As some may have noticed, I've started uploading pp2 versions of teh arsenal from Unreal Tournament to the free stuff section. I figured I woud take a moment to explain a few things here, to save the messages and emails from pouring in, un-necessarily. Firstly, I did not create these meshes. I forgot the name of the perrson, but I asked around,and they were reportedly pulled from the orginal files they used when making the game, by one of the lead programmers there. I dowloaded te meshes and textures and set about making them into poser props so I could do little custom face pics for my skin editing for the game. For my own use, so far, I've done all but the Redeemer, Chainsaw, and Impact Hammer. I am spacing out the uploads of them however, for several reasons. One, I don't want to overload my web server, since they seem to be fairly popular. Also, my server has a habbit of acting up occasionally, when I upload a zip file, essentially going down for a couple hours before coming back up with everything in place again. The exact reason for this, I'll probably never know, but it always comes back eventually. The full arsenal is as follows Translocator-the lovely tool of the telefrag. Impact Hammer-not just for caving in faces, aim at the ground and you have a nice tool for those seemingly impossible jumps, or for launching your translocator disk to hard to reach areas. "FORE!!!!" Enforcer-the standard issue pistol, and my personal favorite. Shock Rifle-never understimate the alternate fire of your gun, especially when you can shoot the slow moving energy ball and make it explode for a nice boost to your frag count, and to get people who hide around corners. Sniper Rifle-Need I say more? Bio-Rifle-Launching toxic sludge at your opponents was never so easy, but talk about messy. The short range is made up for by leaving explosive blobs stuck to the walls, floor, ceiling, whatever. Watch where you step. Ripper-magnetically accelerated circular blades, talk about fun at parties. The predator may be strong enough to throw his, but the rest of us need a launcher for our's and his can't be set to explode on impact either. Minigun-Who says 8 barrels is overkill? Did I mention this model comes with a turbo-fire option? Plasma Rifle-a little energy gattling that fires balls of green plasma in rapid succession, or throw the switch adn fire all that energy in a steady stream from a single barrel. a.k.a. The body armor cutting torch(damage to underlying bodies, fully intentional) Flak Cannon-a fragmentation grenade with a barrel? WOOOOHOOOO!!! Rocket Launcher-Who doesn't want their own personal missile battery? Opponents keep dodging the one rocket? Load up to 5 at once, and catch 'em in a narrow corridor(warning, releases automatically after the 5th is loaded, so don't point at nearby walls) The Redeemer-Lousy aim? horrible at getting yourself in range for the kill? No problem, sit back (way back) and fire off a small tactical nuke at your opponents, taking out all fo them if you aim right. The weapon also has the option to fire a camera guided rocket(if you see yourself on camera, smile, bend over, and kiss it goodbye). Chainsaw-Sore back from firing off that impact hammer? Try a chainsaw instead, sure it gets messy, but hey, so does a Flak Gun to, well, anywhere on the body. Now that I've listed them all off, I think I'll use that order for uploading them as well. I'll aim for 2 a day, one in the morning, and one in the evening, until they are all uploaded. Once I finish all of them, I'll put together a little presentation page on my web server where you can find all of them in the future.

The locations and rotations, not to mention scales of some of them may be off. I tried to get as accurate as possible, but hey, nobody's perfect, god-like maybe, but that's only with a sniper rifle on the CTF-Face map. Some of them were saved as smart props, and others were not, this was basically based on how much of a pain in my arse it was to get them in position. In messing around with them so far, I've found it easier to get them relatively close to the desired hand, then parent them, and finish tweaking the locations that way. The girl modelling all of these in the thumbnails, is my own little character Malice. Way too much stuff I've downloaded/purchased on her to even think about distributing her as a character. I'm probably capable of making my own stuff, but I don't really have the time to find out and start doing that as well. Until I've got a lot more time and money on my hands, I'll stick with tweaking and simple textures, as my contibutions to the poser community.

As a former dev team member for the WFUT mod, I can make a very educated guess that Epic would be none too pleased if they found these meshes lurking in Free Stuff. Also, you mention getting the meshes from elsewhere... big, bad no-no if you don't have permission. I'm not trying to douse your excitement, and lord knows I'm just as much in lust with UT2k3 now as I'm still in love with UT, but you gotta re-think this one, 'mano. /P

I asked the website where I got the meshes, and got no objections from them. As for epic. they weren't planning to make these props, I'm willing to wager, and I'm not proffiting off this, so what do they have to get upset about? They made the game very easy to modify and tweak, so why would they get upset that someone stepped outside the game engine and gave them some free press while they were at it?

