infinity10 posted at 12:48PM Wed, 11 May 2016 - #4268747

Far as I have gleaned from various reports and news articles about fan art, it really isn't legally kosher, but no one can initiate legal action except the copyright or IP owner ( creator / company / estate of creator / etc ).

I'm not sure what you mean by "legally kosher" since IP holders usually hire lawyers to handle the search and takedown business.

I asked the lawyers if they would go back to Gary Larson/ FarWorks and see if he would approve of my images or let me pay for a license to display my artwork, but they said he said no. Maybe I could go around the lawyers and try to contact him directly or maybe he'd just tell me to go through his lawyers.

wolf359 posted at 12:52PM Wed, 11 May 2016 - #4268772

Now I am certain the OP of this thread is not using Farside art with intention of directly benefiting financially.

No, I would never sell any of The Far Side images that I made. Even when I sold my artwork at art shows, I never printed or displayed any of these images- not even in a portfolio book. However, you have a good point about "branding". Back when I started making the images, I got the reputation of being the guy who makes Far Side images. I have no real way of knowing whether this was good or bad or whether it made me more popular. But I've also made plenty of original images, so it's not like these were the only ones that I made.

The other issue is that stars and celebrities have publicity laws in their favor. Basically this means people can't create merchandise with their likeness, including digital models, without their permission. Though many people get around this by either altering the likeness slightly or changing the name. (Or in the case of DAZ's Anna Maria Goddard digital model, they got full cooperation and license from the real person.) Plus, it depends on how well the site enforces the rule: TurboSquid doesn't seem to care, but Renderosity may be more picky. Also, publicity laws don't apply to public figures: this is why it was not legal to sell merchandise of the actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, but it was okay to sell merchandise of California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

It sounds like you're trying to transfer morphs to a clothing model when the program wasn't really designed for that, which could be why you're getting the error message about selecting a unimesh figure. Can I ask why you're using a clothing converter to add morphs to clothing? You might be better off using Morphing Clothes. I use it all the time and it's great for copying morphs from V4.2 to the clothing. Of course, the bigger issue is: which V4 clothing doesn't come with the morphs?

I just wanted to let everyone know that MegaCon has been great so far.

Our panel talk on video games and digital artwork went very well. There were over 250 people in the room- in fact, people were standing against the side and rear walls.
We talked about past game development on an Apple II, then making artwork on the Apple IIGS, then modern-day game development of making models in Lightwave, rigging it in Poser Pro Game Dev, exporting to fbx format, and then bringing the model into Unity.
We then answered some questions from the audience- one lady asked if it was better to learn more skills and have a broad knowledge or concentrate on being an expert in one skill.

One of the fun things that happened is that we met a lady cosplaying as Padme Amidala from "Star Wars: Episode II- Attack of the Clones". She even helped us pass out flyers to people as they came into the room!

The convention itself was full of people in costume. We saw tons of "Doctor Who", "Star Wars", and even some huge Mech Warrior style outfits that people made themselves!

I just wanted to let everyone know about a change in the schedule: our Indie Game Party at the Player One Video Game bar will be on Wednesday, April 8th, not Thursday, April 9th. It will start at the same time: 700 pm.

I have another update: the Schedule of Events (PDF) has been posted!

My panel is the Video Games and Game Development Panel and it'll be in Room 206A, on Friday, April 10th, from 1:00pm-1:50pm.

I also wanted to let everyone know that my friend and I will be hosting a party the night before MegaCon: the 2015 Orlando Indie Game Fest - MegaCon Video Game Party. Anyone interested in showing portfolios, games, or demos are welcome to get involved. This is a great chance to network with other people.

The event will be held at the Player 1 Video Game Bar, in Lake Buena Vista, located around the corner from Walt Disney World.
There's no additional fee for the party other than the cover charge that the location may charge.
Since the location is at a bar that serves alcohol, the party is for ages 21 and up... but please feel free to bring your kids to MegaCon.

More details and an RSVP form can be found on the Limn Interactive website: http://limninteractive.com/wdp/?page_id=5

Any chance that any of this will be streamed or that vids will be available?

That's a good question. I don't know yet, but I'll check and see. I have the feeling that it won't be streamed outside of the convention since the organizers may only want attendees to have access.

Thanks for the advice. I'm still in the process of copying files to another drive, so I don't think I'll need to freeze anything.

