Stop Using Copyrighted Anims!

LMAO, Great debate, yeah what Phineas stated is true believe me 3-4 months of research on the subject gets to burn a permanent epitaph in your mind.

But to add my simple addition about the animations. Poser is a unique and widely used program.
Parrallel development of movment gestures and or simple stances are intrensic to the community.

However, to arbitrarly claim that with out a mocap system one cannot recreate semi fluid natural movement within the confines of Poser are ludicris.

I agreen totaly about the "Reselling" of pirated anims are wrong.

I will not debate that fact with anyone.

However, I will debate all day long that a fluid movement of simple actions can be recreated in poser by anyone that has a decent understanding of the program.

Why?

[begin personal statment]

Let me put it to you this way.

If I want to make a fluid motion of a hand comming up from the side to do a hand shake that is in essence two key frames.

The inital stance and then the final hand position for the hand shake stance.

Poser based on inverse kinetics will map that movement based on the hiearchy of links in the poser model.

Speed and fluid aspect would be controlled by the number of frames in between.

Oh yeah and each of those frames once poser maps them can be edited if they go haywire.

So sorry, I disagree that some animations are directly copied as some presume. I have played with Poser off n on for 5yrs or more even dealing with Poser 2 and its final upgrade to Poser 4 before the release to 5.

I didnt delve into animations in poser till recently but I am fully aware of different types of animation and how different programs map it and utilize it.

At one point 3yrs ago if I am not mistaken there was a free release program that worked in conjunction with Poser that allowed for meager motion capture to be converted to a simple .bvh file that could be imported into poser and tweaked with minor work on the authors behalf and the limitations of poser.

In addition to that there was a 2d mapping program that worked with 3d Studio max that you could take an animation break it down into key frame segments and assign joint points to a 2dimensional animation/video.
From that you would import your 3dstudio characture to the program and reassign those key joints to the charature once that was done via the links and limitations on the joint structure in the skeleton.
You could recreat fluid animation and this was without a Mocap system that cost Thousands of dollars to own or opperate.

As someone mentioned earlier SL is not your ordinary world. There are a lot of bright minds here. A lot may not articulate well but they are indeed smart enough to "parrallel" create motion or a set of motions without having to be involved with some big studio that does 3d animation. Or even having to copy them for that matter.

[/end statment]

Just my L$.02

Shadow

Does anyone here have a home setup? If so, would you share how it was done?

I'm very interested in doing this.

Expensive? Geez! So much for resourcefullness!! I can do it myself, at home- Now!

All you need other than reference markers (I've even used colored masking tape to mark limbs) is a video camera, a way to get the video into the computer, and software to use the video.

I've even used myself throwing a spear as a guide for doing Cel Animation.

Its easy!!!

If Poser lets you load a video into the background then all you'd have to do is match up the camera.

I'm very interested in a DIY mocap studio.

What software/method are you using to do it? Are there many issues with marks overlapping and losing their track? How many cameras do you use?

Thank you kindly!

Aye, it's quite crude to use. Software depends on what I'm doing- 2D or 3D. And yes, there are time when you lose sight of the markers. Being video, it has motion blur, so occassionally you lose track of the marks. What I've done at times, is take the video & increase the contrast in Premiere OR convert it to Filmstrip format, bring it into Photoshop, and enhance the markers that way.

I've been using just one camera. If I had a 2nd digital video camera, I'd use it to capture the other side.

It's a crude setup, but it works. The neighbors must think I'm nuts standing in front of a camera wearing black, with colored tape on me like stick man.

The mention of the ping-pong balls gave me another idea- I wonder if it'd help, to take them then paint them with reflective paint or covered in reflective tape, attach them to the points needed, then in a darkend room, turn on the camera light?? Might have to try that one too!!!

** Edit **

After talking to some other ppl in 3D, this is more related to rotoscoping, but it still works as a cheap home-made motion capture method. But hey! It works!

I don't work with 3D anims, Im'e a newbie, how can I tell if somethings a copyrite rip off ??

Regards Jonathan.

Really hard to say as there are more doing this now then there were when this post started. My best guess is to look how fluid the movements are. But this could be wrong as they might actually be brillant animators (highly difficult given the tools) or have their own motion capture. Maybe by how many people sell the exact same thing.

Personally.. I don't care if it's not illegal. I don't care if you have permission. Selling something inworld that is not made by you is wrong. Providing the assumption that you created them is WRONG. I don't care how many lawyers tell you it's ok. I don't care how much you edited. Telling your customers that you created it is bad business.

I have my own list of people who do this, and I'm not affraid to spread it around to those that ask. The amount of shock and anger should be enough to know that this false advertising does indeed make people very angry.

It defeats the purpose of SL as being a place to be creative. It also infringes on those of us who do make them from scratch. But.. as people are greedy it will never stop. A few times I've almost logged off for good because of such practices. Especially after spending months working on my swing dances and then getting IMs telling me to work harder to have smooth movements like <name ommited>. In which I then reply with a simple "I create my animations and do not use motion capture data found on the net."

