Toysoldier Thor

I will look at that video tonight. "SLAV" is a SL plugin for 3D studio? Why do you need to send the rigged mesh in Zbrush back to 3D Max to export to DAE? Zbrush has a 3rd party DAE Exporter (the ZSculpty plugin utility as is part of the workflow I mentioned). Does this Zbrush DAE Exporter not deal with rigged mesh models?

That looks cool. That was through the workflow? Can I ask what Armatures and zspheres are? I am far from comfortable or ready to tackle this concept of "rigged mesh" which I understand is a mesh that attaches to an avatar, but I do want to start learning terms related to that - specially if you are doing this in Zbrush. Maybe related or maybe not, but a question I have based on something I wanted to experiment with in the closer future. So I have already been able to create and bring into SL a 2 object model. It was an eyeball inside an eyesocket blob object. I created the two object model in Sculptris and brought it into Zbrush. I was able to paint the two objects separately (eyeball and skin) and export it out to SL. BUT... here is my question.... What if I wanted the eyeball to have a script that made the eyeball randomly rotate twitch? When the model comes into SL its 1 object. Is this where a "rigged" model would let me move an eyeball inside an eyesocket? Or... is the only solution to create two models and in SL to place the eyeball into the socket and then apply a script to the eyeball model and then linkset the two so they stay in relative position to each other?

What is interesting is that all the LI values I gave you were from Aditi.... But when I did the same upload into the main grid the LI was lower ... only .5 LI and $3L cheaper for the upload. Not sure why but Im not complaining.

So here is an example of a "Woman On Knees" sculpture that I completely shaped in Sculptris. After I shaped it, I reduced its poly count from about 500,000 triangles to 5100 triangles / 2680 vertices by using the Sculptris Reduction Brush (love that tool). Then I exported to OBJ out of sculptris and imported it into Zbrush as a Zbrush Tool (Zbrush's stupid name for model) and began the workflow described a the beginning of this thread. I wanted to see just how good the process was at maintaining very high aspects of a material - i.e. Specularity (shininess). So I painted the model with a mossy grunge texture over a very shiny material to make it look like a shiny gold model. As you can see, by flowing through Zaplink and PhotoShop, the model in SL was shiny gold - just like in Zbrush. The LI for the model ended up at 1.16 because I set the LOD of med, low, lowest to 200,50,10 since no one would see this model well from a distance anyway so why give it any real level of high detail. I set the physics to the lowest LOD since I just want someone to bump into it. And I told the upload to include the texture - which it did. The model's upload size was .5 x .99 x .77 Other than the time to create the model in Sculptris, the time from sculptris export to uploading into SL was about 15 minutes. This is the result (I increase her size to 1.4 x 2.2 x 2.8 but the LI is still 1.

you are very welcome. I wrote the instructions keeping in mind all the frustration and hassles I have been struggling with over the past 6 weeks trying to get a BASIC SIMPLE set of instructions on the all mighty WORKFLOW! I know how hair pulling frustrating it was to get step by step instructions. SOOOO I decided to interpret the pretty darn close steps bouttime provided me... and write them down to a level I understood. This meant right down to what button to press on Zbrush and why was I pressing this button. The most complicated mystery in getting a foothold understanding over creating 3d models for import to SL is the END-TO-END WORKFLOW. This workflow might not be perfect for all situations but for a noob like me to gor through the entire process successfully once... a whole set of lightbulbs will go on. Now I can understand it and I can start fine tuning it and improving the workflow. and if this simple end to end workflow works for me - then other can get their lightbulbs turned on too. Thanks for the posting of appreciation. I am glad all the time I took to write it helped someone. And thank bouttime for giving me the seed to this workflow!

