[Released] Morph Character System (MCS) - Male and Female

@Morph_JN

I'm still unclear as to this "in-app purchasing of clothing/content". Are you turning my multiplayer RPG into a new version of SecondLife? Will my players (customers) have to pay for each piece of clothing/content they want for their avatar, on top of paying me for my game?

Or is the app from which content is purchased something that I, as a a developer, use to purchase content that I then use in my game?

Along with everything said in above posts, I think dumping of the EULA over and above Unity's own Asset-Store EULA is a must, and some simple Flowchart diagrams of use-flow for Content Creators, Game Developers, and Game Players just to make things crystal clear and without any ambiguity from legal jargon.

Finally, about the 50 instances of any piece of content on an avatar that "could" interact with another avatar. This is just madness.

Scenario A:
A successful Call of Duty type game, in which <50 players interact per instance, with possibly hundreds of concurrent instances.

Scenario B:
A multiplayer RPG with a single instance, and 500 players spread across a world.

If this 50 instances clause is about money - then A has more players using the content than B. So the clause doesn't do it's job.

If this 50 instances clause is because the content is known to be very heavy on machine resources, that you don't want MCS being called bad because games using it crash, freeze, or go slow when >50 avatars are in-view or in-scene at once.

 

+1 for that.
BTW I see the subscription idea of Speedtree which M3D is trying to achieve also I think.
The problem is that creating Speedtrees is much more easier because it comes with everything you need to create those (textures, materials, changing models etc).
The M3D Access Tools on the other hand still need you to get or create 3d cloth Model and material for creating custom stuff. If the Access Tools would come with 100+ object / textures for clothes wich you could change this would be another thing...
So without getting a Maya / 3d Studio guy who creates me some clothes for Morph3d Characters I can't use the Artist Tools to create own clothing. Perhaps I had a different thing for the Artist Tools in mind, but right now it does not help me in any way and less if it costs...

I think you are mistaking something here. Think of all MMO's with InGame shop like ESO, TSW or also WoW. You can buy cosmetic stuff like Hats, Pants or whatever for real money there. That's the so called "in-app purchasing of clothes". If you sell stuff in your game for real money which you created with the Artist Tools. If you create such content but you don't sell it for real money IG or you don't have an IG / In App Shop in your game, M3D does not want anything.

 

So... if I understand this correctly:
I'm making an MMORPG, which will hopefully have hundreds (thousands would be a dream come true ) of simultaneous players, actually playing together (the instances are far greater than 20 - 50). Does this mean only 50 of those users can actually use the MCS content I put into the game? And even they are limited to a total of 20 of those individual assets?

Than what would be the use for me to include the packages? To make a race based on the female and male version? I couldn't effectively use them, if I understand your explanation correctly.

Basically this:

Why on earth would we choose MCS for a M(MO)RPG with those limitation? We'd be very, very, very foolish and insane.

But basically it's not really created with the artist tool, is it? You make it in, let's say Maya and you process it through the artist tool to make it fit with the MCS system. That's all. Or do I understand the AT wrongly?

 

Right now you are right. 50 gamers max per instance which are using Morph3d. So let's say 50 Morph3d Male Asset gamers playing at the same time in the same instance. Would be like a World of Warcraft Vanilla Molten Core 50 Man Raid If you have more you need a second instance. This is the most ridicolous limitation if you take a look to the idea of Morph3d:
"The Morph Character System (we call it MCS) has an API and GUI to easily build characters that can be manipulated at runtime. Yes! This is a procedural character system- so yeah, it looks like you just found your character engine for your next MMO, RPG or Fighter. MCS puts a ridiculous amount of control in your hands and in seconds you’re making characters like a 3D pro! Whether you are designing a single character or a world of characters for your game, MCS is your platform."

Totally right. Thats what I also described in my post before. I thought the Artist Tools come with hundreds of textures models etc to create own stuff out of the box. If that's the case you would or you could create content using AT.
But right now you anyway need to create your models and textures outside using Maya etc and the AT just is the "Middelware" putting it to your M3D Character and exporting it to such a format. So the license does not make sense at all if you ask me...

 

You understand it correctly. The tools basically just take your models, and textures, and bake the information together required to operate with an MCS model. To an outsider, the name Artist Tools is very deceiving, I'd call this the "rigger" that makes props work with MCS and conform to the blendshapes as they apply to the item in question.
In short, "how does this shirt I made in 3DS, react to the MCS male character when a stomache is made fatter", for an over-simplified view.

