*sighs* More possible texture theft

For those of you who don't know me, I run .:: by Max ::. and I primarily make skins.

So I was flying around my island yesterday when I saw someone wearing someone elses skin but I was immediately struck by the shading on the skin that matched mine almost exactly. The tint was different, the back and face were different, but you spend so many weeks working on these things that you get to know every little detail, something as small as the shading on the oblique muscles.

I asked where he got the skin and immediately went to buy a demo copy. Sure enough, although much of the skin had been blurred and altered in various ways, there were many many parts that matched mine down to the smallest detail, way more than could happen by chance.

I've put together 3 examples to see if everyone agrees with me, I would hope some other skin makers have a look as I know you are all used to looking at these things in detail.

All 3 examples are rollovers so you can roll you mouse over to see the 2 screenshots I took. For some reason IE is asking for permission to run the active X thing but these were done in Image Ready.

Example 1

This is a shot of the feet. As you can see, even though his feet are blurred, the shading matches mine exactly, right down to the bones on the top of the foot, particularly visible in the far foot.

Example 2

The full legs. Again, he has blurred the texture but I have a very hard time believing the shading could match mine so precisely when I used a photosources image as my base.

Example 3

While the ab muscles have clearly been stretched I want to point out a couple of things here. First of all, I adjusted the screenshot of his skin to bring out the shading a little more from the actual skin. Also, the pose I used allowed the body to sway slightly so the torse is off a few pixels in the 2 shots. Even still, if you notice the muscles on the side of the body, particularly the obliques, you can see most of the shading (again, photosourced) matches exactly. If you look at the shading along both sides of the groin it doesn't move, perfect match. The abs, although stretched and the navel replaced, have identical highlights on the upper portion. Lastly, the dark shading on the arm also matches exactly. There are many other small details that are identical.

I've spoken to him and he claims it all a coincidence but even with something as simple as the feet, any skinner knows there is no place for the toes on the foot template so the odds that the shading on his toes and mine would match perfectly are extremely remote. He claimed he used the LL bump maps but the toes on that don't match mine.

I'm not sure what to do at this point other than inform LL and show them the proof and hope they do something about it.

As per forum rules I can't mention names but please IM in game if you'd like to know where the other skin is from.

Max

Oh no, I see what you mean. Though not at obvious at first glance (seeing as they made it look painty) alot of the shading is in the exact place, doesnt look like a coincidence if you ask me. I'm not really familiar with your skin line, but seeing from the pics they look like high quality skins, shame to see another incident with texture theft I'm not sure what LL will do about this...but I would file a DMCA takedown immediately...

http://secondlife.com/corporate/dmca.php

Anyway, sorry to hear about this

GL :\

It's hard to tell. The legs and feet certainly look similar as far as placement of the musculature and toes, but the torso doesn't look at all like yours. It doesn't even look like the same source material. Suspcious, but far from a slam dunk. Sorry you're going through this, max. Even if it's just coincidental it's still not a fun experience to wonder if you've been stolen from. I have to say though that I'm not convinced in this case.

Thanks for the replies guys.

I would take a second look Chip, even though there has been some changes to the skin, most notably the stretching of the stomach muscles, the shading along the side of the body, including the ribs and the along the highlighting of the oblique muscle is identical. Don't forget I've done some levelling of his skin to bring out the shading because he dulled the detailed quite a bit so it's not a pixel perfect match. Especially the area along the groin though.

Regardless, I've spoken to him and he's offered to stop selling the skins when his new male skins are released next week.

I'm very glad to hear you were able to get some resolution, Max. The reason I'm usually reluctant to just agree that it's copied when something is very similar is because so many of us draw from the same sources. A friend of mine sent me a pic of the demo skin that was blatantly ripped from Lost a couple of weeks ago I took one look at it and thought "oh crap! That's my skin!" As it turns out Lost and I (and others I'm sure) made skins from the same source photography and we both ended up with a very similar finished product. They're similar enough that either of us might think the other started with ripped textures. Now everything Lost does shows immense talent so there'd be no reason for me to think that, but it was definitely food for thought about how similar things can end up. That makes me wary about accusing anyone because I'd feel awful if I wrongly accused someone who was actually innocent.

Anyway, glad you got it worked out, and very nice work on your skins!

I'm surprised you don't see it, Chip - look carefully at the torso - it is very obvious as you flip back and forth between the two images - the demo skin has had some kind of filter applied to it and a few adjustments made, but highlights and shapes and things are identical and pixel perfect. I thought the torso was the most obvious - perhaps because they went to the greatest lengths to obscure it, but did so in a predictable way.

Hopefully his generosity is not bourne out of the fact that he has a different altered skin from someone else to sell.

Yeah, I totally understand but in this case he claimed there was no photo sourcing at all.

Thanks for the compliment by the way, wouldn't have be able to make these without your wonderful templates

I'm just wondering if there is any way to stop texture theft after hearing about it the past few days. I'm working on a skin and want to be very careful after seeing how difficult it is to do. Thanks.