The Drone Trooper was first conceived as a replacement for human infantry. Outer system planetary incursions needed more troops, but mankind had lost its taste for war. Recognizing that conflict would forever be a part of survival, Drone Trooper units were produced in vast quantities. While primarily ground based, the need for limited aerial capability was quickly addressed with the release of the jump pack. It locks on with the standard Y-H brace to the back of the trooper, the onboard navigational computer interfaces with the trooper's motion control system and allows full integration.

The jump pack takes on a standard power cell with an operational usage period ranging from 800 to 1,200 hours. It allows sustained bursts of up to maximum of five minutes, capable of reaching top speeds of up to 120 kt (222 km/h).

Please do feel free to leave any comments or suggestions to help improve this pack before it is released. This is an untextured render, stonemason will be retexturing this mesh and rigging it for Poser. Thank you very much for taking the time to view this.

Cheers! MMessage edited on: 07/03/2004 06:54

Message edited on: 07/03/2004 06:58

thats so awesome Moe, now i really can't wait for the drone trooper to come out

Love the "grubby" apearance, please keep both textures, clean and grubby.

Cheers Phily :) So far we have planned an olive green one,an urban camo,a desert toned one(similar to moe's original texture) a darker blue Police style,and a couple others,some of these textures will have to be freebie's as the pack is getting pretty big,especially with all the accessories we have planned. The Jump Pack is very cool:)..just been looking it over in Poser. -Stef

I gotta vote for grubby and clean versions whenever possible or feasible. Those in the image look great!

WOW! Many thanks Stef

Love the drone model and the dirty textures!! Awesome work!

I noticed you have a clear focus on just one Drone, the only one that turned to face the viewer. All the other Drones are in shadow, or sublely out of focus. You really know how to put together a image. :O)

Oooh, very nice. That twin-engine design reminds me more than a bit of the Rocketeer's jetpack.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm very displeased that there are no rocket packs in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

sigh, I wish I had a fraction of your creativity... very nice :)

RE:MedBay and CyberSeat and Drone Trooper I have a question. I do commerical work. Since "Dystopia" appears as part of the texture, What happens when the Copyrighted name of "Dystopia", appears on a cover that is copyrighted by someone else? Stephan and Moebius87 also appears. It sounds like a copyright nightmare. CyberSeat is fixable, (I think), because the lettering is small. MedBay has the text in important parts of the texture. I may have to request a refund. Are there Dystopia references in/on the "Containment Chamber"? Are the "Drone Troopers" going to have Dystopia references? Please reply, it is very important to me. Understand this is no reflection on the high quality of your work, it is just a "CopyRight" problem.

OMG- when when when?? And, where where where?? Here, or DAZ?? This looks so amazing!!

Hi Phily, I'd like to think there's no problem using the models that have any Dystopia reference in the textures.The copyright issue is more for people who would re-sell the textures,or use the term 'Dystopia' to make a profit. Moe is out of town till later this week so I'll wait for him to give you a definitive answer though.(Dystopia is his concept & creation) I put the word 'Dystopia' in alot of my projects with Moe simply trying to expand on the universe,it also helps in coming up with concepts if your defined by a certain environment & theme. The medbay has references to Daz productions aswell & my 'Display room' has references to all sorts of things..some political views are expressed in the display screens aswell as the merits of copious amounts of coffee :o)I tend to write whatever pops in my mind when making these textures,lol After a quick check,there are no references to it in the 'Chamber' The Drone Troopers will more than likely have Dystopia references on most(not all) textures,these are 'Dystopian Drone troopers' after all :) I'll get Moe to give a more in-depth answer on Dystopia soon. Cheers -Stefan

Wow! This looks amazing! Stef, that trooper render is fantastic! Perfect lighting and the detailed textures are incredible!

The "" Question...

Never really thought that one through, Philywebrider. Thank you for bringing this potential nightmare up so that we can discuss it.

In your commercial renders, my thoughts are that you should feel free to edit out any markings, signage or textual reference to "Dystopia" that would in any way compromise your own artistic or creative vision. The copyright of the final image should belong to the artist who created the image using our component parts that assisted in your artwork.

If you choose to retain "Dystopia" as part of your final image... I have absolutely no problems with that. It's free advertising for this growing series of environments, props and figures, so complaining about it would be furthest from my mind. :o) Many thanks in advance if you choose to do this.

As for any qualms about staying "true" to the vision of what the heck this "Dystopia" series is all about... don't worry about it there isn't one to worry about. It's a supportive background "universe" of sorts that should be as flexible as anything you want it to be. :o)

A tip of the hat would be most appreciated, specially when there might be some potential misunderstandings or some misrepresentations might arise. As with all credits, I personally don't feel that an artist needs to credit his tools. However, for any acknowledgements, we would be profusely grateful to the point where we would be insanely ecstatic.

I'd like to think that our little group of artists working together to help create "Dystopia" doesn't take itself too seriously. We are dedicated to creating quality stuff, but much more than the sales, it should be about all of us specially the customers enjoying what we do.

I hope that this has helped clarify my position on copyright without becoming needlessly confusing and all jumbled up in legalese. Please allow me to bring this thread to the attention of stonemason, Ajax and billy-home, before we collectively commit to a stand. :o)

Again, thank you very much for bringing this up.

Cheers! M
SUPREME CHANCELLOR OF DYSTOPIA (a.k.a "S.Ch.M") :oPMessage edited on: 07/07/2004 10:55

I'm with M on this one, I believe the copyright on these should be more of an intellectual thing, it'll basically stop people trying to cash in on the product thats M's concept, as someone once tried with M's free blocks, putting them up for sale on TurboSquid.

I believe it states in the read-me with all versions of the blocks that they can be used for both commercial and non-commercial use, and since the textures are also part of the collection, my thinking is they can also be used for commercial use, just not be sold on as someone elses work.