 

Thanks for confirming that. I guess I'll have to look elsewhere and ignore MCS from now on if things don't get changed. Too bad. I would have loved to use MCS in my game, but I'm not letting myself be limited because Morph3D wants that.

Exactly! I was under the impression of that quote and bought several MCS assets in the past. The limitation makes me want to reconsider and perhaps ask for a refund of all of them.

Thanks for the confirmation! And you're absolutely right!

You're absolutely right! Perhaps I've misunderstood the information in the past, but I was under the impression the AT would really be a tool, instead of what we've gotten now. Too bad.

 

I imagine I was writing a game. Maybe something like The Sims, maybe some MMO, or whatever.
In this game, players are free to dress themselves up as they please, with items they can find ingame or, optionally, buy from my ingame store as In-App-Purchases. This is nice, I can extend my library of items over the lifetime of the product. But if I'm not an artist, I have to pay someone to do that for me. So some of the money, maybe all of the money I earn with that particular item, will go to the Artist, maybe even more than that, if the item is not well received with the players. And then I have ONE item..! And for every further item I pay someone to make I have the same risk over and over again. Will players buy it, or am I paying that Artist for nothing in return?

Now I imagine, there was an open library of items, built by a community of Artists all over the world, which I can integrate into my game through a simple API. The Assets would simply be streamed into my game on demand. But I have to share the revenue I make by selling these items with M3D and the Artist who made them. Yes, I'm still not getting all the revenue for myself, but I am guaranteed to never pay more for the Item than I'm ever going to make with it. Also: my library of items is guaranteed to be much, much more extensize than the one I could manage to fill up myself.

From what I understand, that is what M3D are planning to do. And I personally think that a great idea, and a very good deal for everyone involved indeed. Even for your Artist, who can now sell their items to a much bigger audience.

If M3D are indeed doing what I think they're doing, I'm gonna be celebrating, because an infinite library of clothing items would make the game we are building so much greater.
@Morph_JN

 

I've nothing against buying new clothing to add to my game. But I will buy it, and I will add it to my game. I do not want in-game purchases; I'm not making SecondLife. I also do not want it to be limited to 50 instances. Those are the points that would make Morph3D a non-starter for me.

 

If you don't have In-App-Purchases and add the items directly to the game without streaming them in, then neither of those license limitations seem to apply to you. The one thing left would be the 50 player limit, which I do not understand myself, yet, either. I suppose it's because of performance reasons, which may well force you to show a max of 50 players at a time anyways. Personally I doubt most players will even notice that in a crowd of 50 there are some players missing.

 

Here's a question, I'd like input from someone who's done some actual research.
Now that their EULA is updated and all, is there anything that still makes M3D superior to the other systems like Fuse, Makehuman, UMA2?

 

That 50 instance limit is worrying. I can't understand it. It seems to be a legal-clause aimed directly against mmos. It can't be money related, as a small to medium mmo would have fewer players than a big instanced team game like all the console war games.

If it was purely a financial thing, they would be going after the instanced games too.

If they just don't like mmo type single instance games; I don't mind paying a "we don't like mmos" surcharge, as long as it's reasonable (ie no more than double the normal cost). But don't tell me how I can use it after I've paid for it.

I will also only buy it through Unity's assetstore.

 

I suppose only the Blendscape / Morph Feature directly in Unity

Edit:
Wow.. Never saw MakeHuman. Seems really cool

 

This was my original point, but one has to consider in an MMO environment that you may be looking for BuddyXYZ in a crowd, in a populated city (Orgrimmar anyone?). "Hey meet me at the bank..." "I'm at the bank" "wtf, why can't I see you".
So there are scenarios that one would have to try to work around, which I think is just a pain in our butts for no reason, you start making my job harder I might just weigh the pros and cons of not using the asset to avoid such considerations entirely... better things to be spending time on.

