Of course this is just a visualisation, and true metrics change based on different hardware, but basically this is what I see. We're trying to keep our maximum drawcalls around 1500-2000, where 2000 is a gameplay scene, with many characters and effects, etc. Anything over that has a significant performance penalty on the average hardware we use.
So basically, it's not a linear relationship and performance drops can certainly suddenly creep in.
In reality, not many of us can afford legitimate legal advice. Maybe I'm too cynical but most of them would just love to throw you into an infinite black hole of ambiguities and contradictions, while charging you by the hour...
Just reach out to the artist and like I said, appropriate a template for a release agreement. They are pretty standard. It will make sure you have non-exclusive commercial rights and put, at least in part, liability on all signators. Anyone who is genuine and confident about their work should have no problem signing it for you.
Ultimately, you're never really going to be sure unless you're working with artists in a physical studio and watching them throughout the creation process, usually given a set of licensed resources and software particular to that studio, so they can be 100% sure, and even then there's a lot of paperwork and contracts flying around.
Sometimes an artist may use resources (carelessly but innocently enough just Googled) and unwittingly violate copyright, even something as simple as a rivet or screw, as part of a bigger work. The only way to be sure is to have a release agreement with some mutual liability. Then, you actually have something to take to a lawyer to notorise, which _should_ take less than 1 hour...
It can get messy and depressing. However, by all means - never let any of that dissuade anyone from continuing to try!
If in doubt, contact the artist directly (and privately) and get them to sign a release agreement, and negotiate the license terms as needed. You shouldn't really need a lawyer for that as there are viable templates available online.
I see 2 options for the aspiring "idea-guys" (exclusively designers):- Either also be the cash-guy and fund the project - or have enough coding skills to do playable mockups (even just something like Clickteam Fusion) AND also be a decent concept artist and writer.
Ideally, it takes multiple people with relatively dedicated skills to make a game and each one of those team members are designers in their own right. In the AAA industry, someone with the title of designer has worked their way up over years and has dedicated skills with a list of published titles under their belt. For indies, that's impossible, everyone must pull their weight.
Nice. I absolutely agree that all 3D artists should learn about this stuff and learn how to collaborate together to minimise batches and drawcalls throughout the project.
Having said that, there are plenty of things programmers can do that will make the framerate plummet also.
Hopefully you can fix it soon, even if it's a false positive it's something you need to take care of if you want people installing it and checking it out.
Good designers are people who can collaborate in a team of people and accept constructive criticism. In my experience, that's less common among programmers than other disciplines.
"If User A is just making a still render to post to his website/blenderartists, etc.; user A must state "I used the gun found here[linked] made by user B[link to profile]"."
So I'm thinking there has to be some condition about transformative use of multiple outsourced content for promotional (non-commercial) purposes, where attribution for each asset is not "reasonable", because in practice it would mean there are violations of license 99% of the time. It would be especially unreasonable to give credit for specific content within such material, so this is where the whole ridiculous 'baking annotations into every frame of a video' thing comes from. Most information I can find pertains to use of a single music track or single instance of an asset, but in my case it could be dozens or possibly hundreds of different textures, each from a different artist, all in 1 screenshot. Video becomes even more complex. Even if I did link to a 'master-list' of credits, there's no way to tell which asset was created by which artist with that, so it leads back to the question of exactly what do people expect from attribution - instant referral or long-term resume-filler.
I'm just out to get some opinions or hope anyone can cough up further information about specifics on this. I've basically had 50/50 conflicting views about the topic.
The more I develop and study this, the more I realise it isn't so straight-forward and there is a "knee of the curve" penalty to overdoing drawcalls:-
http://www.violae.net/temp/fps2drawcalls_kneecurve.jpg
Of course this is just a visualisation, and true metrics change based on different hardware, but basically this is what I see. We're trying to keep our maximum drawcalls around 1500-2000, where 2000 is a gameplay scene, with many characters and effects, etc. Anything over that has a significant performance penalty on the average hardware we use.
So basically, it's not a linear relationship and performance drops can certainly suddenly creep in.
In reality, not many of us can afford legitimate legal advice. Maybe I'm too cynical but most of them would just love to throw you into an infinite black hole of ambiguities and contradictions, while charging you by the hour...
Just reach out to the artist and like I said, appropriate a template for a release agreement. They are pretty standard. It will make sure you have non-exclusive commercial rights and put, at least in part, liability on all signators. Anyone who is genuine and confident about their work should have no problem signing it for you.
Ultimately, you're never really going to be sure unless you're working with artists in a physical studio and watching them throughout the creation process, usually given a set of licensed resources and software particular to that studio, so they can be 100% sure, and even then there's a lot of paperwork and contracts flying around.
Sometimes an artist may use resources (carelessly but innocently enough just Googled) and unwittingly violate copyright, even something as simple as a rivet or screw, as part of a bigger work. The only way to be sure is to have a release agreement with some mutual liability. Then, you actually have something to take to a lawyer to notorise, which _should_ take less than 1 hour...
It can get messy and depressing. However, by all means - never let any of that dissuade anyone from continuing to try!
If in doubt, contact the artist directly (and privately) and get them to sign a release agreement, and negotiate the license terms as needed. You shouldn't really need a lawyer for that as there are viable templates available online.
I've made a list of free software and resources you might find useful:-
www.violationentertainment.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=414
www.violationentertainment.com/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=Free
I see 2 options for the aspiring "idea-guys" (exclusively designers):-
Either also be the cash-guy and fund the project - or have enough coding skills to do playable mockups (even just something like Clickteam Fusion) AND also be a decent concept artist and writer.
Ideally, it takes multiple people with relatively dedicated skills to make a game and each one of those team members are designers in their own right. In the AAA industry, someone with the title of designer has worked their way up over years and has dedicated skills with a list of published titles under their belt. For indies, that's impossible, everyone must pull their weight.
Nice. I absolutely agree that all 3D artists should learn about this stuff and learn how to collaborate together to minimise batches and drawcalls throughout the project.
Having said that, there are plenty of things programmers can do that will make the framerate plummet also.
Getting the same report:-
https://metadefender.opswat.com/results#!/file/30aab171d6e3bd3858977b3ad...
Hopefully you can fix it soon, even if it's a false positive it's something you need to take care of if you want people installing it and checking it out.
Uh oh:-
Good designers are people who can collaborate in a team of people and accept constructive criticism. In my experience, that's less common among programmers than other disciplines.
This page on Blend Swap seems to disagree:-
https://www.blendswap.com/page/crediting-authors
So I'm thinking there has to be some condition about transformative use of multiple outsourced content for promotional (non-commercial) purposes, where attribution for each asset is not "reasonable", because in practice it would mean there are violations of license 99% of the time. It would be especially unreasonable to give credit for specific content within such material, so this is where the whole ridiculous 'baking annotations into every frame of a video' thing comes from. Most information I can find pertains to use of a single music track or single instance of an asset, but in my case it could be dozens or possibly hundreds of different textures, each from a different artist, all in 1 screenshot. Video becomes even more complex. Even if I did link to a 'master-list' of credits, there's no way to tell which asset was created by which artist with that, so it leads back to the question of exactly what do people expect from attribution - instant referral or long-term resume-filler.
I'm just out to get some opinions or hope anyone can cough up further information about specifics on this. I've basically had 50/50 conflicting views about the topic.
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