Possible 3D graphics resource

ostlandr · Post by **ostlandr** » 17 Jun 2007 20:14

If there is anybody on the forum who is flush with cash and really wants to help, these might be a possible resource for 3d graphics:

http://www.the3dstudio.com/product_sear ... locomotive

http://www.turbosquid.com/Search/Index. ... locomotive

A bit pricey- still looking for freebies, but it looks like you get what you pay for. And with the amount of work a 3D image takes (I have played around with 3D modeling software a bit) "the treading ox deserves its grain" as they say.

ThePenguin · Post by **ThePenguin** » 17 Jun 2007 21:23

I'm pretty sure the models have to be free or GPL for us to use them. If they used those they would be distributing a paid-for model for free.

ostlandr · Post by **ostlandr** » 18 Jun 2007 23:25

ThePenguin wrote:I'm pretty sure the models have to be free or GPL for us to use them. If they used those they would be distributing a paid-for model for free.

The idea is, individual forum members could purchase the rights to use sprites rendered from a particular 3d model in OpenTTD. As long as the artist knows what we have in mind, I don't see a problem. Also, we wouldn't be distributing the highly detailed 3d image itself, just the sprites rendered from it.

It has been suggested that, since I came up with this idea, that I just volunteered myself to keep track of what models we have and which ones we need.

That much I can do.

I will keep a list (in Excel format if that's cool) and then when the project is complete, we can have a page in the manual listing the artists and generous members. Guess I need to look up the graphic specs. It might be easier if one of our hardworking develpers let me know "format A is ideal, format B works, format C can be made to work, but formats D-Z we can't use." Also, what's our priority? I presume Great Britain 1950-2050?

DaleStan · Post by **DaleStan** » 19 Jun 2007 03:25

ostlandr wrote:The idea is, individual forum members could purchase the rights to use sprites rendered from a particular 3d model in OpenTTD. As long as the artist knows what we have in mind, I don't see a problem.

That, in itself, is not a problem, but ...

ostlandr wrote:Also, we wouldn't be distributing the highly detailed 3d image itself, just the sprites rendered from it.

unless my understanding of the GPL is rather borked, such distribution would be in violation of it. I don't see how anyone could argue that the "the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it" is anything other than the 3d model.

IANAL.

athanasios · Post by **athanasios** » 19 Jun 2007 06:59

(This time

) I agree with you DaleStan.
Usage could only be possible upon special licence from artist. Yet I don't think many would provide one.

Raven · Post by **Raven** » 19 Jun 2007 13:21

If you're willing to spend cash, you could always fund the efforts of a community-member. That person would create the desired objects/sprites/whatever.

There are very capable 3d artists around, but as you said, this stuff takes time.

Regards

Chicago Rail Authority · Post by **Chicago Rail Authority** » 19 Jun 2007 13:43

...capable artists...

You being one of them.

[EDIT]Avoiding a double post...[/EDIT]

I contacted the company in question regarding the intended use, and this is their response:

The3dStudio.com wrote: You can use our models/etc for any creative purpose which includes pretty
much anything except re-selling the model itself. If you render the model to
2D images you CAN use those images any way you want, including giving them
away or selling them or using them as sprites in a game. The artist grants
you a royalty free license to use the products in that way.

Further, the agreement can be found at:
http://www.the3dstudio.com/legal.aspx

@DaleStan - Is your aforementioned concern with the general licensing of OTTD (a position with which I am already familiar), or specific to the models from this type of website? I'm not familiar with the language you quoted... If you'd prefer to PM me to avoid yet another lengthy and drawn out public discussion of either game's underlying legality, please do so.

DaleStan · Post by **DaleStan** » 20 Jun 2007 02:30

My understanding is that any graphics distributed with OpenTTD would have to be GPL. If this is the case, then the 3D models[0] would have to be distributed, and the GPL requires that it be permissible to sell them. If, on the other hand, this is not the case, then I don't have a leg to stand on.

IANAL, as usual.

[0] being "the preferred form of the work [the graphics] for making modifications to it"

athanasios · Post by **athanasios** » 20 Jun 2007 05:51

Quite a number of the artists of the forums, including myself, wouldn't agree to GPL their graphics. If a company wants to include it in a distro like Mandriva or SUSE (as long as a worthy download of their distro is available for free), or if a poor fellow wants to port the game into OS "whoknowswhat" that will be used in 'X' mobile and cover his expences with a few bucks that are donated to him for his effort or given to purchase a CD possibly it is OK. But sorry I don't want Micro...garbage to make a state of the s*** clone (3D) game and make profit from my work and fill the pockets of BILLY. THIS SHOULDN'T BE THE FATE OF OPENTTD. I LOVE OPENTTD AND WANT TO PROTECT IT.