And the wording in their EULA leaves too much open for interpretation. As it stands right now, assuming it was enforceable, you wouldn't be able to stream even your own content, from the server to the clients. It says nothing about a specific service that it applies to, it applies to MCS in general. You would not be able to create in-app-purchases for assets you've bought and included into the distribution of the game as a means to cover operational costs, it simply states you cannot have IAP without special permissions (AKA gimme a piece of the pie).
The wording, and the fact that it even attempts to limit the use is the very issue in the first place, not that "it may or may not affect me" if they arbitrarily decide where they stand on a point... it's the very fact that it's a concern in the first place which quickly becomes "why am I even worrying about this, move on and use something else without these arbitrary hassles".

Edit: For clarity, I have added the exact chunk of the EULA from their website for reference.
I will underline workings of concern that imply it does not strictly apply to some streamed cloud service they provide down the road. I am not emphasizing, or cherry picking anything, I am just pointing out the parts to read closely that are wide open to interpretation.


Additional restrictions. Use of the Content in any of the following ways is not allowed under this Agreement, and would require User to obtain additional rights other than those granted under this agreement:

• Delivery of Content in a streamed or on-demand way in which the total number of different pieces of Content situationally available from User is greater than twenty.
• Delivery, unlocking, or other methods of availability of Content from User or User’s applications that require an end user to make a financial transaction to either buy access to or use of the content, or which require a financial transaction for some other credit, item, or status which is then used to gain access to or use of the Content other than the initial purchase and installation of such an application made available by User.
• Use of Content in an application where the total number of unique users of the application allowed to interact with each other in any given instance of the application is greater than fifty.

 

Keep in mind they work with the AGPL license. Basically for games this means:

So.... your game would have to be open-source, if I understand it correctly.

 

I'm not very happy about this whole situation... In fact, this whole license problem (to stay polite), might convince me to drop the whole thing and search for alternatives for our project.

But I still have a question. Our project is not an MMO (20 players at most), and will not have an in game market or anything like it. But is selling a DLC (outside of the game), that could contain a couple of outfits for M3D among other things, be a problem?

 

If you wanted the character creation / editing in game then yes. Otherwise you can use Makehuman to create the character and then export it. The exports are CC0 licensed, so this is fine if you only need predefined characters for your game.

 

Yeah, there's the catch for me. In an MMORPG it's pretty normal to have some form of character editing (if it's only to change hair and eye color)...... Well, for others it might work as a very good alternative though

 

There's also the pretty advanced Manuel Bastioni Labs plugin for Blender, and the paid Autodesk Character Generator.

 

There are very few systems that allow for character editing like you'd find in most mmorpg type games. That's one of the reasons we're fighting to keep morph3D in the real world, not in some financial fantasy land.

 

Kinda cart-before-horse to announce licensing restrictions on MCS in a 50+ MMORG when there is only one skin texture… I guess users can always just dial in more bat…?

 

It depends on your current perspective more than anything. Assuming you bought MCS from the Unity Asset Store, then the short answer is no. They attempted to supercede an agreement that was already in place, and that's not legal, but how you produce those extra outfits creates a longer answer to the question.

The longer answer is that it's still an unknown as to what their move will be going forward regarding the conflicting EULA situation. And using the Artist Tools to create those outfits would currently bind you to a new EULA that, as it currently stands, would result in a grey/black area due to the wording.
A few posts back I reference and underline some key wording in the EULA, notice "initial installation" would not technically include DLC's after the fact. And so technically, since you're receiving a financial transaction (for your DLC) in order to unlock those outfits (as part of the DLC), the technicalities of the wording is such that the long answer is yes, there is a problem for you as well.

This will actually make it entirely unusable for many on the simple principle that a DLC or expansion would include new outfits for new armors and items, whether intentionally cutting off this avenue or not, this shows that accepting additional arbitrary EULA's is not going to work.

 

But with the restrictions of 20 pieces of user generated content, how many people will buy your content? MMO's are currently out due to the 50 characters who interact per game instance. The only people who might buy your stuff are those who will use Unity and M3d as dolls, like in DAZ but then again, why wouldn't they use DAZ?

I bought a handful of M3d stuff when it was previously on sale, not for our multiplayer game, thank goodness, but for a possible single player game in the future. They seemed the right tool for the job. But even a single player game might have more than 50 NPCs in a busy scene. That with all the restrictions just puts a bad taste in my mouth.

I was one who decided not to use M3d for our current game because of the lack of a custom content tool, which was promised over and over again. Now not only do we have to pay for it, but then even though their own EULA says the use content belongs to the user, they get to control what we do with it. Thank goodness Maya doesn't do that!

