Looking for a little clarity on the license's within Daz Studio

jniemiec86

Hello Everyone, 

I have gotten so much contradicting information lately on whether or not I need to buy additional licenses so, I'm looking for a little clarity on this subject. I am building my own personal game and have cutscenes triggered throughout the game. When these cutscenes trigger it either shows a still image or video for x amount of time before the game deletes the image or video and returns back to normal gameplay. In order to be in compliance with the rules and regulations do I need to go back and purchase additional interactive licenses for all the items I have purchased from the store? Also, is there a specific license I need to buy for Daz Studio itself?

Attached is one of the images I am working on to add to my game. How I have it set up is as follows, game start, show image, wait x time, delete image, show text explaining what the game is about and give a little backstory........begin gameplay, Repeat for different images or videos when encountering significant battle animations, locations, important main character events, ect... Game itself is being built using a 2D program(RPGMVXA) so the addition of these images will just be a nice touch on the game.

-James

Charlie Judge

As long as the images are just 2D and do not include any 3D mesh they are permitted without the need for any additional license

jniemiec86

OK I'm going to ask a very noob question here. Given that the figures used within Daz Studio all have 3D mesh then everything created in Daz which utilizes some sort of scene or prop would need a license then, correct? I mean the difference between 2D images and 3D images is depth. Aren't all images produced by Daz Studio 3D images then because each image has depth. For example, the attached photo of a scene I am creating of a student working on a paper at her computer in her dorm room. The scene itself has depth so I would need additional licenses to use it. 

Misselthwaite

The image itself is 2-dimensional.  3dimensional would refer to an actual physical, 3-dimensional object.

FSMCDesigns

jniemiec86 said:

OK I'm going to ask a very noob question here. Given that the figures used within Daz Studio all have 3D mesh then everything created in Daz which utilizes some sort of scene or prop would need a license then, correct? I mean the difference between 2D images and 3D images is depth. Aren't all images produced by Daz Studio 3D images then because each image has depth. For example, the attached photo of a scene I am creating of a student working on a paper at her computer in her dorm room. The scene itself has depth so I would need additional licenses to use it. 

a photo or image is 2D, actual mesh is 3D. Normal games have 3D mesh in them and that can be extracted, hence one of the reasons for the interactive license. There are games that use only images, or sprites, these are 2D games and require no license.

You say "personal" game, If you don't plan on selling or sharing your game, then you need no additional licesnes

nomad-ads_8ecd56922e

To the best of my understanding, the licensing is only for if you're making something where the actual 3D meshes are included within the program or are included in the assets distributed with the program.  An example of this is if its a game where the 3D character is physically loaded and rendered by the game itself in dynamic 3D, such that someone could rip the actual 3D object constituting the character out of the game and use it elsewhere.  If you're merely presenting a bunch of pre-generated 2D images, such as in a premade 3D-movie reel, but the actual meshes of the characters and props aren't themselves packaged in the game, then you don't need to buy the licensing.  That said, some freely-available 3D objects and images one could USE in making those stills and those movie-reels have a non-commercial-only limit placed onto their usage  -- i.e. a lot of fan-made Star Trek props and sets -- which would also prevent one from using even the rendered scenes in a for-purchase game or product.

jniemiec86

FSMCDesigns said:

jniemiec86 said:

 

There are games that use only images, or sprites, these are 2D games and require no license.

You say "personal" game, If you don't plan on selling or sharing your game, then you need no additional licesnes

FSMC, Yes the game I am building uses sprites for the actual gameplay. As far as the second part, while it's just my personal game now that doesn't mean that one day I might not want to share it to get other peoples opinions. I would rather have it set up to share then have to try and back-pedel to the beginning and try to remember where I needed to buy licenses(If I had to that is).

 

 

nomad-ads_8ecd56922e said:

To the best of my understanding, the licensing is only for if you're making something where the actual 3D meshes are included within the program or are included in the assets distributed with the program.  An example of this is if its a game where the 3D character is physically loaded and rendered by the game itself in dynamic 3D, such that someone could rip the actual 3D object constituting the character out of the game and use it elsewhere.  If you're merely presenting a bunch of pre-generated 2D images, such as in a premade 3D-movie reel, but the actual meshes of the characters and props aren't themselves packaged in the game, then you don't need to buy the licensing.  That said, some freely-available 3D objects and images one could USE in making those stills and those movie-reels have a non-commercial-only limit placed onto their usage  -- i.e. a lot of fan-made Star Trek props and sets -- which would also prevent one from using even the rendered scenes in a for-purchase game or product.

