Sorry did’nt understand a word? please explain? 
the normal of the vertex
Blends removed on request from AnimationMentor
Blends removed on request from AnimationMentor
Uh, like why? Was there:
- an oversight in the posting of the data files acquired from them without appropriate permission? :o, OR
- a complaint about some kind of ownership of the look and feel of a certain kind of character? :spin::ba:
More than likely the case. Too bad. These were some nice rigs.
BgDM
All we need to do is change the models a little bit.
Yeah, if you want to get in a lawsuit.
It sucks that this was taken offline. I never got to see any of the rigs myself…
I’ve not taken the course or anything, but by checking out the videos and images on the site I’d say that emulating the same basic approach to animation with totally different models would be possible. You could just as easily learn the same animation techniques with a model that is rigged to support similar motions. I dunno how squashy-stretchy their models are, but i imagine just using a few blocks for a torso, a larger one for a head and a couple long skinny rectangles for the appendages would be sufficient. Hell, they could be like little Blender ‘Crash Test Dummy’ robots or something.
I was actually planning on modeling some manequin type models, tho not that detailed, to aid in training myself on basic animation techniques. I have an idea what all of them are for at least, and their approach seems to be a really ideal way to learn. They seem to place as much emphasis on making sure the weight and balance are spot on and then introduce more and more complex models and assignments. Walkcycles, Runs, jumps, weight shifting, etc and then you move on to a model with a toso and head but no arms and then do similar assignments but now your model’s weight and balances are more complex.
The model was probably removed because of it’s obvious similarities to theirs. Was it a direct port of their models, Or was it something you had made from scratch. If you made them, i don’t see why it wouldn’t be possible to re-make a model with the same functionality but with a different look. I’d like to see it happen honestly. It would be a better way to learn if you could get some well made models and rigs where you could focus on the basic principles first then get more and more complex. If no one else does it I’ll probably do it myself, but I doubt my results would be as useful than if they were to come from someone more experienced with rigging. I haven’t even started on rig constraints or anything yet 
No, the rigs are fine, we just need a new plan for the base model.
We misunderstood each other- When you said “We just need to change the models a little bit”, I assumed that you meant that we just had to do something tiny to the models, like giving them a nose or something stupid like that. You thought that I was talking about the rigs though. Meh… my head hurts.
Okay listen. The reason AnimationMentor asked me too remove the rigs, was because they made confusion. people would look at my rigs, and then theirs, and would’t understand who’s whos, if ya understand.
Heres the mail I got 
As you can see, they asked me VERY nicley so it would be stupid to let them down
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=78809
Hello, my name is Bobby Beck from Animation Mentor. It was pointed out to me that you have very similar rigs to that of ours at Animation Mentor. I even read your nice words about being inspired by the work that our students do. I can tell you are supporting what you see and we are flattered, however our characters are protected under copyright for a reason, which I will do my best to explain. We have worked very hard at Animation Mentor to create a brand that is unique to us. Our little characters, simple as they may be required a lot of time and effort to create them. When you think of Bugs Bunny you think of Warner Brothers, Mickey Mouse/ Disny, luxo/ Pixar, Scrat/ Blue Sky, etc. When people see our characters we want them to think of Animation Mentor.
For this reason I would like to politely ask that you remove your characters as it creates confusion when people see “our rigs” or similar rigs. We want to be clear about who Animation Mentor is. I hope you find this email to make sense as I wanted to send this email to you directly so that you understand how important it is to us at AM to protect the Animation Mentor brand, look and feel. I look forward to hearing from you.
They’ve asked nicely and all, although it begs the question, exactly what / how much is patented? As they stated the characters are very simple… would any character with two arms and fingers made from blocks be too similar?
Still, while I support open sourcing of ideas, especially for educational purposes, the flip side of this is that intellectual copyright must be held. Break that link in the chain and the freebies lose their special character.
So good on you for complying with their request.
Well, if you ever red Redwall, there’s hedgehogs, if you’ve ever played Sonic, there’s hedgehogs. They are different, no copyright infringement. Of course, if there was a blue hedgehog in Redwall with super-speed, attitude and a mono-eye, then it would be, so no, a character with block hands and two arms would not unnecessarily be a rip-off of animation mentor. When you copy the complete setup and design though, then it might be.
It isn’t patented it is copyrighted two entirely different areas of law. What would and would not constitute a copyright infringement is not clear (although simple wooden figures that don’t have the same character style would likely be in the clear).
The copyright in this case is revolves around something thats primary purpose is functional so it is possible that even the current usage would be found non infringing.
Some of the cites in this brief suggest to me that the arguement they are making is rather shaky.
http://www.eff.org/IP/Marvel_v_NCSoft/NC-MemPointsFinal.pdf
They might be able to register a trademark on the characters (which from the quoted email appears to be their actual intent) that would be a different legal discussion though.
LetterRip
Eh, you make it, you own the copyright. They’re just asking that someone lets them use THEIR original setup and design and lets them use it alone and uniquely. It’s not actually unreasonable.
Dude, I know the difference. Until recently (when I decided to discontinue payments) I was an active FSF member for some time. My use of the word “patent” was to subtly point out that they’d effectively crossed the line between “copyright” and “patent” by asking a layman / hobbyist to pull an experimental piece based on their work. Certainly, intellectual copyright has been crossed with such a close copy, although this had referenced the credit directly to the source in the original post. If they want the kind of power that gives them rights to stop say, school kids, from imitating their work then it should be in their interests to seek whether they can literally patent the design as their own.
I was also pointing out that their complaint had very grey boundaries. When organisations aren’t clear about what is and isn’t a breach of their trademark, they are actually themselves in danger of facing anticompetitive lawsuits.
…still, it was nice for Lasphere to comply all the same. A lot of people don’t care for the creative rights of the artist, and that can really hurt.
Test mod:
nice You made that from mine?
Btw, I dont really have time for reweightpainting the chars. Hope you dont mind…
My models aren’t that good and I managed to shoot the poly count through the roof, though the feet are beyond inefecentely modeled.
I don’t use weight painting to rig, I use vertex groups(yes, I am very bad at animation).
Everyboy uses vertex gruops… And when you aplie a vertex group to a mesh, you automaticly gives them a weight-paint…
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