So being new to this MESH forum.... tonight I was reading this thread and weekly usergroup meetings.between LL staff and the community. I actually read thru today's released minutes from todays meeting at noon. A couple observations came to mind as I was reading this: What a shockingly different interaction than what all the SL Merchants (which I am) have to endure when trying to get ANYTHING from the LL Commerce Team. I have been heavily involved in the SL Commerce Forums for over three years and except for a few rare moments in the history of the LL Merchant / Commerce teams that have come and gone, we get nothing close to the interaction that this portion of the LL staff provide the MESH Community. Nice to see - sad that the LL Commerce Team doesnt have the same respect for their respective community that I see here. When reading through the transcripts, read several wishes expressed from the mesh attendees on changes and improvements for LL to consider implementing. And although no promises, I read the Lindens like Nyx and Charlar say "if a JIRA was created - its the only way to make the wish for a new feature be considered for development". That is great but what frustrated me as I was reading this was how LL Staff are actually considering all these new features, and yet there are JIRA's of actual proven Grid bugs that are over 4 years old (like the one I have been wanting LL to finally fix SH-2947 ) that just seem to sit and rot in LL's Jira system because LL doesnt want to work on bugs.. So LL developers are hoping new Jira's get generated so they can be scheduled and worked on... but old existing bugs get ignored. So my question to Nyx Linden.... how can a JIRA like the one I pointed out sit in your queues for over 4 years to be worked on but your teams seems to have enough resources to work on countless new enhancements? I really would like to know the logic to this? Anyway.... generally, nice to see that Lindens actually talk to their respective community here. Can you show the LL Commerce Team how you do this?

annnyyyywayssss... I dont want to get into a debate about what is and is not a "GEEK". To stop this debate.... how bout.... "Those who know all about 3D Modeling Terms, concepts and how LL deployed Mesh" ? Is that less insulting? doesnt change my point.

As for my instructions being more Geek that your postings.... I would debate that. My instructions were long but I provided down to the basics step by step instruction ... even mentioning the exact command in Zbrush to use... and provided a sentence explaining why this step was being done. That is not Geek Talk.... Geek Talk would have been if during my steps I said "UV your model" "now clone your polypaint layer to the texture layer".... making high level "technology assuming" statements without provide the NOOB what button to press instructions that go with it. That is Geek Talk. Nothing wrong with geek talk as long as its directed to a fellow geek at the same technology evolutionary point in life as you are. If that makes sense.

Im not insulting anyone.... I fully place myself into the "GEEK" camp as much as you and other 3D modelers are. In fact the steep hurdles with regard to the technical depth required to create Sculpties and now Mesh have been a boom for me over the past 3 years in the substantial revenue I have been able to make in SL from my 6 sculpty packs. Because a relatively low % of the total SL population understood / understands how a sculpty works - much less how one is made, this GEEK barrier is a huge money maker for those that can get through the technical barrier and create. So... fine... if you say I am insulting mesh creators by calling them Geeks then I have... and I have no problem understanding that I insulted myself. But this is not the point to my message. What I was saying was that LL should be doing a lot more to promote Mesh, educate their customer base what mesh is, and better stimulate the general user population to get off the older viewers and onto the Mesh enabled viewers. "Give it time"? The LL strategy seems to be "we created the technology and got it on the grid. Our work is done here... now let this new feature called MESH get to the masses by word of mouth". There is "being stubborn" and then there is not being informed enough to know why they should upgrade a viewer. When most viewer upgrades tend to introduce some kind of new problem or lag or issue with how they operate in SL, many SL residents are not stubborn for the sake of being stubborn. They are resistant to upgrading viewers just because there is a new viewer since it usually disrupts a stable experience. IF SL residents were much more aware that the upgrade they are not interested in upgrading to is preventing them from a much greater expereince in SL.... if LL would do more to educate their customers how amazing mesh is and you dont know what you are missing all because of a simple upgrade of the viewer..... Most SL residents would likely upgrade quickly. Dont confuse stubborn with cautious because of a lack of knownledge.

