Here is the thing, the moment you create your unique item/clothing using anything like Shrink Wrap or Extract in a 3D modelling app, It is considered to be derivative. The moment you use auto- transfer tools to transfer rigging or morphs, it is considered to be derivative. The Daz 3D EULA provides conditions for distributing or selling derivative content as stated above. The licence owner can also at any time request the derivative content be removed from distribution as in the conditions stated above.

This kind of licensing isn't unusual for rigged figures lets take Project Evolution for example, these are the licence terms for Project E. Copyright (c) 2018 erogenesis. All rights reserved. Not intended for redistribution.

I can only go by what I believe to be true, and I really don't think Daz is legally able to call a piece of clothing for a derivative assuming that they for whatever reason chose to go to court, what they might do is to refuse to sell such item solely because they judge it to be one, but I think this is more like a "we can refuse to sell any item if we want", rather than having an actual legal right.

All objects PE, V4 etc. have basic copyright laws as far as I understand it so PE and Hirewire can say that they do not want anyone to share their design, but everyone have that right, regardless of what they write. The issue as I see it, is that we are talking about a human shape, rather than a complete design so if you removed the head of PE, V4 or Genesis and someone make a piece of cloth that happens to fit any of them, you would in theory have made a derivative of that character, keep in mind that cloth doesn't have to be skin tight, it could be a dress etc.

As said before, i can fully understand that you can not copy features such as morphs etc from Genesis to your own character and distribute it as your own.

The clothng won't fit V4 unless it's being worn by V4 or some character that was based on V4. The rigging in a piece of clothing has to match the rigging in the figure that it's intended to be used on. (IE, copy/paste the rigging directly). It's not just a matter of naming the various body parts and bones the same. The joint parameters have to be the same as well, and each joint parameter has its own host of values unique to that particular joint in that particular figure. Those values exist in a file that is interpreted by the software. In fact they are bits of software code themselves, and software code is vary much protected by IP laws.

Assuming that you only talk about conforming cloth, you can easily make dynamic cloth to fit several characters. And im really in doubt about the rigging, because I do agree that its data, well its as much data as the mesh of a character is. But humans as all other animals are in general very similar in shape and functionality, that you are working within very limited option compared to how many 3d humans are being created every day, which pretty much all use a somewhat similar setup. Remember that Genesis and all those characters are not new to this, they copied the basic rigging setup and technique from somewhere else.

So it would seem that Daz 3D's Eula is actually more detailed and allows more freedom to creators then many others do in their licensing agreements. So I am not sure why it specifically is being scoffed at here?

There is nothing wrong with Daz or their Eula, it just happens to be the one in question as it started with a discussion about V4 and whether SM should buy it, and since Daz owns her, it went on to whether Daz legally could claim that any character that would automatically fit any clothing items made for one of their characters would legally be able to say that it violate their IP for that character. So, at least from my point of view there are no bad feeling or anything wrong with Daz or their Eula, but its interesting to know exactly what a violation of IP involves when talking 3D characters.

Wolf my understanding was that you were attempting to distribute a derivative figure under a new open source licence no? There was no issue with the mesh itself, it was to do with the use of the auto-transfer tool to transfer IP from a Genesis character to your owh dev mesh and then distribute it under an open source licence, as you describe here

I think you are correct, that you are not allowed to do that, because in that case you could do that with any morphs, you would have to make them from scratch or release the mesh without the morphs and simply tell people how to use Daz3D to transfer them unto your mesh, which would be fine as far as I understand it.

Before wasting some attorney's time please throughly read the DAZ EULA ,that you Defacto Agreed to, when you installed any Daz figure on your computer.

To be fair ,Daz never claimed I could not use MY base clothing dev meshes or even give them away free to people.

Only that by surrounding the Shape of the genesis Models with my geometry My models then became "subject to the Daz EULA" which apparently forbids the Open source distribution that I was attempting. Silly, far reaching and questionable ??..yes

No actual harm to me , I still make my own custom ,one off clothing and morphs for genesis and use them in paid commercial animation projects.

I read through the Eula and found this: Which I guess the person you spoke to might have referred to from the Terms of use section (This is just part of it):

...provided that User may not in any case publish, market, distribute, transfer, sell or sublicense any renderings, animations, software applications, data or any other product from which any Content, or any part thereof, or any substantially similar version of the Content can be separately exported, extracted or de-compiled into any re-distributable form or format.

However that was not what you did, based on your model. Right after this they state the following:

Three Dimensional Works. DAZ wishes to encourage the expansion of the catalog of Content available to its users. Accordingly, User may access, use, copy, and modify the Content to create one or more derived or additional three-dimensional works provided that:

• any such derived or additional three-dimensional works are designed to require or encourage the use of Content available through the online DAZ store either by (i) requiring the use of such Content to function, or (ii) allowing only limited function when not used in conjunction with Content from the online DAZ store; and

• upon receipt of a written request from DAZ, User will immediately cease any and all distribution of the derived or additional three-dimensional works User has created from the Content, if DAZ has determined, in its sole discretion, that (i) such additional or derived work is substantially similar to or is a clone of existing Content; or (ii) such additional or derived work fails to require or encourage the use of Content available through the online DAZ store as described above.