Don't you guys see that with a good tool, working avatars, and new content makers, more and more people would have turned to using M3d for their games. Your profits would have increased as the available user content increased, on the asset store, where we all feel comfortable buying it. You would not have needed a cut of the sales, just the increased sales of your base packages, which you could have expanded.

Sad.

 

@Morph_JN, I will preface this post with an emphasis that this is not a “kill the messenger” rant. I recognize you are doing your duty as a community manager in both directions, so I want you to know I appreciate your efforts here, especially on the weekend, when this thread has been particularly active.

As to my feedback, I would argue the root of most/all of these complaints is that the company behind MCS has operated in an opaque manner that runs counter to the culture that Unity has tried to foster both as a game engine company themselves and within their developer community. Higher-ups at Morph3D may feel that what they are doing with respect to terms and restrictions and pricing schemes is normal in the larger content development realm--and that may even be true--but it is pretty much the opposite of what Unity asset and game developers expect with the tools we use for this engine.

I expect (and certainly hope) that the EULA will be modified as a result of the collective outrage, but I can tell you right now that just easing up on those controversial restrictions this one time will not be enough to fix your reputation or engender trust with the community. You are going to have to do a heck of a lot more to be open and honest about plans and ideas and intentions with this product, as well as be open to adjusting your decisions once you get feedback from your audience (us). You can’t continue to be silent for months at a time and then surprise us with a big, shiny new release that also has a bunch of surprise “gotchas” with respect to how we can buy or use your products.

I know a lot of how things have been handled for MCS is similar to how your parent company operates for Daz3D (I am a customer there). I can tell you right now, you cannot treat this community in the same manner, if you expect to meaningfully contribute to the “democratization of game development” that is so integral to Unity’s vision.

I sincerely hope your management will reconsider the path forward.

 

Just a side note, you can take the Make Human characters into UMA now and make a new "race". You can attach DNA sliders for customization and different skins, etc. It is relatively easy and there already are videos out there to help as well as an active Slack community. Any character can be done this way. I have even created a UMA sword race just to prove I could.

This allows you to take your own model or one you purchase and turn it into a great looking customizable avatar. It does not use blend shapes but bones...which actually makes it faster. I know the appearance has been a complaint about UMA in the past, but now you can use any model, except MCS, obviously...I would trust their license to cover doing that.

 

+1

 

Oh, thanks for that information! That suddenly makes it a very attractive option

 

I am going to be honest.

These EULA issues are going to be a problem and not just in the Unity Community but in the Unreal Engine community as well. When you eventually go down that route. I would fix this ASAP.

As for the fee for the artist tools. That should be no more than 100 Dollars. I know that the Daz Game dev license runs for 500 Dollars. Which in my mind is way too expensive for most devs to afford.

Also a question from me -

1. Are the Artist tools compatible with Blender?

 

I didn't address this before, because I'm not really sure what Morph3D is attempting to do.

But others here are saying that the idea is to create access inside the game - is "portal" the correct term? - to an infinite wardrobe of clothing from Morph3D using the MCS system.

Okay, that's fine, but I am not interested in that product. It doesn't fit my game. I can see how other designers might like it, and it could be perfect for them, but it is not for me.

If the additional restrictions in the EULA are intended to only apply to devs using this infinite wardrobe service, then I'm okay with that. But I don't want them to apply to me. I'm not going to be streaming on-demand from Morph3D, so I don't want restrictions on my game saying I can only use 20 pieces of art or that I should be limited to 50 players at a time; that sort of thing. I think this could just be an error in how the EULA is written.

Break the EULA up so there is one EULA for those of us buying individual items from either the Unity or MCS store. This would be a standard, unrestricted game license. This would also apply to art tools for this group of users.

Then there would be the EULA for those who are using the infinite wardrobe service. This could place restrictions on how the streaming and on-demand services are to be used.

If for some reason it's not practical to have two EULAs, then create a special section in the EULA that adds restrictions solely for users of the streaming / on-demand service. It looks to me like whoever was writing the EULA might have had this in mind, but they didn't take the extra - and very important - step of clearly defining who these additional restrictions apply to.