Thanks Maeve And yes... I completely believe your predictions as I have gone through these "break through a technology understanding" barrier many times. I knew that as frustrating as it was hitting my head on developing a repeatable successful workflow and more importantly to understand the key concepts behind the workflow, that once that AHAH!!! moment hits, it will be like turning on a firehose of knowledge expansion. Its almost like the analogy of doing a puzzle. When you decide you want to tackle the puzzle, you pour out the box of a 1000 pieces. You stare at this mess of unconnected pieces and the best you can do is figure out the edges. The rest makes no sense and you often get very frustrated and walk away from it several times after only finding one or two pieces. Thennn you reach that magic moment when enough pieces are together that the other pieces just fall into place fast! The key facts that turned on the lightbulb for me was several of the facts in bouttime's non-linebreak steps in Zbrush, which even though some of the facts were missing or not 100% on the syntax... it was enough for me to research other video tutorials to fill in the blanks to my noob level of Zbrush. POLYPAINT is actually painting colors on each vertice / point on the model (a video tutorial from pixelogic visually showed exactly how). THIS was a huge fact to discover. Explained why my textures looked like crap. I needed to make the model poly count high enough to match the resolution of the texture I ultimately wanted. Understanding that the PolyPaint and Texture Map are two different types of painting in Zbrush and that when PolyPaint was done, you need to copy the results to the Texture Map that is critical for being exported out of Zbrush. Exactly when a UV Map needs to be created... That I could hold of UV mapping the model until just prior to polypaint clones its results to the texture map. To understand how Zbrush really works with LODs (or sDivides) and how it works with the amazing UVMaster plugin (which is an absolutely Godsend of UV Map simplicity). ZAPLink and when it is needed - i.e. to get the cool aspects of a Material baked into what has been painted. I have learned that ZapLink and PS blending of the Shader to the Texture is not required unless you want the Materials aspects to be part of the exported texture map. And how easy it is with ZSculpty plugin to make quick Collada Exports. No need to use Blender for anything now! Since the published instructions I posted, I have already accomplished two new major accomplishments: Importing a Sculptris model (which I love because of its VOXEL sculpting concept) into Zbrush and having the Workflow 100% absorb the foriegn model and work to SL. Importing a multi-object model from Sculptris and understanding how to polypaint each of the imported objects in the model can be worked on for sculpting and painting. And ... that the multi-object model also 100% works with the workflow to SL. Understanding the limits and more advanced feature of Zbrush Polypaint (i.e. painting an image onto a surface). Understanding how important it is to reduce the polycount of the model right at the beginning of the workflow and how this ultra-low polycount does or does not impact the texture map and LI. Sooo it will be an explosion of ideas now that will let my creativity release. I only now wished more of SL Residents would upgrade their viewers to see Mesh. Still surprising even for me how few residents do not use a mesh enabled viewer. Still about 50% of my friends whom I show my sample models say they cant see the model because they have not been inpired enough about upgrading their Phoenix client. Many of them even now do not really know what mesh is and how its any different than any other prim. This lack of awareness still rests on LL's shoulders. They assume because they are geeks and understand it and because they are working with a bunch of 3D modeling mesh geeks in the mesh forums that understand it... that somehow magically everyone in SL will hear about Mesh and understand it. THEY WONT. Not everyone - in fact most ppl - dont understand even basic technologies.. They just use what they are told and when they need it. And since the full adoption of Mesh involves the full adoption of mesh capable viewers where older viewers are still functional and the upgrade to the new viewers is in each user's control.... LL needs to put a ton more effort promoting MESH ... what it is... why you want to see it.... how do you see, use it, buy it. Ohh well... just some thoughts.

Again.... thank you so much bouttime and Maeve for your time and effort to explain the basic concepts and the steps to a NOOB level. Your guidance and input were invaluable. I now have a proven workflow that I can use and expand upon and even use imported Sculptris models to enter into this workflow. AND NO BLENDER!!!

