Questions on the legal status of renders and rendered HDRI
Togire
Posts: 414
If a I do a render and that I give it away on a site (and give an explicit right to use it), I am wondering:
1/ people are probably allowed to do what they want with it (except claiming this is their creation). They can use it for instance to illustrate a site, or whatever.
2/ are people allowed to use it as the background of a render?
3/ and if instead of a regular render, it a a HDRI?
I have the feeling that 2/ and 3/ could be a violation of some copyright of the artist that created the asset. For instance, with a background/HDRI of a purchased landscape or city asset, people can have in some situations a functionnality very similar to the actual purchase of the asset. If this asset is completed with other items (tree, house, etc) there is an artistic creation and it is less clear, but the frontier seems somehow fuzzy.
Do anybody have some ideas on these problems?
Concretely, I made some HDRI of a purchased city and I use them as an exterior decor for scenes in an appartment. Somebody asked me if I could share these HDRI. Would I infringe any copyright by giving them to him (or making a freebie)? (given that of course he does not own the orginal city asset).
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Comments
Only if you say so. Usage rights must be granted, they cannot be assumed
If you say they can
Image format doesn't matter as fas as the Daz EULA is concerned
technically you can do what you want with any render you create. I do agree with you on using a rendered scene as a commercial product though as it would compete with the original 3D and take away sales. Unfortunately this is being done already and noone seems to care. It's a fine, ethical line to walk for sure. I once posted some images of Stonemasons western town on a forum using the presets he included which made for some sweet renders. Another member asked about the images and the product and then asked if I could make new ones he could use as backdrops instead of purchasing the 3D product. it didn't sit right with me, so I declined..
You might want to look at Creative Commons, which provides a set of easy-to-understand license agreements that you can use to specify how you want your free content to be used.
For example, (1) would be covered by a Creative Commons CC BY (Attribution) license, which basically says "You can do whatever you like with this, but you have to acknowledge the original creator (attribution)".
A render that used your image as a background or as an HDRI would be considered a "derivative work". A basic CC-BY license would allow people to make derivative works. If you wanted to say that this isn't allowed, you'd choose instead a CC BY-ND (Attribution-No Derivatives) license when you licensed your image. Other options include saying that "people can make derivative works provided they allow others to do the same with their work", which is CC BY-SA (Attribution-ShareAlike), and specifying whether people can use your image or derivatives commercially.
Creative Commons provide badges that you can put on your website so people know exactly how you're licensing your images, and links that lead to a plain-language explanation of each license. So if you're looking for a way to communicate to people what's allowed with the stuff you give away for free, Creative Commons is the way to go.
The question about whether you can share your image made from a purchased city model for someone else to use as an HDRI is a different one. That relates not to Creative Commons, but to the DAZ End-User License Agreement (EULA). A Creative Commons license (if you choose to use one) binds the people with whom you share your renders. The EULA binds you (as the purchaser of the city model). The relevant part is:
I am not a lawyer, but as I understand it this means that you can make a render using content that you buy on daz3d.com and then do whatever you like with it. So that would seem to say that it's absolutely fine for you to give your render to someone else to use as an HDRI.
The bit of the license that I quoted goes on to say that the one thing you can't do with content that you buy on DAZ is to make a render that would let someone else extract all or part of the product from the render. For example, if you bought a product that consisted of a background sky image, and you rendered that entire image, flat and at full resolution, you wouldn't be allowed to give that away, because anyone who had your image would effectively have the product itself. But that's not the case with your city render: no one can take your render and get back to the original city model.
Do bear in mind that the content you use determines what you can do - you can't grant rights unless the creator (if it isn't you) has already given you permission to do so. The Daz license is very permissive when it comes to 2D renders of 3D content.
Stonemasons' Greeble City Blocks 2 is a set of assets specifically made to create a futuristic suburban environment.
Using those and some HDRI for the sky and lighting, I rendered my own set of HDRI's for background and lighting purposes. Technically, the terms of use WOULD allow me to distributed the HDRIs I created, or even sell them, without even needing to reference the original products I used to create these HDRI's, nor the artists who created them.