Like M said a tip of the hat would be nice, but not neccessary, we'de just be all smug and warm if we did get a bit of credit.

Cheers
Billy

Rear Everything Airborn Leader - Dystopia Airborn Flying Thingys (REAL-DAFT)

Message edited on: 07/07/2004 13:16

Moe, Billy, Stefan Understand that I understand That normally there would be no problem. As I said my only question was a third party copyrighting you Trademark name or Daz's, (as part of the covers). There is something else to consider, Stafan said; "The medbay has references to Daz productions aswell & my 'Display room' has references to all sorts of things..some political views are expressed in the display screens aswell as the merits of copious amounts of coffee :o)I tend to write whatever pops in my mind when making these textures,lol" These are fun to do but in commerical work. 'In Jokes', etc., can be a problem. What may seem funny to you may not be so funny to an art directer or the people who buy the book. These were the first items that I ever had to worry about. Remember the lion King? BTW Stefan said later it was "Daz" medical supplies, not DAZ Productions. I love the outstanding quality of your work. I'm sorry if I seem picky about the copyright and 'In Joke" thing, but there is a possiablty of 'problems'. Even if the current 'jokes' are OK, be careful about future ones. Maybe I'm just paranoid...I am looking forward to hearing from you.

I think it's important to remember the difference between copyright and trademarks. They aren't the same thing. "Dystopia" is a trademark and so is "DAZ" but one of the things about trademarks is that they don't apply universally. If sombody invented a drink tomorrow and wanted to call it "Dystopia", that would not infringe our trademark, nor would it be a problem if they wrote a series of books called the "Dystopia series". A problem would arise if they tried to sell a set of 3D models called Dystopia. This is because trademarking usually applies to products of a similar nature. For example, there's a car called Corona and a beer of the same name and there's no problem. There are some exceptions. Companies like Coke, McDonalds and Disney tend to be very agressive about protecting their tradmarks and you'd probably have trouble using those names on even very different products. Basically, if an uninformed observer could be reasonably expected to think the two products are related, there's a problem. I don't see how having the word "Dystopia" appear in the illustration on a book cover would infringe our trademark at all. It wouldn't be presented as part of the name of the book and even if it were, we don't have any intention of selling a set of Dystopia books, so we wouldn't take issue with it. Basically, as long as the book isn't trying to present itself as being part of our Dystopia range of products, there's no problem with the word Dystopia appearing on the cover. The issue of text in textures hasn't come up for us before and maybe that's something we need to discuss within the group so we can work out a future policy on it. However please feel safe and relaxed using the products in commercial illustration. There's no problem. As the artist, you hold copyright over the image, regardless of the words that may appear in it. If you sell that copyright to a publisher or author, they hold the copyright. We don't enter into it.

What Ajax said, plus, the copyright for any Dystopia stuff brokered by DAZ still remains with the artist/modeler, DAZ only own the copyright if they purchase a product outright from it's creator, so they don't have a say on how either the models or textures are used commercially on these products. I wouldn't mind seeing the final draft of the project your working on, (and I believe the other guys would also like to see the finished work too), if you're allowed to do this, I like to see how people use these products in their own work, makes it all worth while. I do understand your problem with this copyright/trademark thing, I make signs for a living, and I know only too well the problems of copyright and trademarks. Billy

I'm looking forward to getting your "Bar" for Dystopia, the promos look terrific!

Once the art is published I can send you a link to the publisher's site.

That would be much appreciated mate.

About the Drone Trooper - will it be possible to make the aiming reticle (the monocle in front of the eyeslit) invisible? It would add a little to the versatility of the character. It's a nice looking character. As far as the text references in the texture, would it be possible to just edit them out of the texture for that project? Most of the copyright restrictions on textures are meant to protect the origionator if you try to sell the texture. I don't think using a modified texture in a render is a violation, as long as you don't try to sell or give away the new texture. It would be a bit of extra work, but probably not much worse than the needed postwork on some of the older human figures. You could replace the text with something more appropriate to the client, or just clone/stamp over it with the paint color from somewhere else in the texture.

Katoran: Odds are that can be done with material settings or transmaps.

Valandar - I know, but that causes some minor annoyances - his head turning almost invisible in the standard Poser display mode, and there being a hole in the face that you'll have to cover up somehow. Nothing that can't also be worked around (cartoon mode w/lines, and more postwork) but it would be nice if the monocle was a seperate bit of geometry that could be turned on or off, or a smart prop. It's probably too late to do anything about it now anyway, but I thought I'd mention it.

Katoran, Valander, Moe
I tried touching up the texture, (see attached).

Is there any special technique for doing the Bump Map? Do I take the revised texture and just change it to a bump?

Message edited on: 07/08/2004 14:37

I can just change the textures as required. The reference to 666 on the view screens may have to go. Anything else comes up as a problem I'll 'adjust' it.

Philywebrider, would you mind deleting that cutting from the texture and replacing it with a render of the area you want to show? Posting pieces, however small, of the actual textures is generally considered bad manners and Stonemason may not want parts of his texture work available for the general public to clone and use in their own textures.

Ajax I'm really sorry, I never ment to cause anyone grief, quite the opposite. I deleted the image right away. My only excuse is ingorance, make that stupidity, again I'm sorry. :O(

No worries. Feel free to post a render of the area you want to show. I wasn't involved in that particular product and don't have a copy, so I'm interested in seeing it too.

Message edited on: 07/08/2004 20:09

Thanks for that. Thanks for deleting the other image too.

Drone Troopers Drone Trooper Back Pack Transport One Destinations - Bar ***** (I'm really hoping to see/Buy this one soon). - Penthouse - Landing Pad You know I'm buying them all.