OK folks - especially Mesh Noobs like me that are lost on the workflow to get a mice mesh model with a high rez baked texture into SL - I have used the invaluable instructions from BOUTTIME WHYBROW as well as from early valuable input from MAEVE BALFOUR to flesh out a detailed step by step instruction for NOOBS by using the ZBRUSH program. I want to thank Bouttime for the detailed instructions / steps. Although they still were not basic and noobish enough for me, I worked thru the instructions 3 or 4 times and finally succeeded in getting my first complete high rez texture baked mesh model created using only ONE TOOL - ZBRUSH ! Without bouttime's guidance I would never ever have figured out these steps. So, below is my basic step by step detailed instructions of how to start from scratch in Zbrush and create a textured model. 1) Create new zbrush 3D tool (ie. a 3D sphere) 2) Immediately enter EDIT mode (in zbrush if you dont enter immediately into EDIT mode - you cant later) 3) Make it into a PolyMesh3d (tool menu "make polymesh3d") 4) option - decimate to lowest poly count possible (this will become your LOD 1) 5) make your basic model shape changes (i.e. create your model's basic shape) 6) Under TOOLS->Geometry increase the model's geometry to 1 or 2 million points by Dividing the model until you reach LOD 4 or 5. This highest LOD of the model can be used to make more shape changes to the model but more importantly this is the LOd that you will polypaint your textures onto the model to achieve a high rez crisp baked texture for later export to DAE. 7) Makes any more subtle shape changes (good news is you can do steps 7 and 8 back and forth as much as you want) 8) Paint your model (remember to switch to a STANDARD brush to make zbrush actually enter in to polypaint mode... many of the other tools will still change the models shape. Also under TOOL->PolyPaint, enable COLORIZE to paint. Also, set your mode to RGB and turn off Z ADD) 9) Set the 6 Sides of the model to Zplink's configuration as follows: 9a) Position the front face (rotate model then hold SHIFT to snap to a face) 9b) Go to DOCUMENT -> Zaplink Properties -> FRONT (back will automatically be set) 9c) Position the Left side of the model (rotate left and hold SHIFT) 9d) Set the Zaplink LEFT side (right will automatically be set too) 9e) Position the Top side of the model (rotate to top of model and hold SHIFT) 9f) Set the Zaplink TOP side (bottom will automatically be set too) 10) Execute the ZapLink feature (i.e. DOCUMENT->ZAPLINK) to move textures of all the set sides of the model into Photoshop. A Zaplink popup window will appear. You will see Zaplink take a photo of each side of your model and then Photoshop opens a new document with 2 layers for each side - a total of 12 layers at very high res that came from polypaint of Zbrush vis Zaplink. 11) You will now work in Photoshop and leave Zbrush alone for a while until you SAVE the document in Photoshop which returns the updated images back to Zbrush control. Following is what you do in Photoshop to perfect the images: 11a) For each side, you click on the SHADER layer and duplicate this layer. Then "MERGE DOWN" the first Shader layer to the side's main texture layer. Do these 3 steps to each of the 6 sides. You will still end up with 12 layers like when you started. What this does is integrate the material, shader, and specularity aspects of the texture into the texture to become 1 baked layer per side. 11b) You can apply any other photoshop enhancements to the image as well (like brightness etc.) 11c) SAVE the document in Photoshop. This will save the layers back to Zbrush via the zaplink interconnect. It is not Saving like a normal save in PS... its a Save that links back to Zbrush control. 12) Return to ZBRUSH program. It was suspended and waiting for your return. When you return to Zbrush it will notice that changes were made in Photoshop and ask you to accept the changes of the texture layers for each side. You will be asked to accept 6 times (one for each side). THIS BAKES THE TEXTURE with its Shaders/material ON YOUR MODEL. 13) To see how the texture will look when rezzed in SL, change the "Material" to a neutral material like "skinshade". The texture will get brighter as the darker material is not being anymore on the model. 14) Now you need to ensure your model has a UV map applied. You will use "UV Master" to do this work. Following are the steps: 14a) Goto ZPLUGIN->"UV Master" and click "WORK ON CLONE". You need to do this since UV Master cannot do its job on a model with multiple LODs. "Work on Clone" creates a new lowest LOD duplicate of the model. You will now see a white textured low rez model. 14b) Click "UNWRAP" from UV Master. Your model will have a new efficient UV set. If you want to control where the UV seam should or shouldnt go, you can "Enable Control Painting" first and then use the Protect & Attract buttons and paint on the white clone skin the areas you want UV Master to avoid a seam or attract a seam. Then you click "UNWRAP". 14c) You now need to place that UV seam onto the real model with all the LODs. To do this your click the UV Master "Copy UVs" button, then under "Tools" you click on your main model to make it the active model again in zbrush. Then you click UV Master "Paste UVs". Your main model now has the UVs assigned to it at all LODs. 15) Now you need to SAVE your baked high rez model texture that is on the model. To do this you do the following: 15a) Click the TOOLS subtool of "UV Map" and click a UV Map size of 1024. Since SL can only bring in an image no larger than 1024, clicking a higher size is useless. 15b) Click the TOOLS subtool of "Texture Map" and click the "New From PolyPaint" button. Then click the "Clone Txtr" button on this subtool a little higher up. This will move a copy of the baked high rez texture to your main Textures menu on the left side of your Zbrush screen. It needs to go there so that you can export the texture out of Zbrush. 15c) Click open the "Texture" popup window on the left side and click "EXPORT" and save the texture to your disk (in PSD BMP ot TIF). You now have the exported baked high-rez shader aspects texture for the model. This could be used to bring into SL independent from the model's .dae import. 16) You now need to get the model itself converted to a Collada DAE format. You will use the "ZSculpty Tools" (a tool you installed from Pixelogic's downloads site earlier) to export the model to DAE format. To do this you: 16a) Go to your TOOLS->Geometry subtool and reduce the model to the lowest LOD - "SDiv1". This is the model geometry that will be exported out. 16b) Goto the Zplugin->Zsculpty Tools and click on "Export SL Mesh" (there are a couple other option you can click prior to clicking export). You will be asked what the name of the DAE file will be. 16c) The tool will then create your DAE with the actual high rez baked texture at 1024 into the DAE. You now have a DAE that you can import into SL. 17) Enter into SL and Upload Model. Remember that if you want the model to come in with the texture that was baked in from zbrush - you need to go to the UPLOAD OPTIONs and click on the "include textures". If you dont then the model will not internally add the textures to the model. You will have to do this texturing seperately. 18) REZ THE MODEL TO SL!!! And here is a photo of the model I got into SL. Its just a blob but take note that the texture amazingly high rez and it even includes most of the material aspects like specularity and shading and bump!

