The tool used to deal with .yft lock is open source, so there is nothing that can be done to this issue. Consider no locking available anymore, as files can now be read/written by open source tool.
We had an agreement with OpenIV team to respect locking information in .yft files - this information is "additional" to the file layout. There is nothing can be done to protect .yft files, since the game itself still need to be able to read and load them. From now on, there is an open source tool that behaves the same way the game does - it reads and loads .yft files with no respect to any additional locking information.
Lock function exposed and reversed
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MrGTAmodsgerman
- Posts: 59
- Joined: Tue Jun 16, 2015 6:51 pm
Re: Lock function exposed and reversed
I guess the only way to get rid of this now is by uncouple the YFT files itself from the "locking". I mean, some new platform/software would be good that provides the file in a way that we as modder exactly know who got the files or more to say, unable to leak them. FiveM for example just compress all the sever based resource files for the client. But FiveM is still able to read them. An extrenal tool for Single Player in general would be nice.
But above that, the reason why people worry about that the files they mostly only edit is, due to the lost of control of the files. We as modders always want to decide what we release to public and what not. There are many problems coming across with open files. When you as a modder release a mod, you will most of the time find bugs and fix them. But YFT files don't act like an GitHub Project. If someone edit your mod files and upload it, you will lost control over what people from outside get/find when they searching for specific mod. This means that anyone who edit your files, MUST keep his edited files updated with the updates you made after that. Otherwise you will get 100 of different versions of one mod on the internet. And people still like to complain about things you didn't made.
Beside that, the intention that some modder have into a project, get lost over the unasked contribution. This is why we always note down that someone have to ask for edit permissions. In my case i usally say yes to people who ask. But i want to see who they are and what they do then with my project. Its quite interesting sometimes but also important to organise the project.
And lets don't forget about the lazyness some people have. They don't give feedback or anything, and once you do something that they need, they will use it without u ever heard about them. This is unrespectful for someone who do this all in his freetime, holidays and so on. This is motivation killer number 1 for many modders out there. And it isn't not new that we lost many great modders from the community due to the fact that people steal stuff and call they own.
So its all went over to the way that modders trying to exclude people any way. Files by request, files for money or even more like on Patreon.
This can be all fixed by proper administration of the platforms who provide GTA Modding files and the community behavior itself.
Many people are pissed about that most good mods became under the paywall of many modders, and some are pissed that they have to deal with toxic people when they release files for free. The community is now split up.
On one side, people trying to sell anything with unbelievable prices, even they don't made anything from scratch. On the other side, people trying to do all from scratch, without any copyright problems and guarantee the quality trough a paywall. No matter what side you are on, its all a grey area. Its modding and was never meant to be commecial. Modding was for fun, not for buisness. But due to the fact that games getting much more detailed and overall complicated and extended in they environment, modding becomes a hard core job with many types of things you have to do.
And thats why people like to buy some 3D models to spent less work onto a project. 3D Artist on those online shops usally have a straight license system which tells what you are allowed to do and what not. Most of the time, 3D Artist allow to use them in your mod. But now lets point it out. Someone as modder who bought a 3D model from a online shop, read the rules and agree with them. When a YFT file gets locked and only act as a "viewing experience" this is not really a problem. But what about now? Someone who open up a 3D model from a mod, may edit this file and reupload it. Did he saw the rules that the 3D Artist set for the model? No.
When he lets say sell this Model now, the real modder get in trouble, as he "leaked" the model files to everybody, even that he didn't intend to do that. And once the ball rolls, you have no chance to stop it. Its the internet.
This is a huge problem. There is not only the chance that someone unallowed person who didn't agreed any contract with the 3D Artist, sell the model. There are alot of more License rules that an 3D Artist can set trough the website that could conflict with the 3rd unallowed person (stealer).
So what to do? Building all from scratch? Well who ever did that? Who does really have the time for modding to learn modeling, learn how all the stuff? Its still a hobby, not a business. Doing stuff from scratch require many many things that you really can't expect from a hobbyist. Such as a good camera for photogrammitry (or good blueprint), good pc for rendering and such, 3Ds Max, Zmodeler, Blender, photoshop and many many other things.
As a noob you won't need a half of these things i mentioned. But like i mentioned earlier, games getting more complicated and people in this community trying they best to making HQ mods. Impress people and much more.
So what is the price? Keep doing low quality mods for not conflicting with the law, or going back to the main modding principle and doing all in the grey area? How much work does make your work your own? And remember, modding mostly happends in the USA. There is something called, "fair use". Don't forget that.
Do we want to get people they doing this all for free and for everyone? Or do we want to get people who do this all for free but not always for everyone (locked)?
In my opinion, i really don't see a problem into selling mods when they quality represent the price. And if i looked back at my start into modding when i was young, i also would ask some of my parents or else, that he could pay some 3D model for me so someone on Patreon could realise my dream mod. But i won't be happy about when i would see that people doing bad things with my model that my parents or what ever paid. I would get the stress.
cheers
But above that, the reason why people worry about that the files they mostly only edit is, due to the lost of control of the files. We as modders always want to decide what we release to public and what not. There are many problems coming across with open files. When you as a modder release a mod, you will most of the time find bugs and fix them. But YFT files don't act like an GitHub Project. If someone edit your mod files and upload it, you will lost control over what people from outside get/find when they searching for specific mod. This means that anyone who edit your files, MUST keep his edited files updated with the updates you made after that. Otherwise you will get 100 of different versions of one mod on the internet. And people still like to complain about things you didn't made.