When I read "streaming" and "on-demand" I don't automatically understand that these apply to services that are going to be offered in the future by Morph3D. The EULA should say something like, "Additional restrictions for those using Morph3D's infinite wardrobe service (TM)," otherwise I'm looking at the language there and saying to myself, "Hey, these new restrictions could be applied to me. Unity natively does things that could be called streaming (asynchronous additive scene loading, asset bundles), any character customization could be thought of as being on-demand," etc.

So just target the language in the EULA better, so that the content restrictions apply only to those using the service, and things should largely be okay. (I think.)

 

But from what folks say, the tool really is just a rigger/skinner for models that artists make in the 3d modeling program of their choice. Why would this be worth $100?

Trust me, I am no expert, but I can rig and skin clothing for UMA in Maya LT in less than an hour. The hard part is making the models. Artists will be paying at least $30 a month (Maya LT) or more if they use 3dsMax or other software. Seems very petty to charge them $100 just to rig.

And then taking a cut of each sale, for modeling work done in an outside 3d modeling program with a license owned by the user. The cut of the sales is just the privilege of making clothing for a avatar system that is not a very attractive system for most game developers due to a very heavily restricted license.

 

Exactly this ^^^
I don't want access to all MCS content. I make a game in a certain style, pseudo-medieval fantasy. I don't want modern clothing, let alone sci-fi clothing appearing in my game.
I simply want in my game what I create (or future members of my team for that matter) with the style and setting I've created/designed.

I'll have to see how this story is going to continue/end....

 

The tool doesn't do the rigging/ skinning actually that part has to be done by the artist too. What the tool does is taking the skinned model and apply all the morphs from the MCS model to your custom content. Also puts in the required scripts needed by MCS system so it will be equipable in Unity.

While making 400 morphs all available by just one click is quite handy, it is doing less then what you have described.

Not saying it is more useful or less useful, just wanted to clear what the tool actually does.

 

This is a really good point. If you have a theme to your game or even different cultures who can only use certain clothing items, then making it all available to all customers is not a good idea. It takes away the ability to create your game to work how you want it to work.

 

Just wanted to let everyone know I've read all of your comments thus far and do appreciate the feedback I've gotten. It makes my job a lot easier when I can have specific talking points from this thread.

There were a couple of things I wanted to address. Unfortunately I can't address everything that I've read so far but I'll take a stab at a few things.

1. There seemed to be some confusion as to whether we would require users to stream content into their games if they use MCS or provide their content only through In-App-Purchases. I think this misunderstanding came from a post I made earlier outlining some of the technology we will be demoing at GDC this coming week. We are going to be providing technologies that developers can leverage to implement these things in their game, but we aren't going to force those technologies on developers. If someone wants to package all content in the game that is fine.

2. Artist Tools in its current state doesn't auto skin figures. However there are figure templates provided that allow you to skin a figure in your app of choice by just copying and pasting the bones. Now this is where my inexperience may show as I've never rigged with Maya so maybe I'm making the process sound more simple than it is. But from my understanding the figure templates provided should making skinning clothing very simple.

I think that's it. I'll keep poking my head in this thread today and try to stay on top of reading responses. I can't guarantee I'll have time to make another post though.

 

I appreciate the clarification, but what we've been saying/implying is that the existence of these future streaming services appears to be much of the rationality for the general MMO restrictions in the EULA. If they aren't the rationality for them, then the restrictions make even less sense, but either way they're no good.

Exactly. While it may be important for using the items with the MCS system, it's a tiny thing compared to the effort of designing, modeling, texturing, and skinning for new clothes- all of which we have to do in other programs, spending a ton of time and money on. We'll be spending all of 5 minute using these Tools to make our assets compatible with the MCS system, and that 5 minutes having any impact at all on where we can sell the results, or how we can use the assets we've made/paid for in our own games, is completely absurd. It's beyond absurd.

 

So I did some more unpaid testing for you guys, here is what I found:

As others have mentioned, your best bet is to import the male/female packages without core first, then import core. If you do one first then the other you're gonna have a terrible time (Tried this the first time, led to much headache and sorrow, not the upfront kind either, but the lingering kind that keeps making you pull your hair out until you decide to delete everything and start over)

Workaround: you import male, female, then core you can then actually insert m3d models into your game without them throwing errors every frame. YAY

Don't bother try to save a prefab though, you will lose your materials.

