Merchant resources - what are they?
I'll sound stupid, but as it is deliberate I'm OK with it, as I prefer to sound stupid than to breach EULAs or copyrights.
I'm finishing an environment that I intend to submit to be sold through DAZ (or somewhere else). I've created all the objects and the structure in Blender myself, and only used free textures from reputable sites like Ambientcg. Now, however, I need a good seamless lace texture and can't find a suitable one for free. I did find some at vector sites, but these sites are always a little shady (no guarantees that the product was not uploaded by someone else than the real creator), their pricing is too high, and their EULAs and licenses are too confusing.
So, I found this product here in Daz:
https://www.daz3d.com/fabric-basics-lace-for-iray
What I intend to do is to include one of these textures, applied in a table cloth I made, inside my product, and then sell the product as I said. As far as I've been reading, this is EXACTLY what a "merchant resource" is, but even so I decided to ask the more experienced before going ahead and doing it... ;-) That's it, right? I can just include the texture (as it is) in my project and sell the project? Note that I KNOW that I can't simply resell the textures themselves.
I also accept reccomendations of other similar (lace texture) products you find good, or your opinion about this specific one.
Thanks!
Comments
You're correct that that is what merchant resources are for, but have you checked on the license for the free textures you're using? Do those allow you to resell them?
Thanks for the reply, @Gordig!
Just to clarify: I can just copy the files I'll need (in my case, one texture file, it's normal and transparency), copy inside the folder where my textures are and package everything together as my own product, correct?
About the other textures: I got everything from ambientCG. They use CC0 as license, as stated in their page:
"All the PBR materials, brushes, photos and 3D models which are offered for download on ambientCG are provided under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal License.
(...) The Creative Commons CC0 license gives you the freedom to use these assets…
… in your own creations of any kind for free.
… even in situations that require them to be redistributed as individual files (for example as part of an open source video game or tool).
… for commercial projects.
There is no requirement to give credit but it would of course be appreciated."
Correction: apart from the textures themselves, I also got some images from Pexels.com, whose license is:
"We tried to keep the Pexels License as simple as possible. Keep reading to find out more.
Actually, this part in the readme
Merchant resource info:
You may use the texture tiles and shader tab setups for all of these in your own products for free or sale as long as the textures are on a template.
reads as you NEED to use these in conjuction with a texture template and not as is, meaning as part of texturing. Might need to contact DAZ for clarification
Where did you find the Readme? He mentions it in the product page, but I've gone as far as to download the package manually and didn't find it. There's probably some DAZ option I don't know about that gives access to it. :-)
I'll send Daz a message, as I can't figure out how I could use the resource inside my own product if not by redistributing the files themselves. A "template" would, as far as I know (I don't know much yet, I agree), use the files I now have (I've bought the product) in my hard drive. If I export the project without them, other people will not have the files and therefore will not be able to load the textures.
Oh, and for someone reading this thread in the future: it's a good product, pretty textures and effective results.
@FSMCDesigns, I just sent DAZ support a message asking about it, as you suggested. Better safe than sorry. :-)
The readme is linked to the main product page, but you might need to have the daz deals plugin to see it. As for using the files with a template, what that means is instead of using generic tiling UV mapping, you need to have an actual UV map and then use these textures to texture that UV map template in photoshop or gimp