Digital Art Zone

I’m confused. WERTS, one of the great celeb face makers had to take down his stuff, yet I see celeb characters still being sold? What is the rules here? I am very confused. When can and can’t you create/sell celeb likeness models? I’m sure these PA’s didn’t phone them for permission.Or was his case just an isolated one?

Just going from memory here, Zev0, but Werts was an isolated case, not because of celebrity look-alikes, but because he wasn’t distributing point-cloud deltas and his morph packages contained actual M4 head models.

He could have rectified the situation, and re-distributed only point-cloud MT’s, but chose to quit and disappear altogether.

I don’t really know about the rules governing celebrity look-alikes, and we definitely see them created on both fronts (freebies, and commercial).  It is a good question I have often thought about as well.  I suppose there are just as many answers to the question as there are reasons for the creators reasons for creating them in the first place.

Ah yes I remember. I opened my Werts folder and the actual Gen4 head mesh is there in OBJ. Well, thats good news then if I wanna make celebs since there doesn’t seem to be any issues other than distributing the actual mesh.

You still have to be careful.  You’ll note that most of the look-a-likes in the various market places are quite careful not to represent themselves as the famous person.  Instead it is usually some variation off of a character they played.  E.g. “Rapper for M4” which is clearly supposed to be Will Smith.

The exceptions are the things like the Anna Marie Goddard Digital Clone which is a licensed likeness and comes with commercial use restrictions.

What about the Reby Sky for Genesis or Reby Sky for V4?

She agreed with Daz to become a model for them. Hense why the named stayed.

Zev0 - 27 June 2012 09:33 AM

She agreed with Daz to become a model for them. Hense why the named stayed.

Does she come with restrictions of use?

I suspect the only law that matters is that they have bigger lawyers than any of us!

Miss Bad Wolf - 27 June 2012 09:39 AM

Zev0 - 27 June 2012 09:33 AM

She agreed with Daz to become a model for them. Hense why the named stayed.

Does she come with restrictions of use?

Reby Sky does not come with commercial use restrictions as she authorized her likeness AND allowed it to be usable in commercial renders. 

You would STILL need to be careful about how you used her image though.  If you were to portray her likeness as endorsing another product or political platform, etc. you would still be open to repercussions especially if that “endorsement” could be perceived as damaging her “brand”.

adamr001 - 27 June 2012 12:00 PM

Miss Bad Wolf - 27 June 2012 09:39 AM

Zev0 - 27 June 2012 09:33 AM

She agreed with Daz to become a model for them. Hense why the named stayed.

Does she come with restrictions of use?

Reby Sky does not come with commercial use restrictions as she authorized her likeness AND allowed it to be usable in commercial renders. 

You would STILL need to be careful about how you used her image though.  If you were to portray her likeness as endorsing another product or political platform, etc. you would still be open to repercussions especially if that “endorsement” could be perceived as damaging her “brand”.

So no porn with her in a Cowboy cheerleader outfit?  (Do not worry I do not do porn nor do I like the Cowboys)

Can anyone point to evidence that Werts didn’t just choose to stop sharing his work? I always see people speculate that “he got into trouble”,  when it seemed more likely to me that he got sick of people always wanting something from him.

DaremoK3 - 27 June 2012 12:51 AM

Just going from memory here, Zev0, but Werts was an isolated case, not because of celebrity look-alikes, but because he wasn’t distributing point-cloud deltas and his morph packages contained actual M4 head models.

He could have rectified the situation, and re-distributed only point-cloud MT’s, but chose to quit and disappear altogether.

What exactly are point-cloud MTs?  I was under the impression that if the .obj was stripped of certain information it could be distributed.  I seem to recall a script by bushi that actually did that a long long time ago.  In fact, it made the .obj look like a series of points only and this is what Wert’s objs were like.  In the image on the left is a morph by Werts which shows up like points and if I try to import the .obj in Poser I get an error message - it can only be imported as a morph.  The one on the right is another morph distributed as .obj (and now taken down too) which imports as an .obj in Poser just fine.  I would assume this is what is not allowed.  Hence, Wert’s morphs were fine since I checked them and they’re all showing up as the one on the left, just points.  Or is a point-cloud MT something totally different?

Miss Bad Wolf - 27 June 2012 12:03 PM

So no porn with her in a Cow outfit?

Fixed yer quote there.

Nobody could be offended by porn with her in a Cow outfit!

Joe:
That is a good question.

I can not point to any evidence that supports any facts one way or another how/why Werts pulled his work.  As stated, I was going from memory from threads on the subject in the “General Freepozitory” in the old forums.

Yes, it was all probably speculation due to the absence of Werts verifying any reasons for pulling his work.

As to “he got sick of people always wanting something from him”, I find that odd for a creator who asked for input as to what to create for future projects.  I’m not saying that isn’t the reason, but I personally participated in one of his threads for that very endeavor.  I requested (requested, mind you, from his solicitation) a young Joan Chen to go along with his Rutger Hauer morph.  I had a “The Blood Of Heroes” render that formed in my head when he created Rutger.  Alas, it never came to pass, but someday (way, way, way down on list of importance) I will create the render I envisioned.  His contributions just would have made it come to pass a lot sooner.

Kalypso:
Your example shown is indeed a point-cloud MT.  Point-cloud is just a reference to vector only meshes used in some 3D circles.  For the Poserverse that is what is a legally distributed morph target.  The OBJ is stripped of every data except vertex deltas.

Thank you for verifying this in Werts work.  I haven’t checked any of his morphs, so I do not know, and someone previously stated they found full head data in his MT’s.  This leads me to a question for you, and all;  Has anyone verified that every one of Werts distributed morph freebies only contained point-cloud deltas?  Is it possible one, or even a couple had full head data?

Like I said, I do not know, and I could not verify this even if I wanted to.  I did not download all of his head morphs, but I do have a couple of them archived on one of my backup drives for future use.