Workaround: Write script to add clothes to models at runtime, simple!

Don't bother trying to build your game yet though, M3DIMPORT.DLL references editor symbols and isn't excluded from standalone builds.

Workaround: Mark DLL as editor only.

And now finally, you can actually build your game!

.... only to find that your M3D characters can only exist in 2 states in your built game:

* Naked, but visible
* Invisible, but clothed


Way to go with this release guys. I'm sure you wont have any problems with people violating those new conditions.

 

There's a black skin if you buy the voodoo/witch doctor packs.

Personally I think it's kinda funny that they are that brazen. Better not tell Anita

 

For those who don't know, GDC starts tomorrow, so I expect on top of the 1.6 release dropping this week in a poor state of operation that we are going to hear more about their "future plans" over the next couple days, hopefully someone who attends can stop by the M3D booth and get some answers for everyone.
Although cheers for the improvements being reported by the few people who have got this release working, sounds like it was a significant improvement.

@Morph_JN
I don't know that you want to be thanking us for making your job easier in the same post as admitting that as M3D's PR guy you can't keep up with the PR beyond one post a day. Just saying... this isn't helping the cause. I understand it's the weekend and all, but PR is a thankless 24/7/365 job, especially when the majority of your audience are weekend warriors with their own weekday jobs.

 

They do deserve praise for this, loading figures with clothing is massively faster.

Unfortunately everything else about this release is broken making it entirely unusable, but once those issues are fixed this content will actually be practical to use for more than 1 or 2 characters at a time. I'm very much looking forward to that, and also to more content in the UNITY asset store where I can ignore the legalese drama going on here.

 

I wish I could say I wasn't a participant of the drama, but the truth is, any of us waiting to know the future here are stuck in it. I wish the biggest issue I had with M3D was waiting for some bug fixes and banging my head on brand new tools with no documentation. These are issues I'm familiar with and ready to handle.
I don't want there to be drama about the legal aspects, it's the last thing ANY of us wanted. It's why we deal with the UAS to not look beyond 2 or 3 basic licensing factors like per-seat licenses, or the special "Indie 100k" licensed products out there like Substance Designer Indie, or Unity (upgrading to Pro) itself.
Now, I dunno if even that is totally legitimate with Substance Designer Indie (as Unity itself does this for the engine I could see it being an option in the UAS EULA somewhere), but as I've not looked into the UAS EULA extensively I digress on that specific case... the point I want to make is that at least I know what I'd be getting into right in the description of the asset package before I ever bought it. It's very clear about the restrictions on the Indie version of the product. And if you look close, they do release the full edition as a separate product without the 100k sales limitation, it's all up-front and you know what you're getting into... so you can make an informed decision right there and that is really the core of the issue.
I'd love to see M3D go into other areas, I mentioned it before and for my own shameless attempt to plug it again, I'd like to see the MCS core concept introduced to making animals and creatures. How great would it be to have a handful of base models we can purchase that open up making all kinds of animals and creatures, realistic or otherwise. If there was a solid foundation behind all this, I'd gladly spend $50 for a fish base model enabling me to morph fish, whales, dolphins... heck, I'd probably pay $50 for an octopus model just to morph it out into a kraken. And 2 and 3 leg-boned quadreped base models, maybe even 3 leg-boned bipeds as well (I was also thinking 2 leg-boned animal model to focus less on humanoid, and more on things like birds and dinosaurs). If the core system was solid, there is a sensible model for extending out the functionality without trying to overcapitalize on already promised features, I'd gladly pay into the base model concept allowing me unrestricted creativity and usage of that model and any clothing I may want to apply.

See, we all still have hope for the future, and would like to think this wasn't all just a shared hallucination about the potential of MCS.

 

This seems to be somewhat inaccurate, from what I can gather your goal is for your new fancy thing to be a way for you to get a cut of In-App-Purchases in partner games and you want to use your Artist Tools EULA restrictions to prevent anyone from offering In-App-Purchases based on M3D content any other way.

So yeah, it very much is forced on those who planned to implement In-App-Purchases for Artist Tools content. Certainly you can understand the frustration of those who planned to build out a game affected by this on the promise of upcoming Artist Tools (without any mention of these onerous restrictions)

It's worth repeating though, that NONE OF THIS applies to the content on the actual unity asset store, so in that sense it is true that you aren't forcing the new thing onto those who don't care about custom content.

