Anonymous asked: slashmaid(.)deviantart(.)com/art/RWBY-wtf-645284611 Found this to add on to the RWBY team stealing from games topic

musicemo:

puroistna: beikonspamswithmmd: plsno-mmd: I knew the hair was Montecore!

so does roosterteeth actually do anything by themselves How is that nobody sued their sorry ass yet?

I mean Montecore doesn’t probably know and care, but Bethesda and Namco? What? http://sta.sh/0xr1w88iye2

How about comparing TDA face tex with one of the rwby ones? They only put the elements in different places but didnt even bother changing the texture at ALL… disgusting

Yes!! Thank you!! This has bugged me about RoosterTeeth for YEARS, but because all the proof got deleted when RT started threatening lawsuits, I couldn’t say shit about it. Fuck yes! I’m so happy! I read a literal essay about this, so let me break this down for my followers real quick. RT got called out for stealing model parts (something that a huge company should NOT be doing) and in early episodes straight up STEALING models and recoloring them (this is considered rude and an amateur move, even beginners are expected to do better). Once they got called out they started throwing around legal threats like they were flyers. Just MENTIONING the scandal was enough for them to send you a personal fuck you. They even went after MINORS. So how did the soon-to-be-deferents respond? The same way anyone would- they removed their proof of RT stealing their shit and their friend’s shit. If I remember correctly Montecore actually DID speak up, but quickly backed down when they got threatened with a lawsuit too. Again, RT did this to ANYONE. Minors. Indie modelers. Small companies. People who even dared talk about it. People got SCARED. Now for the naysayers who might be think “but they aren’t IDENTICAL, it could be a fluke!” Nah. Nah nah. I dabble in MikuMikuDance and 3D modeling. My expertise in the field is as vast as a toddler’s vocabulary. BUT I could do these edits without a problem. This is the shit you’d expect from a BEGINNER. Professional 3D modeler, like RT claim to be, could do this in their SLEEP. And even if they DID model these themselves, Montecore is FAMOUS, there should be ZERO reason their stuff resembles Montecore’s AT ALL, let alone pieces overlapping. RT literally steals shit from others, tweaks it, and claims they mad it in their $200(0?) program*. *This was a HUGE DEAL, because most of the modelers they stole from used free programs, so in comparison RT seemed big and bad, and rich. That was one of their scare tactics, a literary “I make so much money I could own you.” Bs.

I don’t have a horse in this race (so I’m not arguing for or against anything here) but I do know quite a lot about 3D modelling as well as stolen models - I’ve done 3D modelling and texturing both for game modding and 3D printing for about 10 years now. Back when I used staff a game modding site, one of my responsibilities was to look at models that were alleged stolen (from other games or other modders) to determine whether a theft of model and/or textures had occurred. And while there are absolutely enough similarities in the above pictures to suggest inspiration from a particular source (especially in the hair shapes), some outlines added on top of similar models don’t prove anything. So I went and looked at the boot models and in my opinion, one is definitely a derivative of the other.

There’s definitely some differences - the triangulation of the polygons has been modified, there’s some changes to the normals (the red heels on the left are more square at the top than the pink ones on the right), and they’ve removed a couple of rows of polygons. These are easy, quick changes to make in a short amount of time, not requiring a great amount of skill.

Interestingly, the number of polygons around in each row is the same - 32. The number of polygons used in the ruffle is the same as well - 30. And the fact that those two numbers doesn’t match is significant because it’d have been easier to make them identical.



But the most conclusive bits, to me, are a couple quirks of the modelling. To the right of each blue arrow above is sort of a wide diamond shape with two very skinny polygons in that center horizontal line (this may be hard to see but that diamond shape is made out of six triangles, not four as it may appear). This is a quirk of the modelling - it doesn’t have to be done this way, and could be done simpler by removing those two extra polygons. Same with the yellow arrows. Above both of those is a sort of ^ shaped line where the creases come together. There’s lots of different ways this could be put together, but it’s done in exactly the same way on both. These little quirks of how the particular modeller has made things is a bit like a fingerprint. Two modellers might’ve used 32 polys around to make laced boots with an ankle buckle, but they wouldn’t have both had those above quirks.

Additionally, they’re texture mapped basically the same. Some things have been moved around (the derivative uses a combined map for all clothing textures - the original has three separate textures for the boots alone) but the textures themselves are derivatives. I’ve made a gif overlaying parts of the original texture to fade in on top of a crop of the derivative textures. The only modification I have done of these parts is to vertically flip the left one and scale them both to fit.

Fun fact: That sort of bumpy texture is for the laces… the laces that the derivative doesn’t even have (I think I should’ve flipped that one vertically too, but it’s still obvious that they’re the same). There are other mapping similarities (the body of the boot, the soles, the buckles) but this was the most visually similar and easy to show. Also, they did the textures for the boots twice, even though they’re identical? This is a *silly* way to do it and not something a pro would likely do. Two elements that use the same textures (like two identical/mirrored boots) can share areas of textures, and combining textures whenever possible is kind of Mapping 101.

As I said, I have no stake in this (I don’t know either game or developers)… But the images in the above posts are far from conclusive. Having taken a look myself at the actual textures and polys, though… The original evidence may’ve been presented less than convincingly, but at least as far as the boots go, those shorter ones without the lace are, in my opinion, absolutely derived from the others.

If someone wants to find me the other models and link me to them, I can compare those as well.