Ann Otoole wrote: I wonder if their magic boxes are on homestead sims or on regions that always have over 25 avis on them. this is a good theory and one that could be assessed against IS / IS NOTS... The problem is that there currently is no clear list of IS's and IS NOTs. People are mostly trying to figure out the root cause to the problem by looking at the symptoms experienced by those with problems. A list of the configurations of those with no problems needs to be added to the list so the problem can be isolated. Your thoery has some promise because I am a healthy deliveris merchant and my magicbox is not on a homestead and from what I see, the sim I am on rarely has 25+ avis on it.... soo...

I do think that for the most part MP deliveries are good but I dont want to dismiss that there seems to be a root cause situation that seems to cause a lot of delievery grief for some merchants. I also know that in the pas few weeks (not sure about last week) one of my friends in SL who is only a shoppper in MP (not a merchant) told me that her shopping experience has been horrid. She generally shops in the midnight to 4am timeframes and almost all her orders have completely failed or were an hour late. Her impression of MP shopping of late has been - "I'm lucky if I get my orders now from MP". So I believe there is something wrong.... I just dont know why my configuration as a merchant of MP seems to completely avoid these delevery failures. I do get the delivery delays during the witching hours like most do but those are not failures. Finding root cause of a problem involves problem isolation. I am a huge fan of the Kepner Tregoe Problem Analysis methods. A key to this method is to clearly prove the aspects of what the problem is vs is not. Then throw theories against these IS / IS NOTS. i.e. > if it IS the version of Magicbox code then why are merchants with my version of code having delivery probs? > if its because a magicbox is on a laggy sim... then why does it not happen on my laggy mainland sim? > if its because a merchant only has 1 magicbox.... then why do I have no problems with only 1 magicbox? These are the things that need to be analyzed... compare merchants with problems to situations of merchants that are having no problems.

