No View Sculptie Maps for Next Owner

Hiyas,
one thing that concerns me with creating content within SL, is the amount of work people do in creating sculptie maps. If this has been brought up before in the suggestions forum, I do appologise.

Like many others in Second Life, I like to give customers the ability to modify my products. But with modify, comes sculptie map viewage.

If there was an option along side modify, copy, transfer, for example 'hide sculpted', this would be of great help and make a lot of people happy, including myself lol as I then wouldn't need to create 10 size variations of each release.

This would then keep objects safe from theft, as people creating a 5 prim head for example, would be easy for someone else to just screengrab the maps and reproduce it.

Thanks!!

Det

I know it seems wrong, but I think it's to keep parity with the rest of modify permissions. Modify permissions allow you to view the prim settings and the sculptie map is one of them. How could they modify the sculptie without the map?

If the sculptie map was given different settings then there could be all kinds of problems with people not knowing exactly what permissions they were going to get, or the use of sculpties for shapes that could be made using ordinary primitives simply to get the extra security.

Also adding a new permission is something that LL are unlikely to ever be able to do because it would be impossible to know how to set it for every existing item in world.

Just add an alpha channel to your sculptie texture to make it impossible for anyone to screen capture it. The texture to sculptie mapping ignores the alpha channel completely, since it only uses the RGB data. This has been covered elsewhere in the Design forums. You can either hide the whole sculptie texture with a full alpha channel or you can make a trademark of some kind that only reveals a small portion of your sculptie texture. I favor the trademark, myself.

Thanks for the response.

Yumi, I was just thinking of some kind of radio button that hid the sculptie map display really, but I know, I doubt it'll ever happen lol If it did, I agree that it would just end up being more confusing.

Govindira, thanks for the info, I'll have to look around the forums to see, I was under the impression that adding an alpha would shrink the sculpted prim down to a tiny size, that is, if you're suggesting blacking out the map... I'll give those a go though.

Thankies

Ah works like a charm Thanks for the info, but I'll be damned if I'm redoing all my maps lolol

Thanks again for the help!

Unless you used the no compression 'hack', your map will have already been degraded during upload and then there's further degradation in the edit window display due to resizing.

If someone were to grab it, they'd get even further degradation because they'd have to resize it back to the original size, and if they didn't use the upload 'hack' then it would degrade even further.

If someone actually did want to "steal" sculptmaps, they'd skip over all the relatively involved steps above and simply grab the texture key and reuse that, getting a map with the exact same quality as your original and taking only a second, or they'd simply save the texture to disk.

Removing the preview might seem like it adds protection, but in reality it doesn't matter since there are easier and better ways.

well, considering that the degradation is very very minimal, if any, you can perfectly screengrab the sculpted map on the display, change it to 64 x 64 as the display is around twice the size of the orignal map. This would display all pixels necessary to take it into Photoshop and scale back down to the required size, giving you the exact same sculpted shape. In which I've tried and happened how I thought it would.

The degradation from Maya to SL isnt what I'm worried about though.

I'm not sure about the uuid fetching on sculptie maps, as I think that only applies to textures in the texture window, I'll have a look into that. But still this wouldnt give them the actual texture, just a display much like what you find in the edit window. They'd still have to screengrab the uuid (if its possible) on a prim and scale it, but then they would have to deal with the screens rotation when you do this.

The above suggestion, from Govindira Galatea, about alpha'ring out the texture prevents this, as if they did manage to get the UUID, they wouldnt be able to view it or download it as its not in their inventory.

So, I do now recommend for people to alpha out completely their sculptie maps, the watermarking/trademarking way, I did have a problem with as it cut out some of the quality on sharp edges for some reason.

I'd just like to point out that no matter what you do to hide your sculptmap from display, if the prim itself is next-owner modifiable, I can get your sculpt-map. All I need to do is put a script into the prim that calls llGetPrimitiveParams([PRIM_TYPE]), and I'll get the UUID of the texture. I can then make copies of the sculpt-prim using llSetPrimitiveParams([PRIM_TYPE, ...]) in another prim.

llGetPrimitiveParams([PRIM_TYPE]) returns only vectors of a prim, not the uuid's. As does llGetObjectDesc, which will return the uuid of a texture, but returns vector for the sculptie map. I think you maybe thinking of llSetTexture, unless you are adding some code to the prim params.

