Free Models and Textures

In case someone needs some more Models or Textures. I found this site:

Reiners Tilesets (He’s german, but has a n english and a german version of his site online.)

There is also a licence on the page which includes: “In short: The 2D and 3D graphics are free to use for non commercial and commercial useage. Accent at useage.”

btw. No, it’s not my site, I just wanted to share the link with you.

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Hi

He asks for attribution and the models are under copyright. He doesn’t allow to host his artworks elsewhere or to sell them. His terms of use aren’t permissive enough for a game using a free or free sharing license. He could use the Creative Commons license BY-NC or BY-NC-SA.

He has a lot of interesting models.

Is the NC part correct? Maybe he has a rule stating “not sell directly” but “sell your game made using the models is okay”? If that’s the case then it’s like Blendswap and CC-BY.

CC-BY-SA would mean your game must be open source (at least that’s my interpretation - CC-BY-SA could also mean that you only need to share the assets after you modified them - so it’s kind of a gray area or I missed something). I still need to find out if CC-BY-SA works like GPL or LGPL - if anyone knows… please tell. :chimpanzee_smile:

Now, as far as I got him, you are free to use them, but you have to tell the users (e.g. via credits) from where you got these models/textures and you are not allowed to distribute them as model/texture only. So you are not allowed to copy his stuff and make a similar site to his, with the goal to provide them. In case of using them in a game, it sounds to me like: I would be allowed to.

But sure, you are right! This isn’t the securest way for users. Maybe I should contact him and ask for changing his licence? I don’t know him, but would be worth a try. I don’t know much about that licensing stuff, so I would ask him to change it as a BY-NC or a BY-NC-SA?

No it would mean that you would have to redistribute his stuff and/or the derivatives of his stuff under the same license or a very similar license. I have used the CC BY-NC-SA for several years, the SA clause (share alike) is similar to the “viral” aspect of the GPL but there is no NC clause (non commercial) in the GPL.

As he writes “Even for commercial Games”, you’re right, the NC clause would go further than what he states.

Tankwart, you can suggest him to use the CC BY-NC-SA and to allow commercial use in games by his own discretion. If there is no money to earn, nobody will host elsewhere his models. He can make a strict statement to explain what he considers as commercial use as I do, I prevent even hosting my artworks on any website with ads.

Ok, the e-mail has just left the building ^^ I explained the problem to him and asked if he would perhaps change the licence. A link to this thread was also provided. I will add the answer to this thread.

Yeah, that’s clear, it’s viral. But does it affect only the asset itself (so after changing something in Blender or making a .j3o version) - or - does it affect any software using the asset too. That’s the point. That’s my question which I did not find an answer for yet.

Regarding the part to ask other people to change their license - I once asked an artist to change from CC-BY-SA to CC-BY (without SA) and he made it, stating that he didn’t know what SA meant when he selected that license…

Contract law is kind of easy in one sense: if it doesn’t say a thing then it doesn’t do a thing.

If it doesn’t say the app is part of some derivative work and if it doesn’t say the app is affected, then it isn’t.

Contracts are meant to be interpreted as narrowly as possible… which is why they tend to be so wordy for simple things.

No it doesn’t affect the software and the Creative Commons aren’t suitable for the source code. Lol this artist allowed anybody to redistribute his artworks under another license…

Hm … do you have experience with such things? I don’t … it’s all gibberish for me when I read EULAs or other stuff like licenses. The interpretation in court is what is so annoying. There are people who have based their lawsuits on ridiculous claims and who won. And there are countries like the US where a pub needs to put warning signs on toilets stating “no drinking water”. I don’t know, for me this lawyer stuff is crazy… :chimpanzee_sad: :chimpanzee_annoyed:

You know this for sure? Can I cite you when someone sues me? :chimpanzee_smile:
Hm, maybe I should just do some research - I hope you are right.
Blendswap has very good CC-BY-SA works available. The other stuff is not half as good.

Citation please. There are a lot of “urban legends” about contracts taken broadly and such because it makes good drama. And certainly television takes a lot of liberties here… but in reality it rarely happens.

(To put TV law into perspective, think about how wrong TV gets anything to do with computers… now apply that to literally EVERY OTHER SUBJECT. Portrayals of doctors… just as wrong. Portrayals of lawyers… just as wrong. Etc.)

I’m not referring to TV shows. I don’t watch TV - only if cheap Sci Fi movies are on air.
Over the last couple of years I read a news channel that had some articles of weird cases and popped up some implications that I would never have thought of.

Seems to me it’s mostly interpretations by judges and precedent. Law texts could never cover every possible eventualities, so they are being interpreted. Complex implications often arise that you could not have thought of. Interactions with other local laws make things even more complicated.

I would not even dare to make any statement about laws. But if you know these things, it’s okay. If you say that you have experience with these things, then I believe you.

Layman’s experience. If the roles were reversed, I’m like the lawyer that could at least kind of tell you what your shader code did even if they couldn’t debug it. :smile:

The simpler open source licenses are pretty easy to interpret, though, and there aren’t really any hidden gotchas.

In the end, one should always consult a real lawyer.

Folks, make games, and don’t worry so much. I haven’t sued anybody in the last 15 years. And i am definitely not interested in doing so in the future :wink:

The story is really simple and short: You are allowed to use the graphics for whatever project you want. As long as you use it for something. For free. Also in commercial projects.

You make a game with the graphics? Permission granted. You make a comic with the graphics? Permission granted. You want to use the graphics as illustrations in a book? Permission granted.

What is not allowed is for example to sell the graphics at Turbosquid. That’s not useage. That’s abuse, that’s stealing my artwork.

In case you are still unsure if you can use my graphics for your needs, simply write me a mail and ask for permission. I don’t bite :slight_smile:

For example, book publishing companies usually asks for explicit permissions with my signature at a special form. I also gave permission in the past to bundle complete graphics libraries with a book or with an engine. But those were special agreements where the authors asked for permission per mail.

There are also some border cases. Online games for example, where you might want to offer additional characters as an extra download. Which is technically what i want to prevent: a separate download of the single graphics. But it’s part of the game mechanics then, you use it. And so it’s again allowed.

For the license question, i am not interested to switch my license. Technically my house license is between Public Domain and CC. Which is more free than the two already mentioned CC licenses. It would be a downgrade for me. On the other hand, i don’t want to make the graphics Public Domain neither. So that’s why there is my house license.

I hope the questions are answered now. Happy developing :smile:

Kind regards

Reiner
http://www.reinerstilesets.de

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Hi Reiner!

Thanks for registering here and clearing up some “confusions”.

Greez Tankwart