still freaky how several merchants here post about so many MP Magicbox delivery horror stories.... high frequency of delivery failures, and now this problem..... and yet for me to get a delivery failure is extremely rare.... I just looked at my sales history since Jan 1, 2012. > I had 3 order with a status of Partial Delivery Failure. > All 3 were shopping cart fails and not of my product in the cart and I was paid for my product in those orders > That was 3 failures (which were not really fails for me) of about 135 sales. > 100% delivered for me & only 2% where my product was part of an order that failed (although not mine) > I have 1 magicbox (with v3.0.11 code) in my store on what is generally known to be a laggy mainland sim. > My magicbox has all my MP products in it which is about 60 items So maybe those that have major problems have far greater daily sales that stresses the magicbox out or far more in your magicboxes. Dont know... but its weird how some have no probs and some have tons of probs.

Amethyst Jetaime wrote: I've tried all the different options and got nothing. I too never saw my ads and neither did any of the many people that I asked to look for it. I checked several times a day the entire time it was supposedly on there. As far as I'm concerned mine never appeared regardless of what the report said. Its a waste of money. Totally agree with you. I gave up on MP Xstreet ads longgggggg time ago. Never seen them - never improved sales at all in the 5 wasted attempted. It was just throwing money away for me. EDIT: In fact one of my times I had an enhancement feature I reloaded the front page for an hour. I often saw the same ad show up but in that entire hour of over 500 page loads of the xstreet page... I never once saw my ad.

If you are reporting income being generated from some SL business activities, you should really be capturing all the transaction history from the main SL transaction history log. I capture all my transactions for the entire month each month. The risk of waiting for an entire month is if you forget for a few days, LL stupid maximum 30 day history will screw you and you will miss a few days of transactions that slip past the window. I also capture all the MP sales transactions from the MP site even though the main transaction history records all MP sales. The reason I capture ALL transactions is because I want a record of ANY expenses I incurred in SL to operate the business. For example, if I made 100,000 in January and I paid a monthly rent of 2000L and LL MP advertising for the month of 3000L etc. then I want to know these and record these as expenses against the income that was generated. This transaction log will more accurately show you all Lindens that were actually generated from business activites vs if an SL friend for whatever reason gifted you 20,000 because he was a nice guy. You can then use that NET LINDEN income and determine how much of the Lindens that were sent out to $US cash to paypal was actual income. Or you could just use the ultra-stable currency exchange and divide the $L net-income by 249 as an option. Either way... these transaction logs will tell you all you need. Finally, if you are reporting SL business income, be sure to also include RL expenses related to the SL business. For example, if you bought a new DSLR camera and or a Software license of Photoshop for $700 or a Wacom tablet or an upgrade to your PC.... consider using a portion or all of these costs as expenses against any income you generated in SL (if for example you used all these to create textures etc.). Just some thoughts and only my humble uneducated opinions....

ok i have installed that long time ago.... even with zbrush 3. I now have zbrush 4 and that transition screwed up a lot of my workflow. Got errors on the prims entering that plug in - always seemed to be a complication. BUT that was more with sculpties and Z4. I have not tried mesh as i gave up on it for the most part except that I like zbrush's UV MASTER. The Zaplink sounds really interesting as I want to learn how to get a crisp clear sharp good rezzed texture for a mesh into SL. I have only had moderate success. and u r right... someone needs to sit down with Zbrush team and tell them to re-term most of their tool to terms that make sense. Its like they said.... "if the industry calls this a Gadget... lets call it a Shovel" Dont know what they were thinking. I will update you when i try it. Thanks again

