Question Question on Unity's (once free) deprecated package redistribution..

Hi everyone, I know that the basic rule is to not distribute any sort of asset outside of a "compiled project".
My question is about a free (now deprecated) Unity asset: "Raw Mocap Data for Mecanim"
I would like to freely share some projects that would include the animations available in the asset above.

Do you think this whould be possible in these terms?

Thanks

 

The same license applies to free and deprecated assets. THe fact that they are free or deprecated doesn't change anything.

 

Thanks for your feedback.

 

That asset is still downloadable on some 3rd party sites as it seems, so Unity does not seem to care too much.
So publishing it for example in a github repo as part of a larger project of yours, is technically not 100% kosher, but you most likely won't get in trouble.

 

That's still breach of their license, though.

 

You probably shouldn't be recommending potentially illegal acts on a public, (semi-)professional forum.

 

I know that those animations are "available" somewhere but been running a little channel on YT I want to make things right and clear.
Honestly I think that the deprecated state should be handled by Unity making still available those assets with a specific filter (like you can do with you own assets).

 

Technically they are available. But if they are not in the search of Unity Asset Store, then if you acquired them before, your assets manager will hold the access for you. So you can stil download them.

Some older assets works just fine on latest Untiy. Some may need small upgrade/changes when upgrading.

Either way, licences still apply. They don't have o solete date.

However, something that has been addressed before, yes there is missng filter for older assets, where supporting older version of Unity. But perhaps that is, as some assets developers just left them, and never updated them. So the left to be forgotten and not be discoverable with latest Unity iterations.

 

Yeah, I think the OP's problem is that when the asset is deprecated, you can't make it a dependency for your own project, because then other people who don't already have them can't get them.

I think you'll need to find mocap data that is either CC0 or MIT license that will allow you to redistribute them in your own project. For example, the developer that made this collection:
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/animations/huge-fbx-mocap-library-part-1-19991
They explain how they used the "Carnegie Mellon" library, which "may be copied, modified, or redistributed without permission." The problem with this library, though is that these animations were not really intended for use in games, so (if I recall correctly) you don't really have the basic looping locomotion animations that you'd need in a game project.

 

I know that libraries.. it's quite a mess.. and I don't know if it contains the animation required to build the test project I would like to share (people keep asking how to realise the controller in this video I made

)...

As you already suggested it's not right to share unity's assets, even if deprecated, so I'll dig in those to see if there is what I need.. but even owning Umotion pro it will be a time consuming job to clean animations..

 

Indeed, I would even try to write to directly to Unity if they can release that mocap library wight such licenses and provided "as is".. that would be awsome but I don't where to address that request.
That's why I shared here my doubt..

 

Even if it wasn't deprecated, it might not help. One Asset Store account can't get muliple licenses of a free asset. Free assets have the same licenses as paid ones, making it very clear that you need one per user, but the button to add licenses is missing.

I asked about this recently, and was told the solution is to get your team members to get their own licenses. When I pointed out the issues with this the support person agreed, but couldn't do anything about it.

The store really doesn't handle anything other than hobby use cases well.

 

Actually, If it's an official Unity Technologies package, a lot of those had special licenses where you actually were allowed to redistribute them in open projects. For example, a lot of older assets included assets from Unity's Standard Assets or Image Effects packages. If you still have access to that package, is there any EULA readme.txt in there, or anything like that?

Otherwise, If you can actually reach them, it's possible that they may be okay letting you use these in your project, if that's what was provided in the original license.

 

The CMU mocap library is MIT license. It can be found around the internet. http://mocap.cs.cmu.edu/

 

It's on the asset store too for free as FBXs.

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/animations/huge-fbx-mocap-library-part-1-19991
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/animations/huge-fbx-mocap-library-part-2-20282
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/animations/huge-fbx-mocap-library-part-3-20285

 

It shows a "Standard Unity Asset Store EULA". I had downloaded the package way back when so I still had it in my assets lists on the Asset Store. You can see the information similar to a store page when you click on the package.


There are some other free animation packages on the Asset Store. Perhaps the OP can reach out to some of their developers to see if they could include a few of the animations as part of their package or as a required resource, providing credit where credit is due. I've seen that in a couple of cases, though I don't know what happened behind the scenes for how approval was granted.

 

Oh, well. That ephemeral candle of hope has been snuffed.

 

The Carnegie Mellon library is a pretty darn good replacement, though.

 

Hi everyone, first... thanks for all the comments.
Back to business... the asset doesn't contain any extra license inside the package so the classic EULA applies.
As we know and said the EULA clearly states that you can't share assets (even if owned by Unity, free and deprecated).

So I wrote to Unity's customer service.. just in case you hear strange noises in your homes... maybe it's the eco of the laughs coming from of Unity's offices while they are reading my ticket...

We'll see what happens
regards.