But saying all this, dont you think LL should add some kind of feature? People spend hours making sculpties only for people to gain them for themselves...

correction to my other post... llGetObjectDesc should be llGetObjectDetails.

Are you sure, Detect? I know that with a modifiable object, I can do llGetTexture() to get texture keys, assuming they were full perms when applied. llGetPrimitiveParams() had a problem with sculpt prims returning PRIM_TYPE_TORUS, but I think that's fixed. From the look of the LSL Wiki page, it looks like llGetPrimitiveParams() will return the UUID of the sculptmap, but I haven't tested this.

yeah Lex, I had a look into it before I posted, you can get the uuid of a texture from a prim no problem, but for some strange reason when you try getting a sculptie map uuid, it returns a vector instead of its key Very strange. And thats only done with llGetObjectDetails.

The llGetPrimitiveParams is only applicable to:
PRIM_BUMP_SHINY,
PRIM_COLOR,
PRIM_FLEXIBLE,
PRIM_FULLBRIGHT,
PRIM_MATERIAL,
PRIM_PHANTOM,
PRIM_PHYSICS,
PRIM_POINT_LIGHT,
PRIM_POSITION,
PRIM_ROTATION,
PRIM_SIZE,
PRIM_TYPE,
PRIM_TEXGEN,
and
PRIM_TEXTURE

in which the properties of a texture are only returned from a face of a prim. The sculpt maps arnt part of that section.

Hopefully LL wont add PRIM_SCULPTMAP

I'll look further into it though and see if theres any other way of getting a sculpt map, but fingers crossed there isnt lol I say fingers crossed, I'm actually hoping to god lol

I should of posted this with the one above lol Sorry...

Heres what you can try, if you have time:

llSay(0,(string)llGetPrimitiveParams([PRIM_TYPE, PRIM_TYPE_SCULPT]));

But like I say, theres no Get Params for sculpties, on with Set Params can you do it, otherwise if you do the above, all thats returned is the vectors of the prim.

Sculptmaps are texture assets with an associated UUID and can be extracted with the client.

Having the UUID would save you the trouble of having to reupload the texture (it would also help to cover up the "theft" since you can just apply it as the sculptmap on a prim; if for some reason you wanted to actually save it to disk you can just save any arbitary texture to disk as well, giving just the UUID.

If you're only interested in eliminating one - inefficient - way of "stealing" sculptmaps, then your idea would work, but if you're hoping that it will eliminate "theft" altogether it's pointless since there are far more efficient ways than grabbing it off the screen.

Well, with this being the 'suggestions' forum, I'm trying to bring to light all the ways for sculpt map theft, in the hope of LL adding some kind of security, but I doubt that'll happen.

The inefficient way, as you put it, may take a minute to create, but, 1) you have the texture under your name and creation in your inventory, enabling you to simply drag and drop onto a prim, without the need of applying a script to call the UUID. 2) is a much easier way for the inexperienced eye to take other peoples maps. It maybe inefficient in the mind of a coder, but to the regualr Joe, that doesnt know how to call data from the debugger, its far more apparent. And, 3) within Photoshop or like image manipulation applications, you could simply add slight modifications to the map, making it slightly different to the original and state it was based on what the person had saw on another object.

So, whilst you faff around with the client and trying to cover up the theft, I've already got a legitimate, modified copy of the stolen map, that I can call my own, without the risk of accusations. I wouldnt call this inefficient, I would call it an amazingly easy way for people to take the maps, with a simple click of the button. Which is just as efficient as what you brought to light, if the outcome is the same, wouldnt you say?

Typically, calling the prim data is a way that slipped my mind, thus is just another example on top of screengrabbing unfortunatly...

Anyways, who cares about what the best ways of stealing are, this doesnt concern me in the slightest.

What does concern me is that there ARE ways for people to take these things. The amount of work that goes into modelling the sculpties and theres blaitent ways to extract them.

So, I guess I will stick to doing ten times more work for my products than I would if I could apply modify perms. This is what my original post was about, for the sake of myself and other hard working content creators that fear their work being stolen.

