Potentially unwanted model modifications

[peter_spy]

Another, more serious case of using textures, from a commercial game this time. A character artist from another discord server found that dds\models\md5\chars\heads\face_freckle.dds is actually a modified texture from Silent Hill 2. Google image search confirms it.

 

Maybe TDM should go through some kind of due diligence when it comes to textures? The whole thing should probably go to another thread.

Edited February 22, 2021 by peter_spy

[Bluehawk]

Most people have said she looks like Heather from Silent Hill 3.

[peter_spy]

That was my first impression too. To be fair, I don't think I ever saw that face in TDM, maybe it's a leftover of some kind?

Edit: Nope, that is Heather from SH3 available as one of the female heads:

Edited February 22, 2021 by peter_spy

[SeriousToni]

Uh oh..
 Maybe someone stole it from the silent hill game and uploaded it on a free texture site. Then someone from TDM found it on the free texture site in the believe that this is a royalty free texture to use and applied it to the TDM shaders. It's just a guess though.

[peter_spy]

On one hand, you can find a big modding site where you can download like every model and every texture from every Silent Hill game, so it seems like Konami doesn't care much about that stuff, not outside Japan I'd guess. But that still is their intelectual property. In this particular case we're talking about player character from Silent Hill 3.

[OrbWeaver]

14 hours ago, peter_spy said:

I doubt such dismissive attitude towards mappers or content creators will help with anything.

I'm commenting on the technical uselessness and impossibility of the "closed packages" idea, which is a mathematical fact, and has nothing do with my "attitude" towards mappers or content creators. If you choose to believe that such protection really is possible, if only the developers care enough about mappers to get off their lazy asses and implement it, you go ahead and believe it. I can't force you to change your mind.

Perhaps you can actually find some developer somewhere who is actually interested in implementing such encryption just for the lolz, and you could work with them to release a fork of TDM which would include this feature. But if you're relying on such a trivially-defeated level of protection to allow you to comply with a license which says "nobody must be able to access these models", you're on very legally risky ground.

Regarding textures which appear to be taken from other games, of course I agree entirely that such textures are being used unlawfully and should be removed from the mod immediately.

[peter_spy]

2 hours ago, OrbWeaver said:

If you choose to believe that such protection really is possible, if only the developers care enough about mappers to get off their lazy asses and implement it, you go ahead and believe it. I can't force you to change your mind.

It's not what I think. I get that having an encryption in GPL code is almost silly, but so is the stance of "every security can be broken, let's do nothing".All in all, if you want modern content creators to come and stay here, IMO you have to at least start thinking about offering something more than vague promises of community goodwill, and then blaming miscommunication, when something goes wrong. And lately it does go wrong, more and more often. Even TDM team can't be treated as role model here, as demonstrated above. I get that nobody's perfect, but people do tend to leave, or at least lose confidence after such incidents.

Edited February 22, 2021 by peter_spy

[nbohr1more]

6 hours ago, peter_spy said:

That was my first impression too. To be fair, I don't think I ever saw that face in TDM, maybe it's a leftover of some kind?

Edit: Nope, that is Heather from SH3 available as one of the female heads:

As I recall, @Springheel modified a head that was available on a free asset site?

Maybe Silent Hill 2 used the same base asset?

If not, (and if my recollection is correct) then the person who uploaded this to the free assets site did so in bad faith.

 

Edit:

Here is the 2.01 update. It doesn't look like the same character:

[peter_spy]

It's not the same face.

[nbohr1more]

Yep. Rev 12302 Oct 15 2011

Appears to be added in v1.07 (unless that was too late) ( so 1.07 or 1.08 ).

[VanishedOne]

Re. Sketchfab, free assets there are typically CC-BY, occasionally with additional NC and/or SA. (Edit: having checked my downloads, I did find at least one ND.) If you've bought anything then yes, check the licence terms.

Re. dubiously sourced textures, here's an earlier thread: https://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?/topic/20311-external-art-assets-licensing/

Edited February 22, 2021 by VanishedOne

[Springheel]

2 hours ago, nbohr1more said:

As I recall, @Springheel modified a head that was available on a free asset site?

Maybe Silent Hill 2 used the same base asset?

If not, (and if my recollection is correct) then the person who uploaded this to the free assets site did so in bad faith.

 

 

 

 

I have taken character assets from various free sites in the past, and we had a lot donated during our purge of D3 assets.  I can't rule out the possibility that someone uploaded something they shouldn't have (I've never played Silent Hill so I wouldn't have recognized the character).

 

[peter_spy]

I wasn't aware that SH modding community basically ripped every texture, model and other assets for every SH installment, and made it available for download. Maybe that's why they're freely available on other websites too. Konami doesn't seem to do anything about it, but obviously that's still copyright infringement.

Edited February 22, 2021 by peter_spy