Quote - > Quote - You can distribute her with the shaders after VSS puts them on her. That's part of the VSS deal. VSS is supposed to work like a merchant resource. Once you apply it and it plugs in your maps, you can distribute that.

Yes, but can I also allow others to redistribute it, possibly modified? That's what the Antonia base license will say, so I need to know whether I can include VSS based materials in that.

I hadn't really thought about that, but I suppose it amounts to yes.

Consider - VSS (free version) is free and anybody can use it to generate the same shader for their own copy of any figure. They are then allowed to modify the resulting shaders (or not) and distribute them with their character.

So what difference would it make if I told you you cannot grant others the right to take your VSS-shaded character and further modify and re-distribute? 

The key thing I'm holding in reserve is you're not allowed to re-distribute or grant rights to the VSS software, or the templates I supplied with VSS.

See, the templates are different. The shader you end up with does not have the generality and re-usability of the template, because the template has elements in it that make it possible to use with-or-without various maps. Whereas, the resulting shader that gets applied is hard-coded to expect certain maps, including specific names, and the very existence of the maps in the first place, specific name not withstanding.

For example, if you have Specular Map and Bump Map, VSS will generate a shader that requires both to work properly. Whereas, the template it came from does not require those and will substitute other nodes if they are not present. So the template is like a stem cell in biology - it has the potential to become any kind of cell, and therefore is very powerful and valuable. Whereas, after a stem cell becomes a particular kind of cell, it is no longer that interesting.

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Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)