And I don't think that the 3D model be given along with the rest. We don't have a 3D OpenTTD yet and not in the near future. The game engine will not create the 2D sprites from the 3D model automatically, but the artists will. And this includes too much work. (light, texturing, fine tuning of pixels, adding support for company colors...). The 2D sprites are considered the source in this case. Nevertheless I respect your opinion on the latter, so don't consider my reply as an attack against you.

And Raven (one of our most talented artists) has spoken well.

XeryusTC · Post by **XeryusTC** » 20 Jun 2007 09:12

athanasios wrote:Quite a number of the artists of the forums, including myself, wouldn't agree to GPL their graphics. If a company wants to include it in a distro like Mandriva or SUSE (as long as a worthy download of their distro is available for free), or if a poor fellow wants to port the game into OS "whoknowswhat" that will be used in 'X' mobile and cover his expences with a few bucks that are donated to him for his effort or given to purchase a CD possibly it is OK. But sorry I don't want Micro...garbage to make a state of the s*** clone (3D) game and make profit from my work and fill the pockets of BILLY. THIS SHOULDN'T BE THE FATE OF OPENTTD. I LOVE OPENTTD AND WANT TO PROTECT IT. [/qoute]
AFAIU GPL you have to release everything that includes any GPL licenced stuff (that being code or graphics) would have to be GPL'd too. LGPL should solve this case.
Feel free to correct me here.

athanasios wrote:And I don't think that the 3D model be given along with the rest. We don't have a 3D OpenTTD yet and not in the near future. The game engine will not create the 2D sprites from the 3D model automatically, but the artists will. And this includes too much work. (light, texturing, fine tuning of pixels, adding support for company colors...). The 2D sprites are considered the source in this case. Nevertheless I respect your opinion on the latter, so don't consider my reply as an attack against you.

And what happened to the idea that a render farm will render all sprites from the models? Or that other people can edit your models because they feel like they can improve it? It's an open source game and the best way to modify it is by starting with the beginning, not some intermediate step.

DaleStan · Post by **DaleStan** » 20 Jun 2007 15:09

The "Lesser" part refers to the fact the work may be used in propritary programs, as long as the recipient of the propritary program can use any version of the work they desire.

I'm not sure how this helps the case with 3D graphics; the LGPL still requires the source[0] of the LGPLed work.

[0] Saying "preferred form of ..." is getting tedious. But don't forget that it is the official line from the [L]GPL.

Raven · Post by **Raven** » 21 Jun 2007 20:31

In either (any?) case, there are few locomotives for a reasonable price given the intended use. (Max reasonable size of render needed by OTTD).

If what the maintainers need is the model, I'm sure no artist of the community would say no to share the files. After all, considering the day comes when there are 16 views for each vehicle (for example), and not having around the person with the model (or rights to use it), would have been like wasting the money.

Again, having the direct support of the member outweights whatever customer support these companies have. (and they keep quite a large percentage of the final price)

About licenses, well, they tend to get in the middle of development, so in this case I'd trust the developer or let it be GPL.

EDIT: Oh, and nobody considered standarization, which is a must in this type of games. Type of colouring, lighting, textures, scripts to get the 8 views (or 8*n in the case of planes)...

EDIT2: Considering the options, here's the cheapest it gets for a reasonable quality, 10-15€, but only a few examples.

http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/I ... /ID/309209

Regards

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hmm, against double posting, I'll write my experience about post process of sprites in here.

Well, it all depends on size of render. As many will have realised by now, trying to get classic OTTD vehicles with a direct render won't get you a lot of popularity. Player colour is only a minor issue, but the incorrect aliasing, odd pixels, strange shapes, complete lack of special pixel tricks, also lack of standarization for certain elements (imagine the original TT trucks, or the steel coils that were everywhere, or a truck on a flatcar), that's destroyed at 64 pixel size.

128 vehicles are not that much of an issue, you can get decent results (I think there are still some examples in the Simutrans forum). And the larger it gets...