Which to me seems to pretty much say that you CAN use the mesh if you want to create a new one, as long as you do not keep part of the original mesh. So basically I would understand it as you can use the rig of V4 and the mesh as a starting point, you just have to make sure that you modify her. I can't find anything saying anything regarding props (clothing) having any relation to whether or not you would break the Eula.

To be fair ,Daz never claimed I could not use MY base clothing dev meshes or even give them away free to people.

Im not really sure that I follow you, you wrote in the former post:

..here is a tiny excerpt from the mutiple emails Daz sent threatening me with legal action over MY OWN Original Model:

I assume from what you wrote here, that Daz didn't really liked what you were doing, since they would threaten you with legal actions? It seems very confusing, like the person at Daz didn't know their own Eula, as there is nothing wrong with your mesh, its not even an extraction of V4, its completely different which is fine based on the Eula, regardless of it fitting or not fitting V4.

Eulas are not considered legally binding, at least where I live, so the Daz Eula is worth squat

Yeah its not easy to figure out, it seems to differ from place to place and how the court views it or something, from what I could figure out. And it apparently works a little differently in US than in EU (Where im from)

I decided to send this as a question to a group of lawyers, which should reply within 12 hours whether its legal or not :D

DAZ :"The fact that you modelled the meshes to fit around the Daz figures means that they derive from the Daz figures, and so are subject to the Daz EULA."

Welcome to the Delusional world of Daz3D ?

That's hilarious :D

I have to say that I doubt that such claim would hold up in court and sounds more like a scare tactic made by someone that think they have the right to do something that they ain't legally allow to do. I mean what would they do if someone accidentally figured out that one Dreamworks clothing items for a movie fitted V4, would they threaten them as well? I would like to see that :D

The artist owns the mesh that makes the clothing, but in order for that clothing to function on V4, it requires V4's rigging (and shape), and DAZ owns V4's rigging (and shape). They allow that rigging to be used to make content for V4

There might be is some legal rights if you copy/paste the rigging directly, and that i would say is a HUGE maybe only and would like to see or hear from a lawyer that actually know if that is true or not, because I find it hard to believe. I mean Daz don't have any legal right in calling their bones hip, chest etc. Every 3D human character is build on the principal that the rig is suppose to mirror that of a human being, animal or whatever. I can only imagine Disney and Dreamworks having to invent fictional bones because they are scared of Daz :D

And what about Dynamic cloth? it have no rigging, yet you can model it as a catsuit if you want, so I guess they can legally claim that as well them? And what if its a loose dress that fits V4 and some of the other characters around, then you are really in trouble. :D

To me it sounds insane, seriously deluded if they can get away with that or if people take it seriously. In regards to your mesh Wolf359 it could probably fit several characters with only minor changes.

Mobster that sounds very logical but I guess DAZ (like many US-companys e.g. IBM, Oracle, ...) rely more on these two historical statements:

britain rules the waves but america waives the rules (from america cup historie) pacta sund servanda (latin from very long ago) Second one is unknow e.g. to Donald Trump. I guess he had not have latin in school ...

Both together means US is a land of lawyer and even if something sounds logical it needs not to be successful in law suits ... I would not try to discuss law things with companies able to pay dozends of lawyers even if I'm sure to be on the right side. Very very sad but true ... so no actualized V4 although the girl is it worth and the invests into all these content would be a very honest argument.

But there is a difference between what companies "feel" is right and what they can actually do. Because if you think about it, what Wolf359 is suggesting, if its true, and this is what they claim. Daz have claimed a specific human body shape as their IP, I mean we are not taking about V4 face or design as such, but if any character fits any cloth that would fit V4, then they would be able to claim that someone had violated their IP. US or not, I really have a hard time believing that such thing would be possible, because we will run out of human shapes very fast then. Because I guess this would be the same for any character, so any Genesis character, PE could do the same, SM with theirs etc. I think someone might have misunderstand what Daz is talking about legally here. Disney can and does protect Mickey mouse as a design for example, but they can not prevent anyone from ever creating a character which is a mouse at same basic shape, if it looks different. So as long as you don't directly rip off their design there would be no problem. V4 rig is not unique either, loads of characters use that or something similar, so it need to be in regards to her complete design if you ask me. Meaning that you copy/paste her looks and everything.

Any new figure that automatically uses V4 clothing violate DAZ's IP. and Daz will never sell that IP to Anyone as Eclarke Pointed out.

