Digital Art Zone

I modified a material preset that came with a DAZ weekly free item. Basically I got rid of the mapped reflections and modified the surfaces to have nice real reflections. A few other tweaks were made, too. Another DAZ user would like to use the preset I created. I know meshes can’t be shared, but I don’t know about material presets. I modified and saved it in DS4.5, so it is a DUF file. Does anyone know the rules on this, or do I need to submit a help ticket to get an answer? Thanks.

I’m also interested in the answer to this. In my case it’s that I purchased a .duf texture set which doesn’t work of course in 4.0 so I remade the presets to .dsf files.

If there are no textures involved, just the settings of how they are applied, I don’t see why it wouldn’t be ‘redistributable’...

mjc1016 - 13 November 2012 11:30 PM

If there are no textures involved, just the settings of how they are applied, I don’t see why it wouldn’t be ‘redistributable’...

So when the surface has a JPG file listed in the Diffuse Color, etc.,does the preset just have a pointer to the file in the user’s runtime rather than the JPG file itself, making it OK to distribute the preset? The preset file I created is only 22KB, so it can’t contain much.

barbult - 13 November 2012 11:43 PM

mjc1016 - 13 November 2012 11:30 PM

If there are no textures involved, just the settings of how they are applied, I don’t see why it wouldn’t be ‘redistributable’...

So when the surface has a JPG file listed in the Diffuse Color, etc.,does the preset just have a pointer to the file in the user’s runtime rather than the JPG file itself, making it OK to distribute the preset? The preset file I created is only 22KB, so it can’t contain much.

Yep…just the path to the file.  It should be written as a ‘relative’ path, if memory serves, so if the file exists, then it will be found and used.  If it doesn’t exist, the preset may cough up an error, but it should still load

Basically, most of the ‘shaders’ around are just presets, some with their own textures. And so are any ‘third party’ materials presets (which is essentially what you are creating)...

The jpg file itself is the intellectual property of the creator, whether it came with a freebie or a purchased product. As long as you are not sharing the jpg you should be fine, but will need to let people know that the new shader settings will not work unless people already “own” the original file.

To be safe you should probably be selective with the preset, storing only the settings you have changed, then the user can apply the original followed by your adjustments.

Thank you all for the guidance. I feel comfortable now that I will not be violating the EULA if I follow this advice.