Practically, I shared my HDRI's with only a hand full of people, and wouldn't even think about monetizing them. They would be in almost direct competition with the products I used to create them, with the added benefit of them being way more convenient to use. That is not how I want to thank the artists who made them possible in the first place. Now, I know there are some HDRIs sold that do exactly this, even here in the DAZ store, there is a set of HDRIs created using a product made by another artist which is also sold in this store, without even referencing it..
Is it legal? Yes.
Is it allowed? Obviously, yes too.
Is it ethical? I'd say that is questionable, to me the answer is no, to others the answer is yes. I seriously doubt the staff even had a board meeting about something like this yet, though.
The options you have in creating new renders with a background or hdri renders are extremely limited! You can't decide about the perspective, you can't use your own textures, control only in a very limited way the mood etc. If I wanted an environment from DAZ, I would never choose an hdri to replace it as it really is nothing compared to a "real" 3d set.
Yes you can give/sell the author your image render to use on their book. Other artists in here have been doing that for years [using Daz3D content and/or content made for them to use this way].
The Daz license is very permissive, but not all content comes from the Daz store, and other licenses are not necessarily as permissive.
I haven't something like that (yet) but considering that a render for a background or a HDRI would offer only allow a very limited use of the original product, I'd rather see it as a free advertisement that might result in more units of the item sold. Kinda like "Ohh, that background/HDRI looks good, but it suits my needs perfectly.. but if I get the original product I can make it fit better... just wait for when it's on sale..."
It depends a bit on the HDRI. I love HDRIs with pretty skies that have distant horizons but nothing obstructing the view, they generally fit with any scene, except when you want to render something from a higher altitude, then it becomes hit and miss.
HDRI's with closer objects in the image, like cityscapes and forests are noticably more restrictive, raising your camera as little as 10 meters will be noticable, while moving your camera sideways may be noticable depending on the direction you're aiming it.
Indoor HDRIs leave even less room for camera movement, it's best left at the 0,0,0 coordinates, meaning the HDRI will have to perfectly suit your needs to be of use. That basically means, that I generally have no use for indoor HDRIs, unless I made them myself (there are some benefits to some people for turning their scenes into HDRIs, especially if they often re-use the same scene with identical camera settings). So yeah, having all the props I want to be part of a HDRI myself is useful then.
@Drip
oops, I didn't mean HDRI aren't useful, the kind you first described (distant horizons, pretty skies) are also very helpful for creating the right light and mood and I use them all the time... But a stonemason environment based HDRI, may be good for a little job on fiverr, with some luck, but people who don't need more than that most likely won't buy the original anyway, but rather try to make do with sth cheaper instead. But of course, selling a bundle with 100 hdris from all kind of perspectives from ONE stonemason Product here on DAZ, that indeed would be rather annoying imo...
Totally agree, though at the same time, a variety of perspectives (especially regarding altitudes) is exactly what I always feel missing from HDRI collections. The few times I see that, and when I believe it is original work, I'm extremely interested. A HDRI of some futuristic city scape is nice. A HDRI pack that also has a variant of that same futuristic cityscape, but with the view from the 3th floor and another from the 37th floor is suddenly soo much more useful. It is kinda hard to make such sets using real life photography. But rendering them is a very good solution to the problem. Only problem is that it takes ages for me to make them on my RTX 2070. And I'm not really good with photoshop and the like, so I can't touch them up the way I want, no matter how clear the image in my head may be. But, at least I know it can be done, is relatively easy to do, but just takes a lot of time, both to set up and to render. For me, it's mostly a case of keeping an eye out for some designer to jump into this niche using original assets.
How about a Merchant Resource License in order to create and sell such a package, as Drip described it?
~. an interesting subject .~
You may find these threads useful:
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/467146/interactive-license-visual-novels-illustrations-animations-short-videos#latest
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/6406671/#Comment_6406671
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/467611/spritesheets-covered-by-standard-license#latest