Renderotica

You should start from the "T" or "A" pose ( I have the "T" pose for G8 ) and create your poses, using someone else's pose set to create your own and then try to market it even as a freebie is a no-no!

Back when I made pose sets as freebies and better sets I sold on my site, I never used anyones starter pose, made adjustments and put out there for the public. I made all my poses/animations from the base V4 pose. It's not that hard once you grasp using the hip as a base for the rotations.

That's the kind of answers I was expecting and even, indeed,  counting on. As I said, my question was asked in all candor and I would never assume it's "okay" to extrapolate work from someone else's stuff. In the case of poses, of course, starting from A or T is a rather simple blank slate. From there... photo references and off you go. That'd be the "how can it be done", technically speaking. I was more concerned with the usages and the general norm of what people do these days. Contedesfees, your "How about" smells a bit of sarcasm but don't worry, I am not stranger to the very concept of original and derivative works. Otherwise, I wouldn't have mentioned the limit between creation and plagiarism. To follow up on the examples you gave, a book and a painting, think of what gets "accepted" as art lately. Is sampling acceptable as creation? Any snotty DJ nowadays will take bits and nips of preexisting music, remix these et voilà, a new single. And look at the money they make... a few days ago I came across something even weirder: some SJW minded person had rewritten parts of Carmen so that at the end, the bitch shoots her soldier boyfriend instead of getting stabbed by him. Because, of course, Carmen isn't the bad guy in that story...*snort* and that "rewrite" got...praised? (and yes, I think Carmen is a bitch. She created an impossible situation and drove some guys crazy, enjoying every bit of it and then going gold digger. Sue me :D)

I am not saying all of this is "fine". I'm saying I see it all over the place and that it made me wonder about the general stance about it in the poses/expressions business.After all, there are only so many postures a body can take, only so many faces a person can make... and to push the envelope further, has anyone noticed how so many expressions sets at Daz look exactly the same, save for the more extreme and outré ones? All of this doesn't incite me to want to copy or derivate in itself, but it does make me wonder about a few things.

Which brings me back to expressions. I'm very interested in expressions. Now I'd love to create some but I am really short on tutorials about how to get started with something that'll be a decent blank slate. Start from a zero-expression state is fine but from there... must one go to 3d modeling programs? Zbrush scares me, to be honest...its interface alone... *shudders* that thing isn't 3D or 2D, 3D objects are ... brushes? 

I really want to actually create something nice from scratch but I have to start somewhere and I really don't know where that is. Which is why I ask all those clearly oblivious questions in the first place. If anybody can point me in the right direction, preferably not the exit door, I'd really appreciate :) 

Originally Posted by: simontemplar

Can such a result be posted as a new product at all? I don't even have such a set myself, right now, let's make it clear. I am merely curious. Do our usual merchants all start from the T pose or the A pose when they create a poses set?

Same question applies to expressions. It even gets more dicey there, as after all, when you install your purchases, these go as new dials in your figure's pace and what not. Must one avoid those dials if they want to create any expression they would later sell?

I'd say you can distribute your poses and expressions as long as:

• it contains your own "work" / it doesn't contain someone else's "work" - meaning that (as was already pointed out) you started from a completely zeroed figured and did all the dial turning yourself.
• anything you have that relies on someone else's product, you should let the user know - so if you have a character that uses the Becky dial at 25%, which in turn uses the Victoria dial at 12.5%, then you'd have to list both those as requirements for your character to work properly.

Also, some products have their own EULA, separate from the store policy. Some prohibit you from reusing anything, others like merchant resources are made specifically for you to reuse.

Originally Posted by: simontemplar

All in all, must one work from a "generic" runtime with no added bits other than the basic Daz expressions and morphs, when intending to create a product? Where does plagiarism end and creation start? I think it's much more clean-cut when it comes to figures and props: you actually make the object rather than deform an existing mesh... even if you're creating morphs for an existing figure, let's say morphs for a clothing set that isn't yours to start with, every alteration you make to it is something you add to the original value in terms of creation. For poses and expressions, I feel a bit confused.

Could some of the people who actually make their bread and butter from poses and expressions give me a bit of insight on this matter? I have been wondering for a while now. Please, educate me :)

Some vendors recommend that you have a separate computer with a clean DS/Poser install, to make sure you've packaged your files correctly and they have everything they need. I think that might be overkill. I'm going to try to install a fresh copy of Windows/DS in a virtual machine using VMWare. That should accomplish the same thing.

I'd be interested in knowing what vendors have to say about making add-ons for another vendor's product. Do you have to get permission, or just give them a heads up? It'd be a real faux pas if I released a texture set for your dress when you were about to release a similar one next week.