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Q: the technological and legal aspect of messing with the in-game body


l33tMan

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I'd like to ask your opinion, fellow forum lurkers and content providers, on a subject standing somewhere in between pondering the technological possibilities and philosophizing around the legal status of importing assets from one work you don't fully own into another one.

 

This thought I suspect to be absolute blasphemy towards our current Intellectual Rights system, but nevertheless:

 

Some time ago, my adverts here were spammed with links to Daz3D and the Victoria7 body and I took a quick look through what they boast (/admit) their setup can get done. Basically, the body they use comes with a set of high-quality textures and a bone set that can basically animate everything, even body deformations to conform to furniture.

 

Here comes the question.

Would it be technically feasible and legally sound/grey enough to build a control framework around a finished body used for virtual modeling (anything really; not just Daz, but also its competition or some completely different asset), create an importing framework, and have each interested user have to buy the asset from the original creator / owner and import the body mesh by himself using our own standardized importing framework into Skyrim / Skyrim SE / any highly-modifiable game?

Would it be possible to implement something like Vic7 without frying the CPU?
Would it be possible to explode and reassemble a game's animation subsystem to animate the new body using any SDK the internet community has available?

Would we remain safe from legal persecution if everyone would de facto be modifying the third party's assests "for himself, by himself", without the meshes being tampered with before the one interested in placing the body in his game buys it?

 

The question of price -> later

 

Thoughts?

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DAZ is notoriously strict on usage, laid out in their terms of service, which amounts to a contract upon which you agree during purchase, which takes it beyond standard IP law.  I'm not sure it's still this way, but a few years ago during the 3D printing boom, they tried to stipulate that customers who purchased their models could not 3D print them.  Clearly, the goal was to stop people from reproducing something like Vicky in the physical world and selling it as a statue, but that's ridiculous, because it would make just as much sense to preclude individuals from using an inkjet to print 2D art made with Vicky, which happens all the time.

 

For personal use, they can't stop anybody from doing anything, because they would have no way of knowing.  They are likely to get involved as soon as they learn someone is attempting to distribute their IP, which for their purposes, can be as little as just a single fingernail portion of a texture map.

 

Dan Farr was the kind of guy it might be possible to convince that a profit could be made from getting involved with game modding.  Dan left DAZ in 2012 and I'm not sure who is running DAZ these days.

 

I've seen images of V3 and V4 in Oldrim, rigged to use XPMSE.  I believe a few years ago a Russian was attempting to distribute Vicky as their own body mod under a different name and was thus punted from the Nexus.

 

V1/V2 (the only difference being included morphs) had a much lower poly count, which really exploded at V3 and continued to rise from there.  We're talking, a point cloud galaxy beyond comprehension, far more than any video game really needs.  The extra polygons definitely help in certain areas, but in others, such as the lips, there is an intense amount of waste (not only for gaming, but even for HQ CGI work).  It's a result of improving mesh via subdivision as opposed to starting from scratch.

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Here comes the question.

Would it be technically feasible and legally sound/grey enough to build a control framework around a finished body used for virtual modeling (anything really; not just Daz, but also its competition or some completely different asset), create an importing framework, and have each interested user have to buy the asset from the original creator / owner and import the body mesh by himself using our own standardized importing framework into Skyrim / Skyrim SE / any highly-modifiable game?

If I'm understanding your question, this is already being done. IClone -> Unreal Engine 4. Daz/IClone are used for character creation that UE can use. UE being the framework, although there's no game at the endpoint (yet). Users can buy assets from the Daz/IClone/UE marketplace.

 

I mean, you can do this in Skyrim with V3/4 except you can't sell anything.

 

Are you imagining something like a sex game that uses V7?

 

 

Would it be possible to implement something like Vic7 without frying the CPU?

Hardware dependent question; buy stronger/cooler CPU. Though V7 is probably more GPU dependent.

 

V7 to UE4 pipeline. Can you read that thread without being logged in? He gives an overview of working with V7. Seems to work fine on his machine(don't know specs). Also talks about  V7 license. If you distribute V7 with your game, you'll need a license.

