How much do you need to edit a model to be yours?

Hi,

I always wondered how much you need to edit a model to be yours.

Does anybody know, or have licences which tell me? I already have some models I want to use in my game, but I don’t know where they are from. I figured if I edit them a bit, I can use them in my game.

The only way it will be yours if you make it from scratch. Idea can be changed so much to becomes yours, but not actual product.

You can’t take a car, hammer it down into something else and claim it to be your unique product. It’s going to be modded car of the original manufacturer.

What motorsep said!

though theoretically if you retopo, re-uv, change the materials and change the design… probably with a fair bit of @kit bashing@ too there isn’t anything recognizable from the original left…

people often give out @base meshes@ for sculpting for example to give someone the @average man@ to start… teh final result is unrecognisable from teh original.

If someone has licenced their work under CC attribution for example then you should credit them as your work is a derivative… if you don’t know what licence something has then don’t use it.

same goes even for images used as textures, brushe masks/sculpt alphas etc for even when you are making something from scratch. it is still a derivative work…

if you “must” claim as your own work then you should build from scratch… or if you want to be dodgy then make sufficient changes that someone side by side comparing the models and wireframes and material settings can’t see them as being the same or having parts the same.

depends also on the model and how much money you have for legal fees !

if i make a cube and you make a cube
it will be the same !

so this is very greyish and open for interpretation
and again you have Fanart and fair use things

best way is to make your own model topo and textures
and again if something like it already exist it could be a problem

so at the scale of the planet with 7 billions peoples soon we wont be able to do any model !

happy bl

Yes, with all those 7 billion people all making every single possible model, soon there will be no concept left in the universe that hasn’t already been modeled by some infant in Mongolia.

Do you even read the things you type before you hit send?

qu’est ce que tu veux dire ?
essaye de m’expliquer ca en francais et je vais te repondre en francais!

avec la quantite de monde sur la planete ca deviens de plus en plus difficile de creer de nouveaux model original,
et le simple fait de fait qu’un dessin est automatiquement protégé peu importe la qualite our l’originalite n’aide pas du tout la situation
donc de plus en plus difficile de vraiment generer de nouveaux dessin sans que qulqu’un quelque part sur
la terre puisse etre en position de reclamer des droits d’auteur (copyright) ou autre protection.

element de risque du processus de creation
le simple fait de creer un dessin a partir de 0 ne veut pas dire que quelqu’un d’autre n’a pas deja fait un dessin similaire et donc protégé!

salut

Pourquois en francais?

Bien. Parmi les sept miliards, combien sont des artistes 3d? Deux pour cent au plus? Comment peut-on penser que la population du monde a un effet sur l’originalité d’un artiste? C’est absolument ridicule.

francais est ma premier langue l’anglais la seconde
et il n’y a pas de langue officiel sur les forums ici que je sache!

c’est un example pousse a l’extreme pour mieux faire comprendre l’idee generale

The example is pushing a little agreed but the idea is that there are more and more people using CG and it in the future it will be more difficult to create something really original because of all the copyrighted stuff already on the net or elsewhere!
and even if you create something does not mean that someone else in the world has not already done something looking the same or at least close to it !

so original work created from scratch does not mean you have the copyright on it !
because the way the laws are made.

it is another way to look at it and not feel 100 % certain that creating something from scratch means you have copyright on it !

but wish it was that simple would make life easier !

happy bl

Duplicate post - sorry.

To be copyrightable, a derivative work must be different enough from the original to be regarded as a “new work” or must contain a substantial amount of new material. Making minor changes or additions of little substance to a preexisting work will not qualify the work as a new version for copyright purposes.

Plagiarism is not a crime per se but in academia and industry, it is a serious ethical offense, and cases of plagiarism can constitute copyright infringement.

Both from Wikipedia. In addition the concept of an ‘informed viewer’ is relevant to the issue, allowing the plaintiff to call in someone who has a CG professional’s understanding of topology and modeling to see if the underlying structure is someone else’s intellectual property. So you can’t make surface alterations and claim it as your own.

