Look at this thread where both Kupa (President CL) and and Dan Farr (President Daz) seem to be giving the green light to allow commercial sales of 3rd party derivitive meshes based on the Judy and Don figures in P5 so long as they are encoded to those figures. We are still awaiting a final yes from Kupa, but it seems from what he has already stated that this will be forthcoming. To any Mods reading this thread it might be an idea to eventually store Kupa's and Dan Farr's answers in the Poser Forum Resources area for future reference. http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=876200 (The answers from Dan and Steve are towards the end of the thread.) Regards STORM

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=876200

not that i even have p5, but how would one distribute these meshes? explain 4 me, and any1 else whos not into the "poser lingo", lol..... im just asking cuz im so danged nosey.......

You would use a program like "Objaction Mover" that saves the differences to the original mesh. The end-user would have to already have the original mesh for it to work.

The reason for this may be that when you create a figure in the face room the head gets embedded in the CR2 and when it's saved to the library a new OBJ file is created in the folder with it.

To distribute this new figure, encode it's OBJ in Mover and use the original figure OBJ as the seed.

-Jeff

You could use RTEncoder as well since it will actually natively encode the obj and cr2 files based on the figure's original file as a seed :) Tom

Any character made with the face room has to be encoded with Mover, we cannot distribute the cr2 and it's .obj (the one that the face room generates)? I understood that .obj to be more like a morph target and didn't expect it would need to be encoded. Somone who didn't have Poser 5 and Judy couldn't use it could they? I have just finished a Judy character so I need to know how to go about it...

I believe you can distribute the morph target that is created in the face room with no problem. The question here was new mesh using the existing head. It works exactly how Vicky characters are distributed. There hasn't been any change.

Yes, if you provide the unprotected OBJ they can use it in P4 without owning P5.

please try to keep the copyright owners straight. curious labs can tell you if you can make derivative meshes and yadda yadda yadda. i expect it will be 'business as usual.' if daz says you can make distributable don and judy stuff, that doesn't have any clout. ;)

Not to be redundant but I'm just making sure, cr2 and morph targets for Judy are ok if they do NOT have that extra face room .obj in the cr2 folder? Straight cr2 files can be distributed as usual?

I think so, but you should test to be sure. Save the figure to the library and call it "test".

If you find a "test.obj" in that folder with it you'll know that CR2 points to that OBJ and will not work with the standard version without that OBJ.

Well what I did was export the face room base as an .obj morph, then applied that to a clean Judy .cr2 which worked fine, I then moved my custom morphs over using Morph manager. So now there is no .obj file, only a cr2 with morphs. So that's ok to distribute?

Yes, AFAIK.

This discussion comes back every few months, and no doubt will again! Here is my two cents: If YOU needed "Company A"s "mesh B" to create "YOUR mesh C", then you are safe if you sell your mesh (C) in a form that CAN'T BE USED by anyone who doesn't have "B". So, if what you mean by "a cr2 with morphs", is a cr2 that depends on Judy's OBJ file, then you are probably safe - though even then, it would be best to either ask Curious Labs' permission, or to use a utility that encodes YOUR cr2 versus the original CR2. -- "Toolmaker" Steve S.

(continued) Just for completeness: CR2 files ought to be less controversial than independent morph target files, because a CR2 contains morphs as "target geometry", stored as DELTAS in the CR2, that rely on the original OBJ geometry. Whereas when a morph target is saved by itself, the result is an OBJ file that can be read in any other 3D modeling package - so a morph target file should always be encoded versus the original OBJ file. But even with a CR2 file, to be safe you should either: * remove all morphs that aren't yours [requiring the customer to transfer any of the original morphs that they need, using MorphManager], * or encode the CR2 file versus the original CR2 file, * or get the original vendor's written permission. -- "Toolmaker" Steve S.

(still more) Since every time this topic comes up, some people are nervous that CL or DAZ could make derivative activities illegal some day: If you don't include any copyrighted information, then you are not in violation of copyright law. There is nothing any vendor can do to stop derivative works that don't include any copyrighted information. (That would be "restraint of trade".) The rest is all details. Conversely, if you are including copyrighted information, then you are probably doing wrong, however inadvertently. The reason: utilities can extract that copyrighted information in a useful form. Tailor vis-a-vis transferring morphs to clothing is a prime example of that. Bottom line: encode your file(s) versus the original(s) using some utility. Then the original vendor has no legal basis for complaint. -- "Toolmaker" Steve S.

For the benefit of anyone else looking at this thread, this is a new question, because Poser 5 differs from Poser 4 in this way- Poser 5 creates a new .obj in the libraries> character folder, when you use the face room and save as a cr2. Poser 4 didn't do that. So Jeff has cleared it up but it's not just the same old question. CR2 format is encoded enough to make CL happy, if I understrand things, you have to have Judy to use my new cr2. If I had included the .obj that the face room generated then the cr2 could be used in Poser 4 without Judy, which would be ungood. The original question in this thread about increasing the resolution of the mesh is a good one too. Encoding is always safe though. I look forward to the character if you get it done STORM :).