Also it might help goodwill some if Morph3d specifically clarifies that the restrictions everyone is up in arms about do not apply in any way shape or form to Asset Store Content.

Edit: if my above read of the situation is correct, then a good compromise may be to carve out an exception to the new terms for content that is self-authored, and only apply those restrictions on artist tools content bought from others. Everyones expectations would stay pretty much in line that way and you'd still have the opportunity to try this new (admittedly somewhat interesting and novel) business model.

 

Really? But not everyone is capable of using modeling tools to model, rig and skin a custom set of clothing to use with MCS. That is the problem. If it was easy to make your own content, then it really wouldn't matter. But it is not. And I would guess that 80% or more of the people who use MCS cannot make their own clothing.

And how would this work if you hire someone to use the tools to make the clothing? Would it be yours or would you have to give MCS a cut even after you paid the artist to make the items?

Custom content has to work in a way that allows others to make content to share/sell to others. Otherwise, it is useless for most people.

 

I agree with this 100%. If my company makes the clothing, then we own the clothing. We didn't give a piece of ownership to Maya, Mudbox, Photoshop, or any of the other tools used, so why would M3D, who contributes the least to the process, be able to dictate where and how we sell our clothing?

This is like finding an OBJ -> FBX converter on a store somewhere and being told that you can only sell the resulting FBX files on the converter's website. It's just an adapter for existing assets, and this makes zero sense.

 

I'm just saying plenty of people justifiably had the expectation that they would be able to buy the morph3d assets to use in their unity game of any type or size and eventually make their own content for it without additional non-technical restrictions.

Whether or not custom content from others would be available to buy and use as freely as the existing asset store content is not something that any indications were given about.

"Artist tools coming soon" was a mantra used over and over again to help promote the existing products without any mention of the additional restrictions though. So I think it would go a long way towards making things right if M3D did not try to put these restrictions on self authored content.

But again like I said, it was a compromise option, I don't think anything is going to make all parties happy here.

But on what IMO is a more important note: Have you notified your engineers that the highly anticipated release of your flagship product is currently absolutely broken and unusable for everyone who might try it? Any ETA on a hotfix?

Or do you just not care anymore now that the base assets are free, and the outfits are still heavily discounted?

I really hope you're not planning on turning the asset store content into a "first hit is free" kind of deal before forcing people into a more restrictive EULA in order to get or create any additional content.


So some direct, actionable yes or no questions for @Morph_JN

Do you plan to sell new outfits/content packs in the unity asset store?

Do you plan to allow people to sell their artist tools converted content on the unity asset store?

 

@Morph_JN

So, I too find the limit on avatar's, items and content distribution very limiting for a MMO/RPG style game. Others have said why, so no need for me to beat that one to death. Writing you for the 'super secret handshake deal' is not the preferred method to get around this. Either be public/upfront what it will cost to get around this, or remove the restrictions (preferred).

Additionally a few EULA asks.
1) EULA needs to call out that Unity EULA is dominate for Unity. Right now it is asserting rights over all sources of MCS.
2) EULAs do need to change from time to time. On the other hand, no dev wants to build on sand. Add the clause that customer can use the current EULA, or any following one, at their discretion. This is done on more than a few dev EULAs to ensure they will not have the rug yanked out from under them later by say. . . I dunno adding a limit like max avatars. XD

As for content creators? Most of us are indies. So we need a way to get custom content from indie artists to us without going though the M3D Store. . . Unless it can be so configured as to be just for one customer. . . Reason, if I pay for custom artwork, it should then be mine alone to use in a game.

 

Or resell. In most cases that's also and option for indiedevs if they purchase some work and things don't happen to work out. This basically means that any work done is done and can't really be resold if you wanted to.

I've had a few inquiries about this kind of scenario. From my point of view, if you paid for the work, you should own the work and do with it as you like. (minus the possibility of giving some credit to the modeler)

This will also effect small written studio contracts in some way I'm sure. Unless the dev/studio purchases a special license that allows them to purchase and sell or resell paid for content. It doesn't seem like that's a possibility with the current EULA. (There is mention of purchase additional rights. It might be referring to this type of scenario).

would require User to obtain additional rights other than those granted under this agreement:

• Converted Content. User Content that is modified via the use of Artist Tools is then considered to be Converted Content.