If you can show documentation of the creation process that demonstrates that any resemblance to a protected work is coincidental you can claim originality. This might include, in the case of writing, initial drafts, in the case of artwork, sketches and drawings, and in the case of CG, screenshots or ‘version’ files. The idea that creating something from ‘scratch’ could still result in liability has no real citable case history.

The best analogy is to think of a piece of music or a poem. How much do you have to change someone’s else’s song or poetry until it is no longer theirs but yours? I think you’d say that if the original music or poetry is even recognizable in there then it isn’t truly yours.

Legally: there is technically no amount of modification that makes it yours, it will always belong to the creator.

IRL: enough to make it not easily recognizable as being based on the original.

Just wanted to point out - in the US this is strictly incorrect. You automatically hold copyright on everything you make. Whether it’s similar (or even identical) to someone else’s work doesn’t matter, as long as you came up with it yourself from scratch.

That’s the case almost everywhere on the planet. Automatic assignment of copyright is part of the “Berne Convention” and that’s been signed on to by 167 countries.

Reminds me of a comic I saw on Reddit that everyone was taking credit for making:


It’s usually up to a Judge in Court how much of it needs to be changed. If you get to that point, you probably haven’t saved time or money in using it, so it’s usually safer and faster in the long run to make your own stuff. The exception is Public Domain/Creative Commons licensed stuff.

Believe it or not, I have actually copyrighted the vertex itself. So all models are technically mine…Muhaaa.!:evilgrin:

I just want to chip in and go off topic here… but a few years back it wasn’t allowed to write in any other language than English, unless you’d also write an English translation to the original text…

Has this changed?

Yeah, the official language here is English, but RickyBlender seems unaware of that, among other things. I just figured I’d humor him a little. My reply to him was, approximately:

"Why French?

Fine. Of those seven billion, how many of them are 3d artists? Two percent at most? How could you think that the population of the world has any effect on an artist’s originality? That’s absolutely ridiculous.

<link to Eddie Izzard joke about speaking French>"

Or even more approximately:

There are no completely new ideas perhaps, but if you can’t create something unique it’s because of your own lack of creativity, not because every possible idea has been copyrighted by someone else. There are seven billion people on the Earth. So what? Most of them are not cg artists, so how is that relevant?

Unless you work for someone else who does business related to what you’re making. Look at Tesla and Edison. Edison owned everything Tesla invented until Telsa went off on his own.

It’s the same with artworks. No one at Pixar owns what they create. Technically, if Pixar wanted to be dicks, they could even claim copyright on anything their artists create at home, but they don’t. Of course, that might change now that Disney owns Pixar. :spin:

My experience with copyrights/patents is mostly with podcasting and some on the educational front and some on the technical hobby fronts (electronics engineering by degree and field/bench/test console tech by trade ), And keep in mind I am in no way a lawyer. But now that that disclaimer is presented.

Please keep in mind when dealing with copyrights and patents and the like when it comes to determining ownership and fair use. And this is by no means an all inclusive list.

1- Intent. What is your intent. Is your intent to educate, act in the capacity of presenting news, Or in artistic endeavors. was it research or self entertainment? Or was your intent to mod someones work and pass it off as your own?
2- Is what you did covered under fair use? If you are doing say a media production and you show a clip of someone-else work as part of a news presentation, If it is you may well have grounds to do so under fair use.
3- Is what you did part of an educational process? There is leeway for fair use if it is part of an educational process.
4- Is it still recognizable as the original product? If the layman who is familiar with the source work was to look at your product would they ask what is it, Or would they compliment you on your fan art?

But if you want some honest advice, Look at things such as makeahuman if you just need some meshes to get things done for your game, Document your efforts in time stamped sort of ways. upload private vidio’s to youtube or whatever and however you choose to document your efforts.
Read the above link I gave you often It won’t make you a lawyer but it will at least educate you enough to guide your actions. And if you are in doubt one way or another, Get a hundred dollars or so and find a lawyer to educate you, it is buying peace of mind and may well save you from a costly mishap.