Question…I want to hire some animators to do some work for me, but how can you truly trust that somebody isn’t going to just copy the model you worked so hard on and stick it in there own personal library? Is there a general way to handle these sort of transactions? Thanks.
You’ll need to have them sign a contract that outlines your terms. Though remember that it will be up to you to enforce it through legal action.
okay, any idea where I can get such contracts to work with?
Ask them to sign NDA and ask for 2 reputable employer referral.
You can probably find an NDA template somewhere, though ideally you would get a legal person to write one for you.
Usually you want to build a trust relationship rather than signing an NDA. Maybe you have the resource to take legal actions in case it goes wrong, in this case maybe it’s worth it. But for most of us, we just can’t. So we’re better off dealing with the human being we want to hire.
Getting a basic contract signed is not a big deal. And if you’re paying someone then it’s a necessity
An agreement via email of some basic terms can be just as valid as a contract.
You don’t have to share the textures if you are worried about theft, an untextured model isn’t worth a whole lot by itself. Or you could just share very low resolution versions of the textures if you think it would be hard to animate without them.
For small companies/studios, It is not practical to sign NDA and in return, you hope he/she will abide to it, or otherwise you can sue back in the court and be compensated. NDA is probably fine, but if anything goes wrong then you need to employ lawyer and it is all time consuming process - so not practical. Plus if he/she resides in different country… then the NDA is just an expensive paper… nothing more.