In archiviz section of marketplace i often can read something like - “modeled with real objects references”. And sometimes models are exactly representation of real chairs or sofas which you can find in real life.
Are all those assets creators have some copyright permission from original owner of design?
And the second question: if you’re archivizer is that necessary for you to have assets which are designer from real life references of that okay to have some complitely “not real” objects? For example - some chair which are never created in real life?
Good question and as usual if it matters hire a lawyer
Copyrights usually covers a collective of ideas as assembled into a completed form. For example you can not copyright the word “the” but can as part of a collective of words that makes up a story.
Copyright also covers creative works like paintings and photos so if you take a photo or paint a picture of a chair then you own the copyrights to those images.
What can not be copyrighted is items that are quotidian, common everyday, as to purpose of function. You can not copyright a chair, a table, a car, a bus, a gun, the wheel or anything that has a practical function of the common good aka fair use
You can however copyright the plans of how to make a chair as it’s considered creative works that is unique
The there are trademarks and patents which neither applies unless your making a very unique chair
P.S. The nature of copyright is it is up to the individual who thinks there rights have been violated to file a claim so the copyright cops will not be kicking down your door…unless it’s Disney
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No, he will demand the exact sofa you have modelled I have examples in my life when some symbolic object in the scene practically placeholders were taken literally.
Thanks for the explanation. I tried to submit an asset pack a while ago to the unreal marketplace and it was rejected because the assets were copies of real world assets. For example a Poliform Grace chair which is present in many ArchViz scenes and almost on every site that sells 3D models. There is even a model that looks like it available on the marketplace itself.
I think Epic needs to rethink their policies. If you cannot use real world objects in architectural scenes the purpose of the scene is a bit pointless. I would like to sell a user interface at the marketplace at the moment but with the strict rules it might not be possible. Not sure if there is any good stores around that sell unreal related assets?
After reading through quite a few articles my understanding is this: to copy a real world object as a 3D model, like a chair is most likely ok because the original main purpose of the chair wasn’t a 3D model. If you would copy the design of the chair and create a real chair and sell it in a furniture store it would definitely not be ok, But I am not a lawyer and I might be totally wrong. I just look at the current situation and I don’t see thousands of ArchViz studios getting charged for copyright infringements.
In fact if I would be the owner of Poliform I would be happy if a model of my chair is used in a scene because the client potentially might buy the real chair.
That pretty much defeats the purpose of that entire category who wants to use made up furniture when your doing work for an actual home or condo developer…from my experience they want real life objects in the scenes you create. I guess it could still be useful for video games but i think that cuts down the amount of potential buyers from that category to a substantial degree. What i dont understand is how every other site that sells 3d models can sell any brand model with the name in the title and even the logo included to exact details with no issues yet somehow unreal engine is only marketplace you cant even have a model that looks similar to a real life object.
Maybe that because there are projects that specialise in a real object digitisation? Such as https://www.designconnected.com/ (if you really need real-life objects). And epic just offers DataSmith to bring them to Unreal?
