Question So! A question to all you great creators out there - am I cheating?

[Calluhan]

Hello my VAM family. I'm only 2 weeks in to this adventure but I'm devouring knowledge and experience! My question is - I have created several 'looks' from all the material available from VAM creators such as REN,noheadnoleg, Roac, Nostage3 and all the great clothing and asset creators. I have added to my long standing Deviantart profile to showcase my creations. I start with a look and then 'morph' it into something different - examples can be found here Calluhan - Hobbyist, Digital Artist | DeviantArt and here Media added by Calluhan | Virt-A-Mate Hub (virtamate.com) So! is this cheating? I don't have the talent (yet - but I hope to improve!) to create textures, lighting, plugins etc - I use all these great resources to bend to my will to create something new. Is this frowned upon? I patronise many artists so wouldn't add my work to resources where they could be used without patronage - just pictures and videos. What do you think?

 

[MacGruber]

Complicated topic. Depends on the source content you used, what it is licenced with and how you use it. As long as it is "just pictures and videos" as you say and you credit people for their work, inside this community, it should be fine. Should you run a Patreon site for yourself though, or you are using content commercially in some other way, you should be careful as some content is specifically labeled as "not for commercial use". In that case, contact the original creator, most people should be fine as long as its just pictures and they are credited properly.

Pro-Tip: When you look at VAR packages in the PackageManager inside VaM, there is an info field telling you about what license the package was released under. That includes a sentence explaining what kind of things you are allowed to do. (Note however, that some creators do not set that field correctly....)

 

[Calluhan]

Thanks for your input @MacGruber - it is as I suspected. I wouldn't release my 'looks' on VAM or anywhere else as they are currently based on other peoples hard work (yet I note many people do). No intention of ever patronaging my work - just doing this for fun! Thanks so much for your stuff too - I would be lost without the super screenshot feature in your essentials package or all the fantastic 'life' stuff. Please keep up the great work - no plagiarism here!

 

[Hexenv88]

@MacGruber is right, the main thing to consider is the Licensing details on the materials used to create anything. My first few scenes clearly violated some licensing details I'm sure of it as i didn't realize just how intertwined it is with everything (have started revising them to bring them back inline with Community Standards). I have quickly come to realize that pretty much anything you do here from a creation perspective has a licensing stipulation attached to it of some kind, As I understand it most free content can be used with proper credit given to original creators(Still check the licensing to be clear). Paid content is a different story, Many paid creators will allow their work to be used in other works and some only for personal or non commercial use. the key is in the fine print of the licensing they have chosen. I have 2 versions of vam on my machine, a Dump version where all my stuff goes, free and paid, in there i create my scenes the way i want them then i package the scene to a var and move it over to a clean version with nothing but default installation content , there i do a run and replace the error test to try and fix any dependency issues, deciding weather or not i need a package, if i do, i check its requirements, if i can get around it some other way i will either by using an alternative but similar asset or creating my own. I think most creators on here are chill tho, i mean as long as you don't copy their work and try to pass it off as your own you should be fine everyone makes mistakes, as far as morphs, skin textures and various other assets of that nature i started with the Vam base textures and customize from there. Its amazing how many dependencies show up in a package from morphs and poses, if your sitting there wondering why your dependencies are in the hundreds, a great place to start looking is PRESETS of any kind, pose, appearance, Plugins, Animation and of course Clothing, Hair Skin texture and Morphs Basically everything has an effect.

 

[TToby]

Yes, it is a bit difficult with VaM and quite different to many other communities. I understand those questions very good! I am personally coming from several other game modding communities, and with most of them it is a bit of "Wild West" regarding to using stuff, posting pictures and maybe even copyrights. In a certain way, I like that more than how it is done here, maybe because I am one of those old Internet pioneers and I am missing those "Renegade" and "Wild West" feeling from the past quite a bit.

But in an other way, this is much more professional here and much more serious. There is much of very good contend that took a lot time to create. "Wild West" has definitely its dark sides, too. The creator of VaM is directly encouraging the comercial distribution of stuff and maybe it is the direction VaM will go in the future, like it or not. This will probably make sure, we will allways have professional content to play with.

So if you have this in mind, the difference to other communities you may have experienced in the past, it is a bit more easy.
Keep in mind there are commercial contend and copyright stuff around here and be a bit more cautious about that. This does not mean you should be afraid to share any stuff (I bet some people are), but only be a bit more aware of this.
I feel with anybody who has some difficulties with this, but it's just the way it is today.

 

[DarkFantasy]

Yes, it is pretty complicated like MacGruber said. I am quite sure I have violated something as well though not intentionally. Even when I go through everything with a fine tooth comb I still have a bad feeling I am missing something and not crediting someone. There are many scenes I haven't released due to this concern.

Here are a few things that I have learned after a few semi-complex scenes with regards to licensing that will save you a lot of time down the road:

- Hover over the box in the corner of the clothing item, hair, morph, etc and look at the package and the license in the popup
+ Many times there are several copies of the same clothing, hair, morph, etc from other packages. Make sure you are selecting the item that is in the original creators package (For example if you have VamX you will see many duplicates and the licensing shows as PC rather than FC or whatever it really is. Select the original version, not the VamX version)
+ Morphs are challenging. Try to use the default morphs or stick with a few creators like Spacedog. This reduces the dependencies you are using

- Some plugins and such are not clean when you remove them
+ For example ExpressionBlushingandTears which is a really cool addon will leave a bunch of .wav files listed in the json file. You need to open the file and manually remove them

- Some "looks" have lots of additional dependencies so save yourself some time, create a blank scene with that look and use package manager to check before you put too much effort into something you may need to back out and fix later.

As a side note, it would be really cool if we could filter clothing, morphs, and hair based on license. Maybe in 2.0?