Better way to transfer custom avatars.
x
xTosca
So, yeah- as the system is now, it is a bit... broken. There are three options to make someone a private avatar, for a commission, for example, and none of them are exactly great.
- Log in using their account credentials to upload it directly to their account, so that the avatar can be set to private and thus can't be stolen if the person accidentally has cloning on. This is both against VRC ToS and generally unsafe.
- Make the avatar public, and have the person clone it from your account. This makes it so that the avatar can be taken and stolen by anyone should the person have cloning on. Would suck to have an avatar you paid to have made be stolen- and if you set the avatar to private, they can't use it anymore.
- Give them the actual unity package, model files, etc so that they have to upload their avatar /themselves/. This... is very inefficient, one, because not everyone has the Unity knowledge and skill to be able to do this themselves, and two... sometimes people make avatars from base models that are not allowed to be distributed. For example, Pikapetey's shiba model- you can take commissions on it, but you are not allowed to distribute the actual files, because it is a paid model and if you want the model, you need to pay Petey himself. Commissioners are not allowed to hand out files as per his terms.
This leaves only one single option that doesn't go against any ToS of either VRC or a model creator- making someone's private, paid for commissioned avatar, set to public, and making them clone it from you for other people to potentially steal.
Basically- there needs to be a way to transfer a private avatar to a specific, individual user for use WITHOUT having to use any of the above mentioned options. There needs to be a way to send an avatar to someone through VRC itself, and the avatar still remains /private/ and uncloneable by anyone except the person it is "given" to. This would allow people to actually efficiently commission PRIVATE avatars from people, without having to compile and upload themselves.
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xxx_red_xxx
Someone can just buy a commission and then download it anyways for option 3. You have the avatar ID and asset URL once it's on your account so you can easily just download it anyways.
Then a program such as Unity Asset Bundle Extractor can turn it back into usable assets.
R
Reality․exe
xxx_red_xxx: This is classed as ripping.
Against ToS
Lucifer MStar
I dont think any of this needs to be fixed. Commission's for models are kind of a weird area as people shouldn't be selling content that others make and put out for free anyway. Maybe for the work of putting it together yeah.
I think an official or a market place of some kind would be better. Then again it would have to be from actual original parts and or full model's.
_Cirius_
Lucifer MStar: "people shouldn't be selling content that others make and put out for free anyway."
Speak for yourself, please. There are plenty of us who make original content and/or use assets they've paid for through official channels which allow commercial use of said assets. Not all of us are ripping MMD models and parts from creators who do not allow their assets to be used for those purposes.
Lucifer MStar
_Cirius_: Ok... none if the stuff you mentioned had anything to do with what I said. There was no accusations of any kind that I was talking about everyone i was simply saying it will need to be a moderated platform were the content sold is completely original. I did forget to mention permission to sell premade parts.
`Squishy
Agreed. There sorely does need to be some method to transfer or gift an ID to another account name, who can then choose to accept or decline the transfer on their end. It's simply become the culture of the game to share around account details in order for others to upload avatars for you, and it needs to be fixed.
An additional issue with the method of setting an avatar to public to be cloned by the buyer, is that modified clients exist that are able to browse and equip literally any public avatar without needing to find a pedestal or user to clone from. An avatar set to public can technically be stolen without anyone having ever used or seen it. Not to mention that it places an entirely unreasonable burden on the commission author to maintain that file on their account forever more.
I've been doing some casual commission jobs for people, and have been reluctant to take on any more due to the issue of not wanting to take account details from anyone or incriminate myself due to the nature of how uploading for others links your IP to their account as far as the game and moderation are concerned. The only real alternative so far having been persuading reluctant clients to install Unity, and guiding them through the process via a screenshare. It's slow, tedious, and error prone. An unappealing waste of time as far as both parties are concerned.
Maneki-Neko
if i pay for a commission your giving me the files (unity package) i just paid for, if you cant do that dont take commissions 🙄
it's moe
Maneki-Neko: the OP very clearly outlined two cases where that is not possible, where the creator allows commissions as long as you don't distribute, or more commonly, the commissioner does not have unity experience.
if you have no unity experience after paying money to get a custom avatar and then have to struggle to upload the avatar, or take a bunch of the commissioner's time as they walk you through the entire process, that's just not efficient. Most people who commission avatars do it because they have the money, but not the free time to learn the new skills. For people with very little experience in any sort of dev, just uploading avatars alone would be a headache, and unity projects/packages can fail to import correctly for a billion reasons.
This feature is genuinely needed.
`Squishy
Maneki-Neko: You completely miss the point. Whilst I agree, never pay for any commission which doesn't provide you a unity package or finished assets, that's not the issue being raised. And even regardless, it's incredibly tedious for any commission author being expected to guide people through the basics of installing Unity and uploading from a package for half of their clients. That's a horribly dysfunctional system.
_Cirius_
Maneki-Neko: I'm sorry, but if someone commissions a world from me, I'm not providing a Unity Package. Even free content licenses often disallow redistribution of source assets. Furthermore, I use plenty of paid assets from the Unity Asset Store, the license for which definitely does not allow redistribution of source assets. In addition, the sheer size of a Unity Package for a finished world can be ridiculously large and would take a prohibitively long time to import into a new project.
So, yeah, no way I'm providing a Unity Package for a world commission. :)
`Squishy
_Cirius_: Out of curiosity, what's your policy on handling re-uploads for when future patches break commission worlds then? Personally I would simply never pay for something that left me 100% reliant on the commission artist to maintain forever more, but I can understand your reasoning, regarding non-distribution of assets. And obviously it's your customers own choice whether to take the offer. It just sounds incredibly inconvenient as an author remaining responsible for maintenance of every job ever, and incredibly risky as a customer, praying that you don't disappear one day and remain active in the game.
_Cirius_
`Squishy: Counter argument: if the individual is uncomfortable with this prospect, perhaps they should not commission work to be done in the first place. These issues are ever present, not just in VRChat but other services and real life as well. I get where you're coming from, and I have to admit, it does sound like an enormous pain to maintain the work I've done for people without extra pay, but that is also my own fault for wanting to be in this "business" so to speak. It simply comes with the territory. I also understand being wary of people offering their services. This is the internet, after all, and plenty of people are here just to make a quick buck off of you and then disappear. I'm not that guy but I can't expect everybody and their brother to trust me for no reason. That's why we desperately need an OTP type thing for distributing the content we're paid to make for someone.
As for my personal policy, I don't mind too much. I've never actually done a world commission (excluding the one I'm currently working on, but using Unity 2018 so it has to wait). However, the types of worlds I build aren't typically heavy with interactions and the like; they're atmospheric hang-out/exploration worlds. Mostly what breaks in my worlds is shaders and terrain (terrain fix is relatively easy though as it's automatic in Unity 2017->2018).
I'm fairly active on VRChat (though mostly in private worlds lately, doing RP with a small group of friends) and I keep up with the beta as well so I'm "in the know" about what's going on regarding updates and breakage of features, etc.
xxx_red_xxx
_Cirius_: Thats ok, if they want the assets that bad they will just download it since they have the ID/asset URL once its on their account.
Ghostt
These are some of the reasons that, I hope, an official VRChat marketplace would solve.