magnets, fitting clothing to non standard figures, and matching textures to a character on them. When I was finally happy enough with it to move on, I decided to post them for other people to enjoy. They're not the best mayhaps - definately not the best I can do NOW - but they were the best I had to offer at the time. Any writer in the crowd is going to understand what I'm saying here: you sink that much time and effort into a character, and it becomes a part of you. Doesn't matter if you can do better later, that character is still a part of you with it's own personality and quirks, just like Lee Alverson's Ionne or his twin probably are to him. Hence the one restriction - it may sound silly, but it'd be like giving someone a lisence for abusing my kid to not put that restriction there. But it doesn't sound silly to me. My work, my right to do so. And anyone who knows me respects that choice, anyone who doesn't I don't care about. Dunno. I'm seeing a recurring theme in every example I come up with. Simple courtesy. If it's their work, and they choose to put the restriction on it, well... it's their work and it's simple courtesy for me to respect it. And it just doesn't cost that much to respect someone elses boundaries. shrug The stores are filled with items that can be used without commercial render clauses. And if I have a client that I need to do a render for, as a proffessional, I can ask someone to design an item if needs be and pay for it, and charge that back to the client. That's the way the business works, and clients who are worth working for expect to have tools and materials factored into the cost of the work - they generally understand that a freelance artist is also a business person. If I need a fantasy gown for a project and there's not one available, I can set my fee to cover than and sub contract Styxx to make me one. That's the way graphics studios do business. Freestuff on the other hand is a labor of love, ultimately, and generosity. And it's NOT a "free" one - bandwidth costs money. Hosting items for downloads cost money. Websites cost money. Someone who posts freebies for us to download is generally PAYING for the priveledge of sharing their work, and the dubious priveledge of having people complain about the lisencing agreements. The fact that some poeple like Traveler, April, Helen, Snow, FastTraxx, Nikita, Caligula and many, many, many others continue to eat the cost for giving away things just because they enjoy it inclines me to do a lot of things, but bitching if they put in a restriction isn't one of them. Ya'll can suit yerselves, natch.

"I am a good person now and it feels... well, pretty much the same as I felt before (except that the headaches have gone away now that I'm not wearing control top pantyhose on my head anymore)"

• Monkeysmell