Are you sure that is correct, possible or even legal? Because the cloth that is made is not owned by Daz but by the creator. In theory I could create a dress for Character X that I made, which happens to also fit on V4, it sounds weird if they would or even could sue me for having made Character X, without clearly being able to proof that my mesh were made on V4 or copied from her and even then Im not sure they could do it. Daz own the right for V4, but you can't claim a mesh only the design? Because what would prevent me for doing the same on a specific size box and say that no one else can use my box "character" called Boxer and if any cloth fits him it would violate my IP, it sounds a bit dodgy to me, if that is true. :D

Also you have to remember that V4 comes with a lot of morphs, so if the cloth fits any of these is it then the same?

I agree that they should make a new character a bit more advance than V4 rather than remaking her. Not saying that she have run her cause, because that is simply not true, but as I have said before it depends what you need from a character.

And I don't really follow your point:

V4 smiles are butt ugly, because she suffers from the DAZ-smile desease. Her upperlips don't strech when she smiles. We have the same V4 renders over and over in all galleries for 12 !!! years now. Move on, please.! Here I recreated a V4 gallery nightmare: [ugly Render.png]

Nothing prevent you from creating a morph to deal with that, if you think its a problem, in fact as seen from the demonstration of that comic book, cant remember what its called now, you can completely change her to whatever you need. And what you are using as an example can be said with any character doesn't matter if its V4 or someone else. You will always be able to find things about them that might not be good or what you are after for a given character.

That people render her in such images that you use as an example, have nothing to do with her as a character. I think its a sort of narrow minded view, because what makes a good image or not, is not only the character, but composition, light & shadow, expression, mood etc. So even if you used a genesis character it would make no difference to whether an image is appealing to you or not. Now I would agree that if you take a character of very low quality it might ruin the image, if it doesn't match the rest of quality because it stands out to much. But V4 is no where near that in my opinion.

What it comes down to as I see it is actually a discussion of what is interesting art and what is not. Which is a personal taste, to me it comes down to primarily two things, technical and creativity. By technical I mean someone trying to do something for a given reason which is not especially to be creative or make something that have to mean a lot, but purely to test or show off technique. And then you have the creative part where you attempt to make your media be interesting and meaningful in whatever way. Which is what people that are referred to as artists do. Which could be modern art, people doing all thoughts of crazy things and call them art.

And to me an image like you posted above is not very interesting, but might be more of an technical thing for a person at given point. Like for instant in your image it might be that you were trying to match the background image with the character or something and it were your first attempt. Personally I would upload such image, because I think its to little if that were a technical test and I wouldn't upload it as "art" either, because I wouldn't know what the image were suppose to express. So I can see what you mean with your example. But again I think you are wrong blaming it on V4 or any other character, rather than your view on what you think people should upload as interesting art.

I don't know that song either but its quite different than Iron maidens, But impressive enough you actually guessed it, had you just thrown that one out :D

Maybe its not the best known song :), But it was suppose to be Fear of the dark by Iron maiden. The thoughts behind the image were that the child as most children is afraid of the dark, so she is sitting by the light holding her teddy bear, because she is scared, The hands is just to illustrate her imagination of all those creepy things that they think lurks in the darkness.

However have to say that I really like Daddy girl a lot more, that is an amazing song, very disturbing and dark. Must have heard it 20 times already and is now part of my playlist, so thanks for that :D

You have to remove the nodes from alternate_specular in Eyesurface, if you still have problems you can remove the scatter from the Iris alternate diffuse

That should fix it.

Thanks :) I have to admit that I didn't know that song, but after having heard it, I have to say its a really good guess and can definitely see that it could work for that one as well. But it weren't the one I was thinking off. :D

Some clues that are important:

1. It's the title of the song im after

2. Her emotion

3. That the image is black and white and not in colors is also important

Here is one, which in my opinion must be among the top 10 best songs ever made :D

There is no way to do what you want without doing some workaround. But I do agree that being able to set an initial starting frame would be very handy.

I have to say that either you have a fast computer or are very patience using that many frames for a cloth simulation :D You have to remember that (Frames / FPS = seconds) So using 200 frames for the cloth to settle is almost 7 seconds at 30 FPS, anyway just wanted to let you know, in case you weren't sure how to calculate it, but that might be what you need.

But to make it start at frame 200, you have to do the following.

1. Simulate the first 200 frames.
2. When its done, export the cloth as OBJ at frame 200 (Single frame)
3. Make sure that your character is fully keyed at frame 200 and shift the frames so the frames at 200 is now on frame 1 so its the new start position.
4. Import the cloth you exported in step 2 and copy the material from the old one to the imported one, and delete the old cloth.
5. Setup the cloth simulation again using the imported cloth.

As far as I know its the only way to do it.

Can you replicate it? what happens if you throw the displacement map on a highres poser sphere, does it do the same?