Looking for opinions on my resources...

[Hedgepig]

Well,

One of the great undocumented rules is to ensure you have an unmerged copy of any model you release as if reported to mods thats exactly what you will have to provide, this probably will not be possible with tools like this.

Its also a matter of respect for the creators work you use so if your going to reference It should literally mean that the original morphs are directly used from the creators var and not merged into a character morph so the constituent morphs are the dependencies. Saying its 10% of this that and the other is not in my opinion anywhere good enough if your going to make a release.

I think you need to be telling everyone this, not me. I'm such an airhead I can't even make a .var file. And lol, i'm learning python at a rate that I'd get overtaken by the nearest glacier.

I think your ( not my problem, so don't yell at me about it) problem is going to be unscrupulous 'creators' ( they are not true creators are they?) using these mix-it plugins to make and sell looks, and what's more they could be using YOUR models.

You ever heard of the Peak District in the UK? It's littered with big heavy millstone grit grinding wheels, which were carved by hand out of the local quarries back in the 19th century. The millstones were left there, abandoned, some half-carved, because the industry collapsed almost overnight, and the masons and quarry owners went bankrupt. The reason: cheap more durable man-made composite millstone had been invented. These pesky mix-it techniques/tech were striking long-established businesses way before your problem arose.

The Intriguing Millstones of the Peak District (letsgopeakdistrict.co.uk) <- classic UK business case study. Absorb the wisdom, maybe?

Human nature and subsequent economic behavior is such that it will always go with the flow of innovation. It's something that can't be legislated against, unless you are running a Soviet-style economy. But you certainly have an ethical case to find a way to prevent the theft of your hard work, which at the click of the button can now be recomposed with other looks.

So yeah I'd be very wary of what these new plugins can do. They are awesome. And you'll just have to keep ahead of the field. Shame for the other original commercial look makers if there were whole hard drives littered with gorgeous looks that no one wanted to buy because their potential buyers made their own for free using (ironically, free) plugins. But none of this is my problem, nor am I causing a problem. I didn't choose to make my living in this way, and I'm not sharing your work or anyone else's.

 

[Lytanshade]

It's like the old metaphor, that the best way to get rich during a gold rush is to sell/make the shovels.

The plugin makers; expert skin and clothing creators; blender wizards creating custom morphs; mocappers, etc will always have a market to sell their products.

The Hub is in a weird place atm where there's a lot of people mining for gold using shovels and pans they picked up elsewhere. Ideally the market will sort itself out quickly, and we'll go back to the paid resources being exceptional and the products of those resources being free. And a few artistic/imaginative people will also use those tools to pull enough gold out of the river to pay their bills, and good for them.

I tend to pledge a couple of new Patreons every month, Generally cos someone posts a model with a skin that I have to have, or has a library of interesting looking faces, or an amazing line of clothing, or a plugin with functionality I want. Mostly skins/textures though for me.

I have almost no interest in scenes or models that don't have something handcrafted/bespoke.

 

[Molmark]

Аbout your question: just do it. Two or three years ago when I started making skin (it was shitty by the way) I was thinking the same thing about why I 'm not being evaluated . Especially watching the shittier skin that gets a bunch of likes. And you know what? I scored. People who subscribe to me like it. So I'm doing everything right. The main thing is to constantly develop. And please don't fight the pirates- it's a shame. People will still pay you if they like what you do. Good luck!

 

[VAMIC]

I would definitely review your work, but it's mostly for pay so I haven't seen enough of it. Based on screenshots alone, it looks a bit too cartoonish to become a patron, but it could look better in VAM. I just have no way of knowing. I get that no one likes working for free, but maybe making a few more scenes free might help. Also, cartoony is forgivable if the scene has interesting mechanics or story, like SlamThunderstrike's scenes for example. You've had scenes that intrigued me recently like Sacrifice to the Stars, mostly to see how you made the spinning slab, but that's not enough motivation to subscribe having seen so little. I think your MPSC project is useful even though there are some similar scenes on the hub for free. Maybe providing a stripped down version with limited functionality would allow users to get a better idea what you're about and boost engagement.

 

[VirtaArtieMitchel]

I'm running into the same problem. I'm judging what I make next basically on how quickly things get to 1k downloads as that's the only feedback that I have access to. Would be cool if there was a way in game to leave a comment or something.

 

[WolfmanVR]

Thanks for the additional feedback/opinions everyone! I never figured I'd get rich at this, maybe just a little side cash, but feedback is definitely important so you know whether you're totally missing the mark or not. Honestly, I need to get better at leaving comments also, and upload more free resources. I'm still having fun with it though, so I'll just keep plugging along and try to interact with the community more.

VAMic Novelist - Regarding how I did the Sacrifice to the Stars spinning wheel -- I made a cylinder, put a custom texture on it, linked the model to the wheel, and animated it in a continuous loop with Acid Bubble's Timeline (great plugin!). The model follows along. Pretty simple, but I thought it was a cool enough effect to warrant a story around why a model is on a spinning wheel. haha

 

[Jiraiya]

I have an asset with over 10,700 downloads and 0 reviews or ratings. 15 likes or something.
I know a few creators have used assets I uploaded but quite frankly the lack of feedback on what I put up as free assets has killed the fun for me.
I have a load of stuff I've made and just won't bother uploading (I'll keep it to myself) because of this. The whole VaM community seems pretty dead at the moment. I don't know if people are just waiting for 2.0 or got bored and moved on.
We had a little burst of hope with the IK stuff making assets more usable but other than that it's been pretty dry.
I hope 2.0 comes out soon and revives interest but for now I will just keep making stuff for myself.

 

[WolfmanVR]

Jiraiya - Yeah, I know what you mean. It's frustrating to put in a bunch of time and then not know what the community thinks about it. I think we're all probably guilty of downloading assets and forgetting to review them at a later date to some degree, but 10k downloads and no reviews is kind of eye opening! Wow!

 

[Jiraiya]

Jiraiya - Yeah, I know what you mean. It's frustrating to put in a bunch of time and then not know what the community thinks about it. I think we're all probably guilty of downloading assets and forgetting to review them at a later date to some degree, but 10k downloads and no reviews is kind of eye opening! Wow!

In all fairness it's possible that a creator used it in their scene so it just gets downloaded as a dependency. That's fine, but frustrating for me.
I put them up for people to use, so if it's getting huge download numbers I guess it's popular in some way at least.

It really hurts though when I put all that effort into my "game" scene and got zero support for any future development on it.