Thanks for the posts everyone, informative, but I can see this thread getting nowhere fast lol

One more time: you can save any arbitrary texture UUID to disk. There is really no need to go through Photoshop at all and you'll end up with a better quality copy than the way you're describing. If you have the UUID of a sculptmap/texture then using it in-world or being able to save it to disk are just a given and in-world permissions or even owning the texture or prim it's applied to do not come into it at all.

Whether a prim is modify or not, whether you even own it or not, whether you paint on the alpha or not, it all doesn't make any difference. If someone wants the sculptmap (just the UUID or on disk) they'll be able to get it.

Again, if all you want to do is eliminate one way of copying sculptmaps then the suggestion has value, just don't fall into the trap believing that it actually makes it hard(er). If you create content in SL then the fact that there is actually little to no "true" protection is just one of the things you have to accept and live with and in reality anything actually ending up getting copied is quite rare.

One more time, I've done it via screengrab, its EXACTLY THE SAME. You keep going over the same thing, screengrabbing the sculpt display gives you exactly the SAME map, we're talking about 64 x 64 pixels for crying out loud, not some detailed map. There is no degradation, as its called reformatting from a 3D app to comply with Second Lifes attributes. The DISPLAY is 2 times bigger than the original map, which display all the pixels in an image. I've done it, I can prove it, I can show you.... and you're saying that I'm only concerned with one 'inefficient' way, you seem to be doing the same.

And, again, whist you save the EXACT same map to disk, this would easily prove you were making copies of someone elses work... This is why I mention going through PS, as you can modify it slightly and say it was based on the original shape.

There is no 'best ways' to do this, in your eyes maybe, but AGAIN, this isnt what the post is about, I DO NOT CARE ABOUT THE BEST WAYS TO GAIN MAPS. I care about the content designers in SL, inwhich you seem to only care about 'whats the most efficient way of ripping them off'

The only thing you seem to care about is telling yourself that getting rid of the map preview will make it impossible for anyone to steal anything.

If you're truly this worried about theft then you should just stop making content in SL because when it comes to prims and textures there is no security and despite what you might personally think pointing that out isn't synonymous with a desire to "rip every content designer off".

Rather than live in blissful ignorance like you seem to want, content designers should be aware of what is possible and what isn't when it comes to their creations and then make an educated decision about whether or not that is acceptable to them.

lol listen, I'm not arguing to the fact that theres other ways to do this, I admited that yes, your way is doable and in the last 2 hours, I've found another way thats even easier... Whats I was saying is that the screengrabbing is the most common worry, I've had numberous conversations about this point, and most agree, if people were to steal texture maps and they were displayed, thats the option they'd go down, as not everyone knows about other ways, others have shown their concern in this post and in-world.

And yes, I do have a genuine concern about this fact and all ways that you can aquire, I'm not arguing over the fact, I'm arguing to you that this is a more common route.

Forget the closing/hiding of the display, I KNOW that there are now many ways of doing it, you dont seem to be reading my comments correctly, as I've already said to you that the debugging slipped my mind and there is another way, which I'm not disclosing as its rediculas and puts me off designing anything in SL... right now I'm thinking that theres no reason for me to put no modify on any of my creations, because this new information, I'm discusted wiith.

But then again, this is why I posted in the SUGGESTIONS forum, in the hope that LL will add a little more care to security.

"Rather than live in blissful ignorance like you seem to want"

- errr again, this is why I've posted it here, because I'd rather not live like that.

But then again, do what I do and what many others in SL do and try not to get a little angry on the fact that there IS people that steal creations in SL and get away with it, despite you thinking its a rarity... I hate to tell you this... its far from it.

So before you post the same thing again... listen...

Its not just just the screengrabbing that concerns me.

And don't state that I want to live in ignorace, as I would do something about it if I could, but instead, I'm having to post the concern.... if anything is ever done, is another matter.

But I do realise that people will take textures and theres not much that can be done.

So lets just go over this for you, just incase you've missed anything...

I recognise that..

Screengrabbing
Client uuid calling
And a thrid way

are all concerns, please don't come back and say that I am only self involved with the first one, I was arguing the fact that screengrabbing is just as an efficient way as uuid calling and would be the more commonly used.

Again, I understand that everything has its security risk, but this isnt a thread on discussing/arguing the ways of theft... Its a suggestion for LL to hopefully take on.