STORM, I apologize if I seemed to be saying that your original question was repeating a "same old question" - I was reacting to the broader issues that some responses raised. Thank you for clarifying the "new situation" in Poser 5 that raises your question. I'm sure that's what everyone wants to know: what are the situations that might get me in trouble, and how do I avoid them :-) -- "Toolmaker" Steve S.

No need to apologise ssshaw, this is a confusing and difficult time for everyone. We are still waiting for a reply from Kupa to clarify and finalise the matter although he is up to eyes this week and he may be holding off until the CL lawyers give him advice on the P5 EULA in general. Without creating further controversy can I clarify my original question in a slightly different context, as there seems to be some general confusion in some of the threads both here and elsewhere. In P4 Zygote (subsequently Daz), licensed the figures to Metacreations (subsequently CL). We were allowed to create derivative figures for free or for sale so long as the new products were encoded to the P4 figures in P4 so that they could only be used by people who owned P4 and not by the 3D market in general. Without this right figures like Eve - with new higher res hip geometry by Torino - could not have ever been created for and distributed to the community. The importance and benefit of this policy resulted ultimately in the development of the Millenium figures by Daz as we know them. A long time ago, when Victoria 1 was being launched, Chad Smith (Daz) openly stated in these forums that Daz were strongly influenced by Torino's work which not only added new geometry to Posette but grouped the figure in the way that all millennium figures (Mike, Vicky and Steph) subsequently adopted (I started that infamous thread at the time and I still have a copy of it ;0) !). This superb experimental work by Torino and his largesse in giving it to the community would not have been possible without the freedom to create and distribute derivative meshes. That freedom is a very important right and commodity to the Poser user community, it has resulted in major advancement in figure creation and thus clarification of the continuation of that right and policy in P5 is an item of great importance. Others and I feel very strongly about this right and I intend to pursue it until I get clear and comprehensive answers for the benefit of all. In the thread, linked to above, Dan Farr, when asked about Dazs views on distribution (for free or for sale) of derivative figures based on the Judy and Don meshes so long as they are encoded to Judy and Don, said: Yes, you are correct. Doing something like you suggested creates no problems as far as DAZ is concerned. You still may want to talk with Kupa to make sure that they are o.k. with it as well. That is great as it means Daz are sticking to the original policy. Don and Judy are based on the P4 figures owned by Daz. Don and Judy are in fact derivatives created from those figures by Runtime DNA for CL. Now Kupa when asked about the policy stated: The same rights you have with the licensed meshes in Poser 4 exists with Don and Judy in Poser 5. The license agreement is between Metacreations and their successor (Curious Labs) and Zygote and their successor (DAZ). It's wouldn't be appropriate for me to disclose the full detail of license. But the license does specifically allow users to create derivatives. Bottomline, none of the licensing of this content has changed, and as such you are able to use and distribute the content the same way you were in Poser 4. On the face of it, it would seem that the policy (from CLs point of view) continues as regards Don and Judy. However, when I pursued the question further as regards selling or distributing a high-res mesh derived from Judy with extra detailing geometry included in the mesh, Kupa replied: That's a difficult question to answer. Remember the various statements and position on the hands of the Amy character? While it didn't create significant issues for us at CL, it became an issue elsewhere. The above reply has me worried. The Amy issue is not really relevant, as Amy was a new figure being sold to Poser and non-Poser users which had Posettes hands included in the mesh. Had Amy been encoded to the P4 Female it could have been sold with no problem at all, as it would have fallen under the derivative concession. Kupa also said he did not want to disclose the details of the licence agreement between CL and Daz. No problem there, however, Dan Farr said to Kupa in the thread that he would have no problem with Cl disclosing this. We have no concerns with you discussing or explaining any of the terms of the Meta-Zygote agreement publicly to help explain proper usage of the models. I think that there are more people interested in this topic than just Storm. I would suggest that section 3.2 has a very clear definition of the proper usage. It might be an idea for Daz and CL to publish this and for CL to clarify the situation as regards the Don and Judy derivatives. What worries me is that it appears that there is some remaining doubt about CLs position on free and commercial distribution of derivatives of the Don and Judy figures. One could take Kupas initial statement of the situation as the final one, but his second statement seems to suggest it is not. This needs to be cleared up and clarified so that all of us can proceed without worry in our usage of the P5 figures. Sorry for the long long reply but it is an important issue in my view Regards STORM

Clarification: When I asked Kupa about this it was clear in the initial thread that I was talking about a derivitive figure ENCODED to the Don and Judy meshes and not an Amy type un-encoded figure. I did not make this clear in my above post. "On the face of it, it would seem that the policy (from CLs point of view) continues as regards Don and Judy. However, when I pursued the question further as regards selling or distributing a (INSERT "ENCODED") high-res mesh derived from Judy with extra detailing geometry included in the mesh, Kupa replied: That's a difficult question to answer. Remember the various statements and position on the hands of the Amy character? While it didn't create significant issues for us at CL, it became an issue elsewhere. STORM