Shader Use in Personal/Commercial Retextured Products
pfunkyfize
Posts: 475
in The Commons
Hi all,
If I were to use an Iray shader like this on a product's texture and save it as an Iray material preset for an item I was retexturing to sell, is that contrary to the usage agreements of shaders bought from here? Or are shaders only for our commercial/personal use when we only make renders with them?
Thanks!
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Edititng my post to try and clarify it
The only commercial use is for renders and animations, and not for use in resale on any models or as textures.
BTW there are a few shader sets which are sold as Merchant Resources, such as this one
http://www.daz3d.com/dg-iray-surface-builder-cotton-denim-wool-shaders-and-merchant-resource
They have specific instructions as to how you can use them as a Merchant Resource.
If you do a store search for Merchant Resource you can get most of teh available ones show up
Thanks for that!
Does that mean the regular Uber shader that came with DAZ is also off limits as a shader preset for retexturing products to sell?
A preset for the uber Shader is not the shader, it's settings for the shader - like a pose or shaping preset those are fine to share or sell (as long as they are your own settings, of course). You do have to be careful, however, as not every shader comes as a shader asset or compiled shader - some have the Shader Mixer network in the supplied presets, and those can't be used for distribution as any new "preset" will also contain the actual shader.
NOTE: It's still very important to check those details on the product page, because this search also brings up things which state:
"This is not a Merchant Resource"! (Such is the inexactitude of the store search facility)
Edit to clarify
Ok, I think I am understanding better, thanks!
So if I use the Iray uber shader preset on a texture I created, then I saved the results as a material preset, would I still be able to sell it as part of the texture set? If I used that Simple Fabric for Iray shader package and used the presets on there on my new retextured product for sale, I would be infringing on the licensing of the Simple Fabric Iray package?
How do people add Iray textures presets to retextured products if using the default Iray Uber preset is illegal? (At this point I don't know if that is forbidden yet...)
Ah ok, so that's what merchant resources are for! They are assets solely for the purpose of using its assets for resale. Got it. So basically If I use a merch resource, I should generally be free and clear to use it retex'ing projects and products - Thanks!
Making and redistributing presets for the Iray Uber shader is totally fine. It is included with Daz Studio, and people would have to have Daz Studio installed to use.
Merchant resources can be used for a variety of things, depending on the terms of use, which is hopefully stated in the read me that you can view before you purchase. I wouldn't say the "sole purpose" of a merchant resource is for using it's assets for resale, as you can still use them to retexture items for personal/commercial renders too. The merchant resource part is sort of a bonus for those that find it useful.
Edit to add more stuff: What you can NOT do with any merchant resource set I have ever seen is collect the maps and make new shader presets, or compile them into a texture resource set, either for sale or for free. What you CAN do is open the maps in your image editor and flood fill a template for a clothing item. Essentially, you can not redistribute anything that would make it easy for another user to extract the base seamless tile(s). I hope that makes sense.
cheers!
Thanks for that!
This makes perfect sense. Basically what I intend to do is retex my favorite product with graphics that fill in the template and then apply the Uber Iray preset to it. Then I would save the current surface settings as an Iray preset and submit it along with a few other redone textures done in the same way.
So what you're saying I shouldn't do is grab up the maps from a variety of merch resources, stick them all together into a big bundle and sell it as a merch resource. That doesn't sound unreasonable at all.
Thanks for the explanation!
Not sure if it's been mentioned but you may need to alter the textures depending on the liscense agreement of the merchant resource. You can usually use say the settings of the shaders but use your own maps. And the reason i am saying this is because if you don't change the textures then you are technically selling the textures that the merchant has made.
You can do searches on google for textures that fit I usually do something like metal texture rust public domain and then check out the pages that pop up some will come up that aren't public domain so read the terms.