 

 

Would it be possible to explode and reassemble a game's animation subsystem to animate the new body using any SDK the internet community has available?

Would we remain safe from legal persecution if everyone would de facto be modifying the third party's assests "for himself, by himself", without the meshes being tampered with before the one interested in placing the body in his game buys it?

Probably easier/cleaner to make new animation system tbh. Why would you want to port Skyrim's awkward looking animations? If you're asking to use animations from one body to another (Skyrim to V7), you can retarget animations.

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Would it be possible to implement something like Vic7 without frying the CPU?

Would it be possible to explode and reassemble a game's animation subsystem to animate the new body using any SDK the internet community has available?

Would we remain safe from legal persecution if everyone would de facto be modifying the third party's assests "for himself, by himself", without the meshes being tampered with before the one interested in placing the body in his game buys it?

 

 

- nothing hard

 

 

161129110757832041.jpg

converting an oblivion outfit, or a doa body, or a daz body, or a chair, or a pokemon, it's the same

161129110836932717.jpg

 

161129110753727667.jpg

didn't check the number of verticles of v7, but those outfits have much more

1611291108204639.jpg

 

 

 

- just give skyrim pose to v7, export the .obj to blender or 3dmax and copy paste unp weight on that, done (the tri file of the head that's another story)

 

- as if someone would buy daz stuff for skyrim, didn't bought mature skin or fair skin, or dizona, or ...

 

 

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~ snip ~

 

 

~ snip ~

 

I might have created some obscurity with the amount of detail I was trying to give to my question.

The main idea behind this is that modders are trying to develop body physics (bounce, collision etc.)

while some other (professional and paid) models already have these things partially done - like more bones, for example.

The point is not to make a new sex mod, animation framework, or whatever. The question I'm asking is if we can take a body and skeleton from a completely different system and import it into Skyrim, or Skyrim SE, as that will be the future main modding platform (I think).

Could we hijack SSE's animation subsystem to animate a skeleton that was not made for its animations and revamp the collision framework to capitalize on the advantages a third party body could bring?

 

Of course there are other products than Daz - that was just an example - but would it be feasible?

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DAZ is notoriously strict on usage, laid out in their terms of service, which amounts to a contract upon which you agree during purchase, which takes it beyond standard IP law.  I'm not sure it's still this way, but a few years ago during the 3D printing boom, they tried to stipulate that customers who purchased their models could not 3D print them.  Clearly, the goal was to stop people from reproducing something like Vicky in the physical world and selling it as a statue, but that's ridiculous, because it would make just as much sense to preclude individuals from using an inkjet to print 2D art made with Vicky, which happens all the time.

 

For personal use, they can't stop anybody from doing anything, because they would have no way of knowing.  They are likely to get involved as soon as they learn someone is attempting to distribute their IP, which for their purposes, can be as little as just a single fingernail portion of a texture map.

 

Dan Farr was the kind of guy it might be possible to convince that a profit could be made from getting involved with game modding.  Dan left DAZ in 2012 and I'm not sure who is running DAZ these days.

 

I've seen images of V3 and V4 in Oldrim, rigged to use XPMSE.  I believe a few years ago a Russian was attempting to distribute Vicky as their own body mod under a different name and was thus punted from the Nexus.

 

V1/V2 (the only difference being included morphs) had a much lower poly count, which really exploded at V3 and continued to rise from there.  We're talking, a point cloud galaxy beyond comprehension, far more than any video game really needs.  The extra polygons definitely help in certain areas, but in others, such as the lips, there is an intense amount of waste (not only for gaming, but even for HQ CGI work).  It's a result of improving mesh via subdivision as opposed to starting from scratch.

 

 

Thanks for sharing your knowledge!

 

From this I gather it would be overkill to import Daz meshes into SSE. Though, what about the skeleton they use: as I've said, a superficial look on their bone list and the declared capabilities of the tech, their are far beyond what the animations in Skyrim are capable of right now. Could the skeleton be mated to SSE's animation framework and could the 64bit Skrim Special Edition handle it?