-User may otherwise not reproduce, sell, distribute, sublicense, rent, lease or lend the Converted Content.

It's too much I think.

 

Hello I am having Issues with the MARTIAL ARTS for men outfit. It seems the injection mask in not being applied ? Do you know what I should do to fix this ?

 

BANG! And there you have it in a nutshell. Simply put, easy to understand. Photoshop don't own the textures made with it's tools. Blue Circle Cement don't own the house you made with their cement. Selling the Content Creation Tools must be financially sustainable. The content made with them must be free from all licences and saleable by the artist.

The bigger the pool of created content, the more people will want to buy the products, the more power the product range has. Nothing stopping Morph3D from making their own content for sale too. The more the merrier.

 

OMG this is truly unbelievable.... I have bought a LOT of assets from the Unity Asset store and NEVER had these kind of issues like I have with MCS... why does this have to be so difficult??

So let me see if I have this straight....

I bought the MCS Male and MCS Female assets from the store, yes bought, you were charging for them then (the "LITE" versions were free) I still have my invoices.... I also went on to your website and bought a number of outfits from there for my characters. I see that the characters are now free..... wow, nice for new customers but a bit of a kick in the teeth for your long-standing customers who supported you from the start and are often small indie developers with not a lot of money to spend on assets that they seemingly did not have to, specially when various issues an non delivery of tools has been prohibitive in using the paid for assets with any success so far.

Now to top all that you want to tell us you are imposing a restriction on how and how many instances of those assets we put into our own games... seriously? Just exactly how would you enforce that anyway? What if I say the plot of my game involves a group of 20 people with the ability to change / morph into whoever they want and to re-appear in new places - giving the illusion that there are hundreds of them in the game when in fact the twist in the story is that there are only the same 20 people re-appearing every time? How could you prove me wrong without analysing and interpreting my plot? None of this makes sense.

It's like me selling a 3D model of a crate and then telling the game developers who bought it that they can only put 3 crates in any scene? Why? What has it got to do with me anyway? Makes no sense!

When I decide in my game (yes it is my game afterall) that I am selling DLC where players can pay a fee to get a new cool outfit.... I am not selling your outfit anyway.... I already owned that and compiled it into the game.... I am really selling a binary flag that will enable that outfit on a player or not.... your asset and the data defining it (which is after all just a string of zeros and ones) is not changing hands or being transmitted.... just a boolean flag within my code that will enable your asset within my game or not.... so will this also be restricted? are you gonna try and control our use of boolean values as well when using your asset?

I seriously think that MCS need to take a long hard look into how they are doing business and alienating the very people that made and can still make their business a viable one... I, for one, am close to calling it a day, taking my losses on the chin as a lesson not to be repeated and to find an alternative... this is too much time spent back-and-forth for using a simple asset.

What happens to all of the man-hours that developers have put into using your assets that may now be wasted as your restrictions have made it no longer viable? will you re-imburse them for their time?

This really should not be this difficult....

 

I'm afraid it doesn't work that way. Photoshop, Maya etc. are tools that allow you to digitalize ideas, they are like the pen a painter uses, or like the pointy, tiny shovelly thingies a modeller uses to form the clay. You pay for the tool, you own the things you make with it, because it's actually your creative work and property.

Converting the digitalized art from one format to another is really nothing more than that. It's like making a photo or a 3D scan of your handcrafted art, it just changes the form it is represented from material to digital. Or from obj to fbx. No claim for the provider of the camera, scanner or converter, they didn't actually contribute to the art.

But: if somebody were to take your realworld sculpted figurine and were to add joints, motors and sensors to it to make it move, so you can sell it as a toy or something, this adds functionality that you didn't originally craft yourself, it increases the value of your work. Nobody forces you to let them do it, but if you want them to, you should allow them to take their fair share of the value they added.

Point being: the Artist Tools don't just convert the files, they actually add blendshapes that weren't there before, and that you did neither design nor fine tune and evaluate a hundred times over, yourself.

 

I purchased a new Lego set today. Couldn't believe the EULA on the back of the box. I can only use 37 pieces at once, and every time I build something, I need to pay Lego a dollar.

Needless to say, I won't be buying any more Lego.



(Not really. Lego is a great product and doesn't have any stupid EULAs)