Nomad, From what everyone is saying im getting the impression that I don't need to buy more licenses since I'm just providing images and video files and not the actual content. Much like you are saying these images and video files are imported into the game and then turned on and off with switches/commands within the script. As far as the non-commercial only limit you mentioned. So far I have only purchased items(Clothing, hair, props ect...) from the DAZ shop and not used any free products. So far everything I have purchased in the shop had no mention of non-commercial only usage. Do you know if this is mentioned somewhere specifically within these products that I can check? Or does this stipulation only apply to free products or 3rd party products not in the Daz Shop?

 

Thank you everyone for the clarity. I was originally under the impression I didn't need the additonal license since the Standard License Agreement said that content purchased on the Daz 3D website allowed you to:

• 1- Render out images
• 2- Render out videos
• 3- Render out an HDRI or Virtual Reality scene

It also stated that any of these things that you rendered out were completely owned by you and you could do whatever you wanted with them since what you were delivering to the end consumer is not the actual 3D content, but a render of it. Then some other people had told me this wasn't the case and that the rendered out images weren't covered by this agreement(gotta love sea lawyers). Again huge thank you to everyone.

-James

mwokee

I think a simplified answer would be is you can sell, distribute, anything, with JPG files. You have all Rights to JPGs.

The Blurst of Times

2D sprites also don't need a license.

The artist put the time into the morphs, the 3d architecture, the image maps that create the 3D figure... that's their ownership. They own the 3D resources. You need a license to export the resources for a Daz model and put it into a game.

Once you make a 2D image (you've put work into composition, lighting, etc), then that's yours. The 2D image has lost all the information that goes into a 3D model... it's beyond the artist's work, and it's been transformed into your work through your own work. You own your work.

This includes 2D sprites. Take a 2D image and put it into Spine or DragonBones - no problem.

There's nothing magical about "gaming". You just have to think about it as a 2D image versus the resources that make up a fully 3D model within Daz. You don't "own" the license or the rights to redistribute the resources for the 3D model... that's akin to piracy.

You do have the ownership of your 2D image - the output from a render. Throw that into a video game as a sprite. Render a 2D image and put it into a fully 3D game. Make a animated 2D sprite in Spine. That's what Daz is for!

Psyckosama

Are you distributing the actual textures or mesh data?

If yes, you need the extended lisence.

If no, you're fine.

nomad-ads_8ecd56922e

Well, there's (probably) never going to be noncommercial only stuff sold at Daz3D. A lot of FREE stuff on other sites, such as ShareCG, and some of the things in the freebies section of Renderocity do have noncommercial-only clauses in the readmes.  Pretty much if an item is being SOLD, it's not going to be noncommercial-only though....  Mainly I was just bracketting in case you'd found some nice freebies somewhere and wanted to incorporate them into your renders.

jestmart

There are some character products that have very strong resemblance to celebrities that you may want to avoid, better safe than sorry.

nelsonsmith

mwokee said:

I think a simplified answer would be is you can sell, distribute, anything, with JPG files. You have all Rights to JPGs.

Thanks.  That does simplify it a great deal.

Matt_Castle

nelsonsmith said:

mwokee said:

I think a simplified answer would be is you can sell, distribute, anything, with JPG files. You have all Rights to JPGs.

Thanks.  That does simplify it a great deal.

I would say that simplifies it too much, as the original texture files may be JPGs, and you CANNOT distribute the original texture files.

To simplify Daz's standard licence as best as I can (with the caveat that I am not a legal professional):
- You may store, use, modify and transfer the original product files in basically any way, as long as only you have access to them.
- You may sell, distribute and use any images or videos you render in Daz Studio (or any other program you choose to render in) for any purpose, including using those pre-rendered images for interactive gameplay experiences.

(It should go without saying that this obviously assumes that you're not in breach of some other law, such as rendering indecent images of children).

The interactive licence, while somewhat confusingly named, only applies when a third party will be rendering the resources on their own system (and will thus need access to some form of the original product files).

~~~~~

I will add that I believe there are a small minority of products which have more stringent requirements, although I don't have an exhaustive list. (I believe Reby Sky, based on a real individual under licence, may be one example).