If unsure of the usage rights on the merchant resourses you can always contact the merchant and ask :)
Jen is half awake so yeah leaving this here as it's showing me half asleep lol
Happy to help pfunky. Jen is correct that you should definately check the terms of use on each merchant resource you wish to use. In addition to the standard restriction that requires new textures to be baked to a specific UV texture map, I've also seen some that require you to modify the maps to a certain point, some that will only allow redistribution of a few maps in any given set, and some that do not allow use for texturing freebies. Check with the vendor if you are unsure. Happy texturing!
Thank you both so much for the information!
I just realized that I am speaking to DG and JGreenlees. I have bought so much of your content I had no idea LOL! I am in the midst of 3D celebs! Thanks for the great stuff, I aspire to be a PA like the both of you! JenG, I really found your tutorial on youtube for making clothes super helpful. I made my first 3d item ever after watching the 3 part video and it made the modeling process no longer a 'black box' to me. I watched the material zone video too and I am glad to know I am not the only one that gets thrown by Hexagon's crazy UV process ;)
So as an example to both of you using your Iray shader products- Is it ok to use your settings of the shaders on my preset but then I throw in my own Diffuse/bump/Disp/Trans maps? I really like how the settings are used in your products but I can understand that I need to put in my own maps and I never really thought of that when people say "You can not redistribute my product in whole OR PART".
This now makes perfect sense, No one can claim a set of Iray surface values and parameters but the maps are a different story since that is artistry done by a certain artist for that product.
It is crystal clear now - until I dig into more legalise of the EULAs of the various merch resources and I'll come right back here I'm sure ;)
My Fabric Basics and Lace shaders for Iray are both for Merchant resource use, the shader itself is Iray Uber based, the seamless texture tiles you can use on your own product for sale as long as they are on a template for clothes (or whatever), basically cut off the parts of the seamless time that aren't used on that item so someone can't buy your object and get my unaltered seamless tile.
Thanks Fisty!
No wonder people draw within the lines of a template, so the entire seamless graphic can't be used in another item by someone lifting it! I found out the other day that I can just blank out the entire template with a pattern fill and it is fine when it displays on screen but the people that edit it so that the tiles extra material outside of the template are cropped away is so that they don't fall afoul of distributing it in its entirety by accident. Got it!
You PA celebrities are out in force tonight!
It also cuts down a lot on file size. =)
How is this iray, though? That's just the tile the shader is based on? How is the iray resource any different from regular texture resources if you can't actually distribute the shader?
Dana
My set is not just a set of merchant resouce textures, there are plenty of those kicking aorund. Mine is ready to be used to retexture things in DS by end users for kit-bashing or if someone just wants to change the look of something. It started out as just a set of shaders for that purpose, since almost all seamless tiles you can buy have that restriction that they must be used on a template you need to make your own seamless tiles when you're developing a set of shader presets... so if you're making them all from scratch anyway I see no reason not to allow their use as merchant resource too, it broadens the market for the product to not only end users but also content creators.
Edit: and you can redistribute the shader settings from my sets, not a bit deal with the lace, but huge with ones like Fabric Basics, texture maps still need to be cropped to the template but you can apply the shader preset, find out what looks good as far as tiling scale and other settings, tile the texture maps that same amount in a 2D program, crop off the exess on the template with like 10 pixel padding around the outside, and then swap out the texture map calls in the surface tab to your own and turn the tiling down to 1/1, and save it as a material preset.
The lace ones I made to be more of an add-on to the Fabric Basics set since it only includes a few lace styles, but when I made Fabric Basics for Iray it was very new and the most valuable thing about that set was as a short-cut to getting things to look good in Iray. A lot of end users and content creators weren't comfortable yet with Iray so having a product that you could just load something up and go directly to the "shine" section and chose what kind of surface it is was a pretty awesome thing, I still use it all the time to quickly convert 3DL surfaces on older content to Iray since it converts the shader to Iray and makes the glossy settings proper at the same time, really cuts down the the time needed to get older stuff looking nice when you're setting up scenes. Bump and diffuse/base color come through a conversion fine usually but things like glossiness/shine/specular and reflection usually need to be adjusted, and that's much easier with a few double clicks than messing about in the surface tab for 5 minutes on each type of surface (wood, marble, satin, cotton, metal, etc).