Mesh Avatars with Second LIfe Mapping? Legal?

[RipleyVonD]

I was wondering how legal it is to upload a mesh Avatar with compatible Second Life UV Coordinates or UV Mapping. The mesh Avatar source would be a Make Human Avatar. Legal info would be very much appreciated, Thanks. 

[MIstahMoose]

http://www.makehuman.org/doc/faq/can_i_sell_models_created_with_makehuman.html

http://www.makehuman.org/doc/faq/can_i_create_a_commercial_closed_source_game_with_models_generated_by_makehuman.html

[RipleyVonD]

I appreciate the the links MIstaMoose but I am aware of Make Humans lenient license, Its the reason I thought of using a Make Human Avatar. The issue is I'm not aware of Linden Labs legal side. Is Linden Lab ok with taking a Make Human Avatar and creating Second Life compatible coordinates?

[MIstahMoose]

Linden lab doesn't have any creative restrictions, Just don't create anything that is illegal in RL and you'll be fine here too.

[Chic Aeon]

No one here can actually answer that question since The Lab is the only one who can and as citizens we are SO not The Lab (yes, here's that *wink*).

 

It "seems" like it is OK as the license is public domain and most lawyers seemed to feel that is OK to upload (again, just their opinion) and since there IS no license you would not be going against anything in section (I think it is 2.2 but not absolutely sure).

As far as the coordinates, folks here have stated that the Linden avatar is "open source" for USE and as long as you don't reupload it as "yours" OK. Again, that is only what folks have said.

We don't know.

We WON'T know until something happens to LET us know - LOL.  And it all goes round and round.

 

 

[Gaia Clary]

Hi;

The Linden Lab Avatar is distributed under the CC By 3.0 license. this has been mentioned by LindenLab themself here:

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Avatar-model-and-clothing-files-now-have-an-updated-license/td-p/739657

I have read the CC By 3.0 license in more detail and i tried to understand how this works together with the TOS. Of course all what i write here is only my opinion and no advise of any kind. Just some thoughts.

So, in first place it looks like you can do anything you want with the Avatar, including reusing the UV Layout of the SL Avatar on the MH Avatar, provided you do the correct attribution required by the CC license. That is: you must mention LL as the original creator of parts of your product.

So far, so well. Now to the TOS: LL clearly tells that you must waive all rights to LindenLab, which means lindenLab can do whatever they want with your derived work including redistribution of any kind. Since LL has allready all rights on the original work, and since you waive all rights to them they actually CAN do what they want, but ...

You can do this as well: You can distribute your derived work for example under CC By 3.0. The TOS does not forbid that. They state that your content remains your content. So you can redistribute your own work to the public if you like and as you like (at least i think that redistributing your modifications under the same license as the original work sounds very legal and doable).

And here is the catch:

If you your Makhuman avatar with SecondLife UV Map is distributed by you under CC By 3.0 (because you have chosen to do so as assumed above), then any third party must use your work under CC By 3.0 attribution.

On the other side LindenLab owns the SL Avatar and since you waived your rights to them, they also can do whatever they want with your own modifications, including redistribution of your work under any license. Lets assume they have decided to not redistribute your work under CC By 3.0. And lets assume the same third party has got your content once from you under CC By 3.0 and once from LindenLab under their own license.

So which of the 2 licenses counts then ?

[Rhys Goode]

As a practical matter, *HOW* would one use the SL UV map on a different avatar mesh?  The only thing I can think of is to start with whatever UV map the MakeHuman happens to have, and then spend a couple of weeks editing the UV map, almost surface by surface.  

Is there some "easy" way to take the UV map from one mesh and apply to a different mesh?  

[MIstahMoose]

Maybe not weeks, but tedious yes. Unwrapping like SL has and positioning the pieces in the correct way. Could take some time, but with proportional editing and all the other tools blender has it wouldn't be all too difficult. You might end up with some distortions though. I don't think it would be easy to get perfect, and the skins people design for SL avatars would look hella weeird. So I wouldn't see the point of actually doing it..

[Chic Aeon]

OK. Someone obviously reported that LL avatar use incorrectly .  So I take back my previous comment.

This takes us back to a thread from a week or so ago with the same CC use and uploading. It looks like the Make Human license (or lack thereof) makes it legal from their side, but you are still stuck with The Lab and creative commons use. And as it has been said OFTEN, there is no answer to this but it seems like since you cannot ATTRIBUTE   cannot guarantee attribution will stick is more correct --  you cannot use in SL.

Edit:

"Except as prohibited by law, you hereby waive, and you agree to waive, any moral rights (including attribution and integrity) that you may have in any User Content, even if it is altered or changed in a manner not agreeable to you."

Now  here's something I hadn't noticed before (or is new as each time I read this it seems different - likely me) - that "except as prohibited by law" part. So if you are using creative commons attrib items as a base of your work and THAT licence is "law", then THAT (in my train of thought) couldn't be taken away? YOU would lose YOUR rights by uploading but the original CC creator could not be stripped?  An interesting Idea. I have obviously been watching SUITS *wink*.

End edit.

 

I have a neighbor in my commercial sim in IW that seems to be using the Make Human avatar as a base. I have seen others doing this also but HIS are spectacular. Now, "to me" they look tooooooo photorealistic; it is jarring. So in some sense they do not seem like "real avatars". But they are mightily impressive. Hopefully he has done a lot of work on them and not just ported them in. I don't know all that much about Make Human.

IF the idea behind Ripley's question is to have a mesh avatar that could wear regular Standard Sizing or Fitted Mesh clothing, then it seems a better route would be to make your avatar from and test clothing inworld adjusting as needed.

ALSO I noted that there is a NEW area on the backend of the Marketplace form where you say which avatar your clothing will fit.  Make a good enough avatar and folks will design for it. We know that some folks have made small to large fortunes on mesh PARTS this way .

 

[Sassy Romano]

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MIstahMoose wrote:

 I don't think it would be easy to get perfect, and the skins people design for SL avatars would look hella weeird. So I wouldn't see the point of actually doing it..

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L$!

That's the point, re-use of all their effort in skins and other textures that have a new life with new mesh avatars

[Aquila Kytori]

Just to note,

Layer 2 of the Avatar Workbench    http://blog.machinimatrix.org/avatar-workbench/   already has a Make Human mesh UV unwrapped to cover the SL UV's