I got carried away and went ahead an uploaded 4 new props, sort of to get myself caught up to my list. Next up, the Pulse Cannon, and Flak Cannon! I still haven't done the Pulse Cannon, so don't expect these today. I also put a picture in the gallery of Malice blazing away with two enforcers. It was just going to be me trying to fix the translocator, which was actually going to be the first upload, but I got carried away. I seem to be good at that.

Obfuscate, I have done work for Epic... and most of the other game companies over the last 15 years and NONE of them like having their copyrighted materials taken out of a game and distributed for other people to use. It doesn't matter if it is a .wav file, a mesh, a character, a prop. They don't like it. Period. If it isn't yours, or you do not have explicit permission from the creator/copyright holder, then you don't have the right to share it, sell it, or give it away. Copyright is the right to make copies. You do not have this right for these props. Please remove your copies from distribution. Carolly

wow we get a new mod around here every day

If somebody who actually works for epic contacts me directly, and asks me to remove them, then fine. For now, I'll look to try and get in contact with epic and ask them directly if I'm allowed to do this, just to satisfy all those who say "are you allowed to do that?" In the mean time, the files that are already up, remain, and no further ones will be posted.

"I'll look to try and get in contact with epic and ask them directly if I'm allowed to do this" Although that's what a lawyer would label "obfuscatory language", he (or she) would also tell you: "If you have to ask, the answer is no."

Never liked lawyers myself. I've emailed infogrames and asked about this matter, and everything is on hold until I get a reply from them either way. Current downloads will remain in place, unless removed by a renderosity administrator. All bases thus far are covered. I changed the names of the dowloads with the loophole inducing "looks like" labels, and detailed exactly what 'I' have done so far in that email, without naming any person or website except the person said to have originally provided the 3ds files and textures.

Cool. No one is trying to crucify you here - I want you to know that. I just remember that even for in-game stuff as a MOD tinkerer, I recall our team doing a lot of e-mails to get permission for this-or-that to go into UnrealScript, or for certain actions to be added. Most of these requests were made for security and anti-cheat reasons, but in the case of exporting models for some tesing work, or to check the weapons fit against player meshes, which is prolly how your mesh source came about... I still have my pile of exported UT weapons meshes in my posession, too. My pile was exported (via a .t3d-to-.3ds plugin through UeD) only with specific permission, and with severe limits on use, which is why I've never done anything with them after WFUT closed shop. /P

Using the models right out of the game is absolutely definately a no no. If you made your own version from scratch it would probably be a different matter. Then it would be basically a work of parody or fan art... Not strictly legal, but more likely tolerated. Go ask the guys who made the Generations mod for Quake 2. they got got their (quite Fun) mode wiped out for doing just that, and it takes a lot to get Id in a snit. It was a fun mod. (still is on my LAN... LOL.)

Actually, "looks like" is misleading. They ARE the original meshes if I read you aright. "Looks like" would be appropriate if you had imitated them from scratch. You will note that no-one has ever tried to release a Poser model of Doom, Crash or any of the other Quake 3 characters. I understand there is a very good reason for this ... they've been well and truly warned off by id. A shame, really, but it's their IPR.

Don't you people ever get tired of whining? I went straight to the source, emailed and they didn't " slap down a gnat" but somebody had to keep whining and whining until they got a moderator to pull my free stuff items. Well congratulations, I hope you feel better. In reply to... "However, he knows that what he has done is illegal... and the fact that he went back and changed all the names to "looks like" instead of removing the items, just confirms his guilt and his obstinancy." Why do you think I went through the trouble of emailing them to make sure I wasn't ticking of any legal department people? The looks like thing was basically to just get the whiners to shut up. If anyone had bothered to look at them, there is a very clear readme file that explains they are NOT my meshes, and in fact the legal property of infogrames/epic/digital extremes. Now could someone explain to me why almost every person I see whining the loudest has never contributed so much as a picture?

If you have an e-mail from Epic that gives you permission to use ripped meshes and an e-mail from the person who converted the meshes from Epic then please send those to us and you can re-post the links. That's all we're asking for. We're not trying to ruin people's fun, but we need to be very careful and very protective of people's intellectual property. As an artist yourself, I hope you can understand our position. If what I sent was unclear, please let me know, and I'll be very glad to discuss this further. Thanks, Cres