Need help with HDRI maps in Poser 11 Pro

[Semicharm]

Actually the next part you mention but didn't bother to quote says "For the avoidance of doubt, You do not have permission under this Public License to Share Adapted Material." Frankly, that's fairly explicit. I don't know why you keep trying to dance around it. It really is the most restrictive element of CC.

Personally, I wouldn't include noemotionhdrs on a list of resources for CG artists , but they technically can use it for their own personal doodles.

 

[eclark1894]

Actually the next part you mention but didn't bother to quote says "For the avoidance of doubt, You do not have permission under this Public License to Share Adapted Material." Frankly, that's fairly explicit. I don't know why you keep trying to dance around it. It really is the most restrictive element of CC.

Personally, I wouldn't include noemotionhdrs on a list of resources for CG artists , but they technically can use it for their own personal doodles.

You don't have to use it. But think this over, why bother to make that conditional if it's so explicit? Furthermore, that's only applicable if you want to share ADAPTED material. In other words, a derivative.

 

[Semicharm]

You don't have to use it. But think this over, why bother to make that conditional if it's so explicit? Furthermore, that's only applicable if you want to share ADAPTED material. In other words, a derivative.

The NoDerivatives part of the CC BY-ND license isn't optional, and using an image in a render is a derivative. I get that you're having a hard time with this because NoDerivatives licenses rare. I had to look it up myself because I can't even recall the last time I had to deal with them.

 

[Willowisp]

Using the image as-is in your artwork, is NOT derivative. Derivative means altering the image itself.

Edit: To make a comparison, say you have a merchant resource for skin for a figure. You add this skin to a figure and render the figure in a scene. This is totally fine. But if you alter the files in the merchant resource and redistribute as a merchant resource, this is derivative and not ok. In the case of the HDRIs, if you alter the HDRI itself and redistribute as HDRi, then it is derivative, but simply using it as a background for a render is not.

 

[Semicharm]

Using the image as-is in your artwork, is NOT derivative. Derivative means altering the image itself.

Edit: To make a comparison, say you have a merchant resource for skin for a figure. You add this skin to a figure and render the figure in a scene. This is totally fine. But if you alter the files in the merchant resource and r
edistribute as a merchant resource, this is derivative and not ok. In the case of the HDRIs, if you alter the HDRI itself and redistribute as HDRi, then it is derivative, but simply using it as a background for a render is not.

Creative Commons licenses are general purpose, as they can apply any copyrighted material regardless of medium. The standard they use to determine a "derivative" is based on copyright law, not the common concept of a "derivative" used by CG artists. It doesn't matter if you perform geometry and color transformations in a 2D space with a photo editor or in a 3D space with a renderer. As far as copyright is concerned, manipulating the image to produce another is a derivative regardless of the method used. Whether a particular method is allowed or not depends on the license. (I'm not going to wade into the deeper issues of fair use/fair dealing law.) For example, you can't downloaded a random, unlicensed image and use it as a texture. It does not matter whether you manipulate the texture in a photo editor (one form of derivative) or as-is in a renderer (another form of derivative), it would be illegal to distribute either derivative publicly. Most texture licenses, say for a character, allow you to make renders and distribute them but not distribute the textures themselves regardless of whether you edited them. A merchant resource allows those kinds of derivatives to be distributed, as long as they're not licensed as another merchant resource.

In the case of NoDerivatives license, it's the complete opposite of a common texture license. Texture licenses let you derive a rendered image from them, but not redistribute the original images themselves. NoDerivatives allow you to redistribute the original images, but NO derivatives of them. I believe the only exceptions are for format conversions, compilations, and "excerpts". Using them in a render is a derivative and doesn't fall under any of those exceptions.

 

[eclark1894]

But you keep omitting the part where they tell you the circumstances under which you CAN share an adapted image. That makes no sense to tell you that under no circumstances can you share an adapted material, but if you do, then here's how we want you to do it.

 

[Satira Capriccio]

The NoEmotion HDRs website states you can use his HDRs in both personal and commercial work. So ... isn't that stating you can use his downloaded HDRs in a derivative work ... which generally for most of us would be a render. He specifically said commercial use is allowed.

Showing or selling (distributing) a render is not distributing the elements (objects, textures/materials, HDRs, etc.) used to create the render. It is "distributing" a new, original creation, which is a derivative work, and the copyright for that work belongs to you, not the original copyright holder of the materials used to create the new, original creation.

The license doesn't prohibit you from modifying the HDRs to create a render, whether for personal or commercial use. It also doesn't seem to prohibit you from including the HDRs (as is) in a product you distribute for others to use. But if you modify the HDRs, you can't include those modified materials in a product you distribute for others to use.

Now ... if someone is a copyright lawyer, they could jump in and explain that licensing. Or ... someone could contact NoEmotion HDRs for clarification. Other than that, we're all just tossing out our own understanding of the licensing.

 

[Semicharm]

The NoEmotion HDRs website states you can use his HDRs in both personal and commercial work. So ... isn't that stating you can use his downloaded HDRs in a derivative work ... which generally for most of us would be a render. He specifically said commercial use is allowed.

View attachment 46418​

Showing or selling (distributing) a render is not distributing the elements (objects, textures/materials, HDRs, etc.) used to create the render. It is "distributing" a new, original creation, which is a derivative work, and the copyright for that work belongs to you, not the original copyright holder of the materials used to create the new, original creation.

The license doesn't prohibit you from modifying the HDRs to create a render, whether for personal or commercial use. It also doesn't seem to prohibit you from including the HDRs (as is) in a product you distribute for others to use. But if you modify the HDRs, you can't include those modified materials in a product you distribute for others to use.

Now ... if someone is a copyright lawyer, they could jump in and explain that licensing. Or ... someone could contact NoEmotion HDRs for clarification. Other than that, we're all just tossing out our own understanding of the licensing.

Though using images to create another work can create a new copyright (it's an argument about whether the use was "tranformative"), that does NOT nullify the license requirements of the original items used to create it. It does NOT matter if you distribute the original elements or not. To put this in a different context, using an unlicensed clip from a copyrighted movie in a student film would be be infringement. Having the same clip playing on a TV in the background of a shot can still be infringement, even if you didn't distribute the clip itself.

CC BY ND does allow you to use the image AS-IS in a commercial work. That is, without modifying it. Using an HDR in a render, for example as a background, is in itself a modified version. While your use would create a new copyright, that doesn't nullify the requirements of the original license.

I'm not a lawyer, though I did have to study copyright law in college, and have followed copyright issues for decades. Frankly, I hate the unintuitive mess that copyright has become. And yes, I agree that NoEmotion's intentions for using a very restrictive CC license are not clear.

 

[Semicharm]

BTW, much of what I said is explained in the sections of the official CC FAQ I linked to earlier.

Can I combine material under different Creative Commons licenses in my work?
If I derive or adapt material offered under a Creative Commons license, which CC license(s) can I use?

If NoEmotion allows uses beyond the bounds of the CC BY ND license, he either needs to be more specific about which kinds of uses he allows or move to a different CC license that is closer to what he intended.