Lightning's grass

[Hannes]

I didn't know whether I better should have posted this in the Open discussion area, but since it's some sort of a Terragen thing I decided to post it here.
For those who do not know this, long time ago there was a member in this forum named Lightning. He shared a lot of nice plants with us, but after a while it turned out that there were some legality problems with his models. He deleted all his stuff and quit (or quitted?) the forum.

I still have (and love to use) some of his models. His grass is the best I've seen. I use it in each and every image that contains grass.

To cut a long story short, here is my question: Would it be OK (and legal!!!!!) to reupload his grass models? I don't know which program he used to create these, and Lightning isn't in this forum anymore.
What do you think?

[Volker Harun]

I say 'No'. The copies of products created with an illegal copy of a software are not legal. I doubt that there is a years' countdown.
But I like to be proofed wrong.

Edit: but it could be recreated, couldn't it?

[Tangled-Universe]

I guess if the models were deemed 'illegal' then, that they still are illegal now?

[TheBadger]

 

In a few years time, when people glow in the dark (if there are any people left), it will be funny to think back how we worried so.

[zaxxon]

Hannes, could you post a couple of jpegs of the grass model? Perhaps it can be reasonably recreated with ST or TPF, then we can share the results.

[Oshyan]

I believe the original concern around Lightning's models was from Xfrog. So I think the best thing to do if you want to share them would be to contact Xfrog and see if you can figure something out with them. If they have grass models that are as good, or that his were based on, perhaps there's a way they can incorporate the changes/improvements, or at least be inspired by them.

The other option, as zaxxon suggests, is to take lessons on what works in Lightning's approach and do some new grass models that achieve similar or even greater levels of realism and utility. I think this approach would really be the ideal and cleanest way. Of course Speedtree models can't be shared either... *sigh*

- Oshyan

[Hannes]

I rerworked the texturing a bit, but here's one of the long grasses and one of the lush grasses. The different models of the same kind look quite similar.

[archonforest]

wow that is a nice model!

[masonspappy]

Interesting that this is made in  xFroggie.   Looks very, very  similar to grass I saw modeled in Blender a year or two ago.  of course, anything modeled in Blender is free to use and disseminate any way the user/owner chooses.

[bobbystahr]

Well I just went through 14 pages of XFROG sales items, a good cross section. I personally don't think these plants were made with XFROG...they seem more like max models to me. I'm not familiar at all with Blender so I'll take masonpappy's word they appear similar..they just don't look like anything I've seen at XFROG.
front row l-r 2 high res plants then, grass mtl.tgo 1, 2 & 3, lush grass 4
back row l-r 2 tall grasses and lush grass 1, 2 & 3.

[AP]

I'm working on this. Made entirely from scratch.

[Dune]

That looks good also, Chris. In fact grass can be made with a lot of apps, perhaps even Zbrush or LW. It's a great pity that even simple models such as these can't be shared, coming from ST or TPF.

[Hannes]

I sent the models to Volker and Pascal. Both offered to recreate these from scratch, so hopefully we'll all have some more neat grass in the next weeks.

[AP]

That looks good also, Chris. In fact grass can be made with a lot of apps, perhaps even Zbrush or LW. It's a great pity that even simple models such as these can't be shared, coming from ST or TPF.

Thank You. I need to fix the specular some and colors. I at least can make a set of three, maybe one short, one long and something wild like in a prairie.

[AP]

I sent the models to Volker and Pascal. Both offered to recreate these from scratch, so hopefully we'll all have some more neat grass in the next weeks.

Certainly. If they create those species but keep them original then perhaps i can do something very different that no one else has done.