 

This is a purely theoretical question, of course. I might make use of this information - but some time later.

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Thanks for sharing your knowledge!

 

From this I gather it would be overkill to import Daz meshes into SSE. Though, what about the skeleton they use: as I've said, a superficial look on their bone list and the declared capabilities of the tech, their are far beyond what the animations in Skyrim are capable of right now. Could the skeleton be mated to SSE's animation framework and could the 64bit Skrim Special Edition handle it?

 

This is a purely theoretical question, of course. I might make use of this information - but some time later.

 

It's been a few years since I used it, but I don't remember animation abilities being particularly special and when it did look good, it was typically because of joint controlled morphs, not the rigging itself.  There is a massive amount of JCM in later versions of Vicky and without it, you would see clipping and crumpling in a wide range of poses.

 

The extreme polygon count isn't necessary, but the truth is that the body (V3 and above) just plain looks better.  It would probably be possible to reduce the poly count via conversion to normal maps, but I haven't tried it myself.

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I'd like to ask your opinion, fellow forum lurkers and content providers, on a subject standing somewhere in between pondering the technological possibilities and philosophizing around the legal status of importing assets from one work you don't fully own into another one.

 

This thought I suspect to be absolute blasphemy towards our current Intellectual Rights system, but nevertheless:

 

Some time ago, my adverts here were spammed with links to Daz3D and the Victoria7 body and I took a quick look through what they boast (/admit) their setup can get done. Basically, the body they use comes with a set of high-quality textures and a bone set that can basically animate everything, even body deformations to conform to furniture.

 

Here comes the question.

Would it be technically feasible and legally sound/grey enough to build a control framework around a finished body used for virtual modeling (anything really; not just Daz, but also its competition or some completely different asset), create an importing framework, and have each interested user have to buy the asset from the original creator / owner and import the body mesh by himself using our own standardized importing framework into Skyrim / Skyrim SE / any highly-modifiable game?

 

Would it be possible to implement something like Vic7 without frying the CPU?

Would it be possible to explode and reassemble a game's animation subsystem to animate the new body using any SDK the internet community has available?

Would we remain safe from legal persecution if everyone would de facto be modifying the third party's assests "for himself, by himself", without the meshes being tampered with before the one interested in placing the body in his game buys it?

 

The question of price -> later

 

Thoughts?

 

By using the word buy you fucked this entire premise. Daz does not allow what you're suggesting in any world, universe, or galaxy, the end.

 

If you want to be paid for a custom body, you need to make it from scratch.

 

There's another person essentially doing what you're suggesting with other people's stuff too for 32 on this site and tumblr, and all it would take is one email or thereabouts to send this person up shit's creek legally and financially. Kris+a's pretty much banned everywhere but russian sites for a reason, and that reason is legal and financial indemnity.

 

You cannot reuse Daz assets for commercial gain for a previously published commercial product, period. This is very plainly stated on their site in big ass font, it is required reading before you open anything you've dl'd from their site or any official reseller.

 

You want to use Daz, you either buy a commercial license and make your own game, or you publish Daz approved products within the existing Daz product framework.

 

 

 

too many polygons

 

No such animal, I have no idea why people keep saying this when it is not any way shape or form true. The per-nitrishape limit is 65,000. There is no model limit, and we can see from the gang orgy butt fuck that is Immersive Armors that barfed together masses of five armors consisting of 5 40K each model per outfits being cludged together and rendered by the engine produces NO framerate drop.

 

None. Period.

 

My current char is about 45K polies, his main companion is 75K and there is zero hit to skyrim. I'm using between 12K and 33k bodies for all my npcs and running 3dnpc, Incpc and one other NPC mod and there is NO framerate hit from polycount . None. Papyrus, on the other hand, is another story.

