Models Protection

[Valcriss]

Well i made a little search on the forum, but didnt find a thread talking about Models protection.

When you release a game, a sample or other stuff using commercial models, do you protect them ? and if it the case, how ?

[Hypnotron]

Personally i dont think going beyond a simple unencrypted archive or package is worth the trouble. 

Nobody is going to use your art in a commercial game and if they do, you can take legal action.  Otherwise people will just use them in their private projects for testing/placeholder.  No big deal.

Second, if you want your game to be mod-able then having the ability to easily replace / add / remove models from the archive/package is a good thing.

[Lyrical]

I would like to add i will be releasing a TVPackager with unique encryption with a library to load/unload the packages in your applications.

This will be a free tool for everyone and should protect comunity members models ect.

I have personally purchased models that i would like to use as demonstration to show what i've done with TV3D but without the protection of these files i can't show anything apart from using movies.

Models and textures can be loaded

This will be release soon.

[Lenn]

You can protect your files as much as you like, but as soon as a model is loaded into memory it can be grabbed easily by an application. Many people do this in fact, even for mods/games that have built in exporters because it is easier to save the models like that. One such app is 3dVia printscreen : http://www.3dvia.com/software/printscreen/ and a lot of the models you see on their website are possibly from dodgy sources.

So, in my humble opinion, protection - forget about it.

[newborn]

You can protect your files as much as you like, but as soon as a model is loaded into memory it can be grabbed easily by an application. Many people do this in fact, even for mods/games that have built in exporters because it is easier to save the models like that. One such app is 3dVia printscreen : http://www.3dvia.com/software/printscreen/ and a lot of the models you see on their website are possibly from dodgy sources.

So, in my humble opinion, protection - forget about it.

Holy crap! I've never heard of any tools like this before! Thanks for the input.

[Lyrical]

Thanks Lenn, I would agree Loading the TVPackage into a secondary security layer would actually make things more difficult for the developer and no more secure, Cheers i never thought of it like that.

Maybe i should just release what i have for everyone to look at and give feedback.

Cheers

[Lenn]

It's not like there is absolutely no sense in protecting your assets though. Any added effort by the user to have to get the models is a deterrant. Besides, most of these apps have trouble capturing bones/animations properly, or models with multiple texture layers which have shaders applied, but fixed single-uv-channel models are very grabbale. My thoughts were more about the fact that people don't generally rip off anyone's art or assets. And if they do they use them for testing, never commercialy - or at least I never heard of such cases from indie or smaller studios. But that's just my philosophy of having content open to everyone to encourage modding of any kind!

[Lyrical]

HI Lenn, good points, I may after all create the extra security layer for the TVPackages.
My TVPackage Creator i've done Add/Deletes files to the TVM also adds the password,

The problem is that you can open TVPackage files with any password, i've sent bug report for this. This is the reason i was going to add an extra security layer with password and excryption to battle the problem for now.

Test models are usually free models downloaded from places like TurboSquid so sharing isn't a problem like you say.

I hope to get what i've got so far with the TVPackage Creator out soon for everyone.

Cheers Lenn

[Lyrical]

I have released the TVPackage creator for eveyone

http://www.truevision3d.com/forums/tv3d_sdk_65/tvpackage_creator-t18260.0.html

Have fun

[Amon]

Has anyone tried MoleBox with TV3D?

I use MoleBox for other stuff and it is perfect for packing media and in to the exe or pak file.

[TMichael]

...lurking...

MoleBox?

...database update...

Nice one, Amon!

If you're still looking, I have a growing list of file encryption software on my site under Tools->File Management->File Encryption.

Cheers,
Tim