I'm not able to copy some files and I get an error message saying "I/O error", but I'm able to copy most of the stuff that I need. I'll probably have to re-download some files, but it's not looking too bad.

The only pain is when I try to copy files within folders withing folders: Explorer just freezes instead of giving an I/O error and I have unplug the drive. If I go down a subfolder and copy the files, Windows give me the I/O error and I'm able to skip the file and keep copying.

I ran a defrag and it stopped at 48% and the drive started making the clicking/ spinning noise again.

I'm pretty sure the drive is a goner. :(

Yes, I know drives are cheap, but I use this drive for product zip files, downloaded videos, Poser scene files, and Photoshop versions of my artwork.

I've started copying my data to my back up drive, but there are some files that won't copy: the drive just spins and if I wait long enough, I get an error saying Windows can't read from the drive. It's a little strange to see which files I'm losing: an episode of Doctor Who that I downloaded (but the other 12 episodes were fine), some older zip files of sales images, and a 3ds product zip file.

I'm able to copy other video files and large zip files just fine, so I'm not sure if the bad files were too fragmented or if they just happened to be on the drive's bad sectors.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Here's the latest update: I still have my old desktop computer running Windows XP, so I decided to plug the drive into it to see what would happen. (I switched to a Windows 7, 64 bit laptop back in 2011.) The other difference is that I use a firewire connection to my desktop, but a USB 2 to connect to the laptop.

Everything seems to work fine! I was able to copy some large files from the drive to another external backup drive without any problems. I ran chkdsk and it ran at normal speed, though a tad slow since my desktop computer is slower.

Now I'm suspecting there's something wrong with the USB port on the hard drive. It's odd that I've been using it for a few years, but it's only started making noises yesterday.

But, I'll try running a defrag and then plugging it back into my laptop to see what happenes. Luckily, my backup drive has enough space if I need to copy the files to it.

And what's the difference between the chkdsk in the link you posted and Windows' chkdsk?

It looks like that chess game is going to end very badly.

My thoughts:

First, I agree 100% with TG: just because people say they want something doesn't mean they'll buy. Case in point: would dphoadley purchase that hair that he keeps posting images of? Or will he complain that the $10 price is too expensive?
I don't mean to pick on him specifically, but this seems to be the number one excuse from requesters: they want a certain, specific item, but then don't want to pay for it when a merchant makes it. Well, if customers aren't going to buy what they request, why should merchants make things on request in the first place?

Second, the complaint about merchants using "!!" in their folder name is an old one and it's been brought up many times. By this point, I'm surprised that we're not seeing folder names with 30 exclamation points. After all, the merchant has to force his folder to the top of the library somehow. :rolleyes:

Poser has supported nested folders since version 5, so there's no need to name every folder "Add On for John's Product By John": just create a folder with your name, then put a folder beneath it with the product's name. I know it may sound shocking, but customers will prefer a standard naming scheme better than randomly searching for a folder.

Third, the biggest issue of all: you say you want a moratorium on skirts and other clothing? That would be fine, but how do you stop the customers from buying? In my opinion, the only way to change what the merchants are making is to change the market: when customers stop buying V4 clothing, merchants will learn there's no money to be made, so they'll stop making those kinds of products.

As another 10 years veteran (I joined in March 2000), I'm favor for a 10 year mark or icon. How about a mini-banner under our avatar picture?

Attached Link: Mozilla Add-Ons

For the best protection when using Firefox, I recommend the following:
-AdBlock Plus: blocks all the advertisements on a site. You can set the options to temporarily allow a site or whitelist it.

-FlashBlock: blocks all the Flash plug-ins on a site. Very helpful for sites like Yahoo which use annoying, flashing banner ads to advertise semi-shady mortgage sites. The downside is that you have to whitelist every site where you do want Flash to run, such as YouTube.

-NoScript: blocks all JavaScript from running on a page, including redirects and other bad code. Like FlashBlock, the minor downside is that you have to whitelist the good sites, such as Renderosity, DAZ, Amazon, YouTube, etc. However, if you hit any sites that are suspicious, the NoScript automatically blocks any scripts.

I not only recommend these add-ons, but I use them myself.

P.S. Some people report that web pages load faster with these add-ons since these annoyances don't have to be loaded or displayed.