I've got a bit of a moral problem. I bought a ship prop from the marketplace, and it couldn't do what I wanted. So I'm modeling my own ship in 3D Max, it's shape is inspired by the ship I bought, but it's functionality is vastly different - and I might say, superior.

Here's a small list of the major differences:

• my ship will be a posable figure (posable rudder, sails and hatches), not a static prop;
• my ship is scaled to accomodate Poser characters as crew;
• my ship has much more detail in the rigging and hull;
• my ship has UVMapping that allows a simple wooden plank texture to follow the lines of the hull planks;
• my ship renders fine in both FireFly and the P4 renderer.

Now I wonder, if I upload it to freestuff, would it hurt sales by that merchant? And if so, is it morally acceptable to upload it? Or is it unfair competiton?
A note: I model everything myself, not a single polygon of the merchant's ship has been used. Same goes for textures, I'll make them myself too, so there will be no copyright issues.

I'd like to know your views on this. I feel this is a different situation from character packs, since generally speaking the character packs in the marketplace have at least the same quality as those in freestuff.

The pen is mightier than the sword. But if you literally want to have some impact, use a typewriter

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