Porting = Bad, Copying = Okay?

[Kualan]

Hello everyone, only just discovered this place, no wonder the forums over on the filefront site are so quiet these days.

 

I have a question concerning modding and porting, specifically where the 'line in the sand' is for most modellers.

 

Recently came across this whilst looking for 3D models of Cad Bane on Google:

 

 

It's an extracted mesh/texture from one of the Clone Wars games - I think either Republic Heroes or Clone Wars Adventures by the looks of it - and even if it could be made useable for JKA, it would be illegal to do so. I know that much about the 'porting question'.

 

But is it considered illegal - or even just morally objectionable - for JKA modellers to use meshes from other games as a "paint by numbers" style approach to creating their own meshes? Using the meshes made by developers in other games as a model upon which to base their own renditions of various characters? Or is even that much too far? I am referring to using the mesh as a 'guide', and in no way including anything from another game in the final product.

 

If that's considered okay, I have practically every PC game released under the Star Wars license (legally purchased and obtained, I might add; the only one I can think of that I don't own is Battlefront 1), and have some experience in extracting files and making them presentable so would be willing to try and obtain any meshes or textures modders might want to request to use as 'guides' for their own legit creations for JKA.

[minilogoguy18]

I think if you copied the poly flow exactly it would still be considered copyright infringement, best would be to learn to model then just use some images from the net to make your own mesh.

 

If you want to port models from a game you own to another game you own go right ahead, no one can stop you, it's when you start distributing these things is when it's not ok.

[CaptainChar]

this is a grey area, and unless you get permission from the original source author, your kinda SOL when it comes to redistribution, from what ive learned from ports though, they can go all wonky, and deform on you, plus its better to learn the modelling process, so you'll have one more thing under your belt

[minilogoguy18]

^Some out there are only "wonky" cause the person who ported them is terrible at what they were trying to do. A good example of this is the KotOR ports, they only deform bad because the person who ported them didn't know what they were doing. Any model can be ported successfully as long as the person doing it knows what they're doing, most people who port do it because they don't know how to use the software so it comes out terrible.

[minilogoguy18]

The reason most things that are imported are triangulated is because game engines require them to be so most exporters will do it automatically not because modelers triangulate models themselves. For instance, Softimage can export to dotXSI 3.x with various settings even preserving most scene elements that are normally lost in most file types but JA will only render triangulated polygon meshes. Polygons with more than 3 sides, nurbs surfaces, curves and implicit geometry are not allowed and you'll get errors.

 

I think the limited perspective comes from a lack of familiarity with the model, when you didn't build it you sometimes aren't sure how to go about changing things so that it fits the games skeleton where as the person who made it knows it like the back of their hand and can quickly edit it do work in any game without greatly altering it.

[mrwonko]

Sorry. Im used to blender where you have to triangulate the surfaces yourself before exporting. I know why they must be tris.

That's just a shortcoming of the exporter though. One could imagine the importer triangulating it automatically.

 

Regarding the actual question: I'd render the imported model from front/side/top and then recreate it based on that. That wouldn't be far from modelling based on screenshots.

[minilogoguy18]

^Pretty sure his plugins are on the site but it could use a good video tutorial on how to use them, I couldn't get things to import right but that might just be because I don't know anything about blender.

 

Oh yeah, does blender like not have a triangulate feature? Or is that what you mean by doing it manually? Cause that'd suck if you had to go through and draw all those edges.

[mrwonko]

You doing some work for gtkRad1.6.3 regarding jka btw?

I'm already done, pretty much. We just need an official release. Until then, you can get the gamepack via svn from http://svn.icculus.org/gtkradiant-gamepacks/JAPack/trunk/

 

^Pretty sure his plugins are on the site but it could use a good video tutorial on how to use them, I couldn't get things to import right but that might just be because I don't know anything about blender.

Yes, they need documentation.

[Kualan]

Thanks for all the replies so far, folks. Interesting read.