Thanks so much Bouttime for all your effort in explaining how to use Zbrush more fully. I have always wanted to use Zbrus more but got frustrated with Zbrush's terrible terminology like calling a model a TOOL and switching into a mode of polygon vs not. Your posting still had no line breaks so I had to copy it into word to read it A few points from your posting.... WOW I didnt know that Zbrush has recently released a direct Collada export plugin. I thought the only plugin was from shinylife and often I get errors from that tool.... likely the way I am using it. I really must go find this new plugin. What is the name of this new plugin? I never heard of Zaplink either! This sounds exciting too. Your steps are for a tool I initialy liked and very very well explained. I will need time to go through your steps and see how the results work. I will post back later to tell you how it goes. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS INVALUABLE ADVICE!!! Where do I send the roses?

Actually I briefly tried working with zbrush model texturing a while ago but it was no intuitive so i abandoned trying to figure it out further. I only used zbrush to create PLANE type models for my SL Sculpty terrain packs. My mind seems to wrap much more naturally to the voxel type tools like Sculptris and 3DCoat - and in Sculptris the texturing of the model was very simple and common sense. Are you suggesting I export my texture, bump, normal maps from Sculptris and import them and the model into Zbrush to merge them together? My understanding is that in order to get the textures i painted onto a model into SL , they have to be integrated together with the tool that will be executing the Collada export (i.e. Blender). Zbrush currently has not export to .DAE yet (wished they did - wished Sculptris and 3DCoat did too). Please help me understand what you are suggesting.

Dont know if any of you 3D folks have heard but there is an AMAZING (hard to even believe) promotion right now from DAZ3D... For the month of February... DAZ 3D is offering a fully licensed version of their DAZ STUDIO PRO BRYCE 7 PRO HEXAGON 2.5 FREE ! Hard to believe but this week I registered and logged in and bought through their shopping cart and downloaded all three of these packages with their provided licensing. I installed all three products. Here is the link if any of you were interested in DAZ 3D products... http://www.daz3d.com/i/3d/free-3d-software-overview?home_5_btn=start

First of all we were talking about a person taking a 2D photo of a 3D structure or artwork. Your first paragraph was not on topic. I wasnt talking a 2D of a 2D - photo of photo. So...example.. if I went and bought a tapestry and brought it home or I saw a statue of a white marble lion at the front of a neighbours driveway or a statue of a bronzed work in a park.... and I took a photo of it.... no copyright restrictions of my 2D photo of that 3D structure or statue or work. Yes the UK is a bit more picky about this ruling but I dont live in europe. Anyway.... this thread has completely come off the OP and its more of a witch hunt of which LL doesnt seem to care. So you all can stay in the thread and maybe you all can attack another poster that enters and disagrees with you. This thread is so far off topic and poisonous. Enjoy ladies....

OK if I am wrong on this point.... which I am pretty sure I am not based on the research I did on it... then NEF had better do some MASSIVE deletes of almost all her MP Store.... since you are suggesting that if I am wrong... almost ALL of Nef's photos of the countless other artist's 3D artworks (statues, sculptures, bronzes, building architectures, etc.) are in violation of copyright. Those white lions and tombstones and statues and building 3d stoneworks.... OHHHHH Nef...... Start deleting !! You entire MP store will be wiped out if Innula''s fear is correct. Ohh and Innula.... I sure hope you dont own a camera and used it to take any photos other than of your family and home.... because then you have just been violating copyright for every 3D statue or artwork you took a photo of during your vacation. uhmmmm... yes I am pretty sure Innula lol.... but please... prove me wrong and then I guess we can start looking combing thru all the content in all the merchant's of MP. obviously you cant take photos of 3D content that was not released or sold or deemed for public viewing (i.e. breaking in somewhere etc.) and I am sure there are limits exceptions... but generally.