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too many polygons

 

No such animal, I have no idea why people keep saying this when it is not any way shape or form true. The per-nitrishape limit is 65,000. There is no model limit, and we can see from the gang orgy butt fuck that is Immersive Armors that barfed together masses of five armors consisting of 5 40K each model per outfits being cludged together and rendered by the engine produces NO framerate drop.

 

None. Period.

 

of course there is a performance impact

but not the cpu melting crap many are repeating because they read that somewhere

 

 

161202094731499432.jpg

justice nif 17 mo (150 k verticles)

justice textures 71 mo

161202094726634051.jpg

it's more accurate without the fps limited to 60, that thing drop the fps too much

161202094733285579.jpg

 

161202094730258095.jpg

 

 

but it's easier to crush your fps with high poly

 

 

161202103129762654.jpg

cpu love high poly meshes clipping with each others

161202103126571251.jpg

 

 

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By using the word buy you fucked this entire premise. Daz does not allow what you're suggesting in any world, universe, or galaxy, the end.

 

If you want to be paid for a custom body, you need to make it from scratch.

 

You cannot reuse Daz assets for commercial gain for a previously published commercial product, period. This is very plainly stated on their site in big ass font, it is required reading before you open anything you've dl'd from their site or any official reseller.

 

Sigh. I really seem to have a problem getting ideas and thoughts through. My aim is not to get me (or any modder) paid, I'm thinking of ways to implement high-poly bodies with a lot denser skeletons in terms of the number of bones. It does not have to be daz, that was a mere example.

 

I'll try a point-plan interpretation, maybe that will stop people from assuming I'm trying to get rich here (on a forum, of all places):

  1. A modder adapts a game's animation control system to cooperate with a skeleton not conforming to the game's original standards
  2. Someone else creates a file format converter tailored specifically to the problem at hand (texture and mesh format to be readable by the game)
  3. We compile these efforts into one executable (like TTW installs itself)
  4. The interested consumer will buy the third party product (like a Daz body)
  5. The consumer puts the bought body into this compiled converter executable and the thing churns out a ridiculously high detail equivalent to CBBE
  6. Enjoy the game
  7. ???
  8. No profit

Well, maybe some credit on the forum for making a compiler. I reiterate - would not having illegal copies of the body and demanding that someone buys the body from the respective third party allow us to have bodies used for virtual model work in our games  without having to go to obscure or malware-ridden sites to avoid getting hit by the mighty hammer of the legal system?

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Yes, provided the tools you use allow for such or requires the buying of "whatever" through entirely legal mean with a check thereof.

 

 


 

cpu love high poly meshes clipping with each others

 

We both know that is entirely fixable and not related to rendering said models at all, and secondly intels don't have the same issue that amd does in this particular instance, and Zen is unlikely to have it either.

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  1. A modder adapts a game's animation control system to cooperate with a skeleton not conforming to the game's original standards
  2. Someone else creates a file format converter tailored specifically to the problem at hand (texture and mesh format to be readable by the game)
  3. We compile these efforts into one executable (like TTW installs itself)

 

wonder why you wrote "we" since you have no idea what you are talking about

 

if you make a v7 in daz that match unp i can put that in skyrim in less than an hour, but in that state

 

 

16120302011561703.jpg

that's the v4 that convert the outfits i put in skyrim

didn't feel like learning how to make tri file, head is an armor

16120302014944353.jpg

don't know how to make msn, sk or s textures either

161203020053297862.jpg

as if a tool could do all that

keeping daz skeleton mean editing all human animations, for nothing (more bones if nothing use them, why bother?)

161203020140768346.jpg

 

161203020124653287.jpg

 

161203020148749120.jpg

 

161203020158691364.jpg

 

16120302020275035.jpg

 

 

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It is my belief that you wouldn't get improvement by adding bones beyond XPMSE or using a DAZ/Poser skeleton.  Bones without purpose (ie; for joints) are pointless.  Vicky looks miles better than other Skyrim bodies because of the mesh, not because of the skeleton.  DAZ default body shapes come from 3D scans of real women.

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