If you feel like you have a right to do this, then tell your customers upfront. Let them make the choice if they want to support this kind of thing. As you can see there are people here that would. Or if you are the not so greedy type that really wants to have smooth animations in SL give them away. Or if the motion capture was paid for, sell them cheap (with a disclaimer saying what they are) until you have made back your investment.

someone mentioned earlier about a ping pong ball covered suit, that was acutally a college project for me, some good lighting, neon green (or whatever) paint and a decent video imput system.

Altho what we did was for 2d animation (we didnt have fancy computers then hehe) it worked great, i would imagine with mutiple cameras and some software it would work just as well for 3d.

I paid US$ for a relatively cheap mo-cap animation pack with stuff I needed.

The license said I couldn't distribute the animation files, but could use the animations in software and games for free. (Doesn't make any mention about how easy or otherwise it might be to recover the animations from the software.) Since you can't re-download the BVH files from SL, I figured that uploading them would count under these terms.

Am I breaking copyright here? I was using the animations in an item I'm building; one of them I was selling seperately, but I've deleted it from the vending sites after the comments on this thread.

Using them no in a project and then selling the project i dont think would count, its like using them in a game then selling the game .

outright selling animations from a vendor, yes ... eventho your not selling the BVH you are selling the animation to be used in other ppl's projects

and they didnt shell out money for the right to develop with them

Am I? My argument would be that I'm selling my permission to use the animation I uploaded to the SL server. No copy of the animation is made, and the animation is being used as part of a piece of software (SL).

lol. for a start off, we do not all come from the us which means each country,s laws from rl would be different. our movie and music backup laws are different in the uk versus the usa.
also if we care to take a browse round sl i would say a ot of it breaches copyright somewere.
sonic the hedgehog slot machines. various pirate movies openly being played. homemade pirate media streams using ilegal mp3. visual images of copyright material. art being used as pictures. but then again we live in a virtual world. and when that world can directly connct with the internet and use content from the interet you WILL ALWAYS get the internet flowing in.
its a case of you dont agree with anims being intellectually stolen and used.
i say whos gonna stop it. just get on with as long as its not yours in which case you can stop it.

Here we go with all the "don't use copyright" people again in another game.....

If they use it , is it hurting you? If they get caught , is it hurting you or helping you in any way? NO to both, so lets not whine about who is using what and just do stuff in SL that we cant do on the outside.... let the people who do it get caught....

so what I am saying is, I am going to mind MY OWN business and not worry about others...

Rutain

Some already have.
I personally know of two professional artists that have been cruising through Second Life and seen their work being used as shop displays, or for sale, with no requests coming to them for permission and..even worse..no credit being given to the creator.

In one of the cases I know of, the artist issued a cease and desist order to a shop owner who'se storefront image and Search display featured the artist's work.

Situations like this just make it bad for everyone. It very well could happen that the Lindens may decide to just disable the Upload image feature to prevent this kind of stuff from happening, and issue 'generic' images for use by the SL community. And that would be sad.

There have been several times during my tenure in sl in which I have had access to a mocap studio. Given that, I am certain that among sl's other 160K users there are people who work in areas where they can use one if they needed. And as for expense, I set up a magnetic mocap system (Flock of Birds) that the guy got used for around 8K. However based on the growth of the world and the current marketability of animations I can easily see someone purchasing a suit based mocap system for 40K as a biz expense.

Also there are programs that can be rented on a monthly basis that produce animation very similar to mocap especially if the person using it knows how to animate.

But I agree, there are a lot of people uploading and selling anims from copyrighted mocap libraries, and that is unfortunate, as is all forms of content theft that happens and goes unpunished in sl.


Rutain, yes as a matter of fact it does hurt some of us, since some of us are the people who's hard work is being exploited.

You get the lawyer, and head up a good legal case against these people.

Then when you can't find the actual originator of the illegal animation , or better yet, you do find him and he lives somewhere else other than the U.S. and our laws do not apply, you get back on here and tell us how you wasted all that money on a legal system that can't help you. Then you can go around feeling mad and disgusted that someone got away with something they shouldnt have. I am sure you have never gotten away with something you shouldnt have, have you Niel?

Instead, why don't just try and get a better system of security, making sure that these people that have stolen a great amount from you, can not do it again?

I do not know, that is just my thought... Why not put the cookie jar up high, instead of just complaining all the time about the kids getting into the cookie jar?

Max

Or should have, but a broken legal system makes it immoral.

Suffice to say, the views on 'personal/public performance' are dodgy. If you're playing music at a party, technically according to the letter of the law it's infringement. I have a few albums which I like the covers of so I scanned them and put them up as posters in my apartment. I own the albums, so is that infringement.

If I upload an on-SL copy of the Manchester United shirt I own IRL (only 'cause the place selling them had an obsolete one, and it's pretty much the same bar the fact that asymmetric sleeves can't be done ISL) and don't sell it is that infringement? SL is somewhere to have fun, not to get your knickers in a twist playing angel over the works of others. If you don't like it, hey! Tell all the companies. Let's get SL ruined 'for good intentions'.