Made, Back in 2009 when I got into Sculpties (making and selling 60L cheapies on xstreet was going no where), I decided to initially use and include a few seamless rock texture (5 or 6 diferent tock textures) from a cool texture artist that allows full use of his seamless textures - even without attribution. But I gave the texture artist attribution anyway and even mention his name on the label of my packs where his textures are in the pack. For my raging rivers sculpty pack with is rough raging rivers, waterfalls, rapids, I decided to take my own photos and make them seamless. They turned out so well that I decided to sell them as actual texture packs. I really loved making seamless textures... and have since made rock, stone, and even snow texture packs to be sold independently and with my packs. Then in 2010 I got full addicted into creating art.... first manipulations of SL photography and then mixed media manipulation. And if you want to learn about copyright... be digital artist. Not only do you have to worry about the main image - which is mine - but also the copyright rules for the countless enhancement / blending textures and even photoshop brushes. Since I quickly decided that I wanted to sell my art (which only started out as a hobby), I knew I had to find textures from artists that would allow their textures for commercial use - often this is not the case. So I found another awesome texture artist on Flickr that I contacted and asked if I could use her textures for commercial use. Again, although I was allowed to use her textures without attribution... I so appreciate her works as part of my works that I give credit to all her textures in my art to this day. In fact, even though LL TOS allows SL photographers to take photos of any SL sim whereby the sim owner has not stated any restrictions on photography of content on the sim, I still give attribution to any sim owners where I took the photo in my artworks. To be sure to protect myself and my art I even take an image snapshot of the sim's covenance on the day I took the photo and keep it just in case the sim owner decides to change his/her terms of photo restrictions. Finally, since enhancement / blending textures are so important to my artworks, in 2010 I started a serious compaign to take my own high resolution photos (bought a $1500 DSLR with the profits from SL) and have built up a large personal library of my own textures where I am in full control of my copyrights. So I use my own textures wherever possible and the use my other texture artist's work for anything else. It keep my copyright control tight. My new high rez textures have even had a side benefit as they are starting to sell RL to commercial artists - which was not planned but an amazing bonus. I recently sold one of my seamless snowflake textures for $65US for non-exclusive without attribution for single commercial deriviative. Forget about understanding copyrights on MP .... try operating on art sites like Deviant Art where everything has to be stated and even attributed ... often with links to the copyright owner. Now my artworks themselves are moving to RL sales onto canvas. .... all said... my 3.5 year old cheapies tapestries... for me has long been ancient history. And if they are going to be used as a source for a witch hunt by follow merchants and bitter immature forum posters that dont like being proven wrong.... its not worth keep them for the few hundred Linden they generate a year. Even I dont know where I got the texture way back when and none of you can prove where I got them from either. Just unfounded non provable accusations. Now.... Veronika and Zanara and Nef.... maybe you should open up a new thread called "MERCHANT WITCH HUNTS" and start digging through each merchant's content... As you all already know - the tapestries I had are used by dozens of merchants for the same reason I used them way back when. Public Domain.

Nef said... They can claim copyright on their tapestry derivative work, and the photo in the advertisement of their derivative work. That's what ToySoldier infringed on: not the dead painter's copyright, but the companies derivative and the photo of it. ,,, A TAPESTRY derivative can only be copyright 3D to 3D - not 3d to 2D. i.e. a tapestry is a 3 dimensional object similar to all the statues and every other random object you claim you have taken photos of. Anyone can take a photo of a actual hanging tapestry or a statue or a tombstone or 3d artpeice and use the resulting photo of the hanging Tapestry or 3D object free of any copyright claims. I was not selling a competing 3D RL hanging tapestry that I hand weaved nor are you selling a mock up of a hand chiselled white lion or the dozens of pages of other images you are selling on MP. The best legal case example of this is the Charging Bull on Wallstreet when the artist tried to sue two large commercial operations - a retailer and a bank - for copyright infringement by using photos of his raging bull. The courts sided against the artist that copyright is not violated on a 2D capture of a 3D copyrighted object or artwork.