About player colouring, if it's going to use the method of original TT, then no problem, since you can either render a mask (as good old Alltaken method stated) and then copypaste it over. Or apply a pallette that restricts the range of blue/green to the exact values. This would detract a lit of quality from the image (see locomotion) IF we were restricted to a single 256 pallete, but we aren't, and for my Simutrans ventures I used a grey scale with 12 colours asigned to certain materials present in the model, and 8 for the player colouring (brass, copper, wood, whatever). This gave nice results (Hadn't I applied it to size 64 sprites, which meant I had a good base to pixel push over).

A bit confusing, but roughly it'd go something like this:
Render-Merge in one single png-Sharpen image (I used Gimp)-Apply pallete-tweak pixels

EDIT: Added old pic of my TTSet weekend project. Ah, if only Simutrans had animation, the rods would have been there

ostlandr · Post by **ostlandr** » 21 Jun 2007 22:54

The3dStudio.com wrote: You can use our models/etc for any creative purpose which includes pretty
much anything except re-selling the model itself. If you render the model to
2D images you CAN use those images any way you want, including giving them
away or selling them or using them as sprites in a game. The artist grants
you a royalty free license to use the products in that way.

Let me see if I understand all this.
Let's say I hypothetically want to do some 3d art. I purchase detailed 3d models of an Alco "Big Boy" and some freight cars from The3dStuido.com under the agreement above. Then I use Poser (or Daz3d or whatever) to make a really great scene of the locomotive running a time freight at speed through a fantastic landscape. (presume I also have licenses to all the graphics used.) Then I render that 3d scene to a 2d image. That image then becomes my intellectual property. If I want to distribute it under GPL, then I would have to make available not only the 2d image file, but the Poser/Daz3d file as well?

Post by **PikkaBird** » 21 Jun 2007 23:15

Pretty much. Which just goes to show that the GPL is not an appropriate licence for complex artworks.

athanasios · Post by **athanasios** » 22 Jun 2007 01:32

Would you also have to make available all the skins you used, the plug-ins you used and any photos that helped you with liveries? Do you have license from companies using these liveries?

Raven · Post by **Raven** » 22 Jun 2007 10:46

I guess you could always make your own license.

They don't have to be perfect, but nobody is going to kill for the stuff being done here, and if it's going to be stolen, nobody is going to commit lawyers to defend his/her models. Often a polite e-mail is more than enough.

Again, the artists are here already.

the3dstudio.com · Post by **the3dstudio.com** » 22 Jun 2007 17:45

Maybe I can shed some light on the subject of how the models can be used (I am the President of The3dStudio.com).

It sounds like you plan to take the 3D models and render 2D images from them (aka, sprites). You will then use these sprites in your game and redistribute them.

This use is 100% okay to do. Upon purchase, you have a royalty free license to use the model in this way. The images you render from the model can even be sold...but the model file itself (what you purchased from us) cannot be resold.

Any questions, feel free to contact us directly at support@the3dstudio.com

iagows · Post by **iagows** » 17 Jul 2007 15:55

We can make out own models

I think I can make models using wings3d and distribute the model for rendering. Wings3d is very easy to use, but doesn't have a good renderer.

(sorry for the English, my native language is Java... ops, Brazilian Portuguese)

this is my first post

Bilbo · Post by **Bilbo** » 17 Jul 2007 16:19

PikkaBird wrote:Pretty much. Which just goes to show that the GPL is not an appropriate licence for complex artworks.

Yes, if one of the source file will be GPL, you'll have to include entire source for the scene along with the movie. But if someone releases such movie as "public domain", you are IMHO legally alowed to incorporate it into GPL'd game - you don't know even if this have some source or if it was shot by camera outside (though usually such movies are not realistic enough to be undistinguishale from camera recording). If you do some gamma correction, you don't have to keep original 'source' image probably either.

Still, sometimes it is hard to tell what is the source and what is just tool used for development ....

In theory, when including some model converted from 3dsmax in a GPL'd game, you should put in also the .max file (the source of the model), source code od 3ds max (which is needed to convert the .max to some simpler format you are using) and source code of windows (which are needed to run 3ds max) ... Hmmm .... you don't have source of 3dsmax and windows? Too bad ....

athanasios · Post by **athanasios** » 18 Jul 2007 03:24

You forgot the 'source code' of the motherboard, CPU and Graphics Card you used...

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