In the spirit of friendly debate....
gregsandor, I wouldn't be ripping off anyones models etc anyway (sorry if I offended anyone with my offer of providing any xfrog models, must admit, didn't think about it first), BUT if I were to, I would be far less inclined to rip off models from an independent producer than a large company, for exactly the reasons you state. The fact that it would be a civil rather than a criminal matter makes no difference to the producer (or the re-distributor for that matter). Believe me, I develop a geotechnical database for a living, and if I charged what it cost me to do the work I would never get any business at all, the client would be looking at paying £30000 rather than £3000 so I fully appreciate what you are saying.
On a slightly different area, I would hope that your (gregsandors) license would include the words "or derrivatives thereof" After my initial post where I offered gregsandor the xfrog models (again, didn't think) I did offer to rejigg the models, therefore making them not affected by their license agreement. In gregsandors own words "there is no grey area here". Going by xfrogs own license wording (legally binding) you are not allowed to redistribute or resell in any format the contents of the disk. Now I fully appreciate that just changing textures and changing the format of the model would still leave the 3D model the same as the one on the disk. You could open both versions up in their respective programs, examine them, and come to the conclusion that the underlying geometery is the same, regardless of texturing etc. However, open the xfr file in xfrog and change the distribution of the branches, leaves, alter the gravitropism, corkscrewing etc and then export, open the file on the disk and the tree you have rejigged and they would be, to any observer, different models, therefore NOT the contents of the disk. There are no grey areas... unfortunately, because of their wording, it works BOTH ways, for and against them. Its not my fault! Take my work for example. If I put together an imput format and various report formats for a client (either for money or not, it doesn't make any difference) and I subsequently found out that the client had changed the logo on the reports and sold them on to someone else, I would have them in court faster than you could shake the proverbial stick. If, however they had spent the time going in and changing the way the reports worked (under the hood so to speak) by applying different equations, expressions, filters etc and then passed them on, thats fair enough, and I wouldn't have a leg to stand on in court, even if the reports LOOKED the same, because, upon analysis, the reports would be fundamentally different in operation.
Anyway, just playing devils advocate here. The modelers here may not like what I have said above, but by xfrogs own wording, by changing the base models, I wouldn NOT be doing anything illegal, by xfrogs OWN definition!! Again, there are no grey areas.
Miles