Beside that, the intention that some modder have into a project, get lost over the unasked contribution. This is why we always note down that someone have to ask for edit permissions. In my case i usally say yes to people who ask. But i want to see who they are and what they do then with my project. Its quite interesting sometimes but also important to organise the project.
And lets don't forget about the lazyness some people have. They don't give feedback or anything, and once you do something that they need, they will use it without u ever heard about them. This is unrespectful for someone who do this all in his freetime, holidays and so on. This is motivation killer number 1 for many modders out there. And it isn't not new that we lost many great modders from the community due to the fact that people steal stuff and call they own.
So its all went over to the way that modders trying to exclude people any way. Files by request, files for money or even more like on Patreon.
This can be all fixed by proper administration of the platforms who provide GTA Modding files and the community behavior itself.
Many people are pissed about that most good mods became under the paywall of many modders, and some are pissed that they have to deal with toxic people when they release files for free. The community is now split up.
On one side, people trying to sell anything with unbelievable prices, even they don't made anything from scratch. On the other side, people trying to do all from scratch, without any copyright problems and guarantee the quality trough a paywall. No matter what side you are on, its all a grey area. Its modding and was never meant to be commecial. Modding was for fun, not for buisness. But due to the fact that games getting much more detailed and overall complicated and extended in they environment, modding becomes a hard core job with many types of things you have to do.
And thats why people like to buy some 3D models to spent less work onto a project. 3D Artist on those online shops usally have a straight license system which tells what you are allowed to do and what not. Most of the time, 3D Artist allow to use them in your mod. But now lets point it out. Someone as modder who bought a 3D model from a online shop, read the rules and agree with them. When a YFT file gets locked and only act as a "viewing experience" this is not really a problem. But what about now? Someone who open up a 3D model from a mod, may edit this file and reupload it. Did he saw the rules that the 3D Artist set for the model? No.
When he lets say sell this Model now, the real modder get in trouble, as he "leaked" the model files to everybody, even that he didn't intend to do that. And once the ball rolls, you have no chance to stop it. Its the internet.
This is a huge problem. There is not only the chance that someone unallowed person who didn't agreed any contract with the 3D Artist, sell the model. There are alot of more License rules that an 3D Artist can set trough the website that could conflict with the 3rd unallowed person (stealer).
So what to do? Building all from scratch? Well who ever did that? Who does really have the time for modding to learn modeling, learn how all the stuff? Its still a hobby, not a business. Doing stuff from scratch require many many things that you really can't expect from a hobbyist. Such as a good camera for photogrammitry (or good blueprint), good pc for rendering and such, 3Ds Max, Zmodeler, Blender, photoshop and many many other things.
As a noob you won't need a half of these things i mentioned. But like i mentioned earlier, games getting more complicated and people in this community trying they best to making HQ mods. Impress people and much more.
So what is the price? Keep doing low quality mods for not conflicting with the law, or going back to the main modding principle and doing all in the grey area? How much work does make your work your own? And remember, modding mostly happends in the USA. There is something called, "fair use". Don't forget that.
Do we want to get people they doing this all for free and for everyone? Or do we want to get people who do this all for free but not always for everyone (locked)?
In my opinion, i really don't see a problem into selling mods when they quality represent the price. And if i looked back at my start into modding when i was young, i also would ask some of my parents or else, that he could pay some 3D model for me so someone on Patreon could realise my dream mod. But i won't be happy about when i would see that people doing bad things with my model that my parents or what ever paid. I would get the stress.
cheers
Re: Lock function exposed and reversed
Only the work I performed is my own, so if 3D model is purchased then modified and converted, it should be mentioned in credits and posted under original modeler's allowance. There is a still the area where we feeling free to modify vanilla vehicles, while R* maybe does not really like it, but just let it slide
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MrGTAmodsgerman
- Posts: 59
- Joined: Tue Jun 16, 2015 6:51 pm
Re: Lock function exposed and reversed
True, like before. The standard. But that doesn't stop from people who use unlocked YFT files to do edits and sell them somewhere.tall70 wrote:Only the work I performed is my own, so if 3D model is purchased then modified and converted, it should be mentioned in credits and posted under original modeler's allowance. There is a still the area where we feeling free to modify vanilla vehicles, while R* maybe does not really like it, but just let it slide
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theaurumtheory
- Posts: 1
- Joined: Thu Jan 23, 2020 4:25 am
Re: Lock function exposed and reversed
tall70 wrote:Only the work I performed is my own, so if 3D model is purchased then modified and converted, it should be mentioned in credits and posted under original modeler's allowance. There is a still the area where we feeling free to modify vanilla vehicles, while R* maybe does not really like it, but just let it slide
That's true. The only thing that sucks about this is some prick stealing the 3d model and selling it online, claiming that it is his own.
Re: Lock function exposed and reversed
An update have been released recently. When a locking option is toggled, it will allow to export any adaptation on material. These adaptations will be configured as regular material, but the game will not render this geometry, as there is no matching shader code for it. Given that, you can create a set of polygons in a model (e.g. duplicate some of polygons) and assign one or several materials (mix them among "good" materials, so they are not in the end of your materials list) onto these polygons. Give any adaptation name to these materials, e.g. "lock" or "blahblah". The exported model will have several additional geometry fragments inside that game will not render. This will not give you any error in game, neither performance penalty.
However, an attempt to import such a model will fail, as ZModeler will not be able to load geometry because of "Unknown shader adaptation for ...." (like you see when some new models from DLC are failing to import). This model will fail to import on old (cracked) version of ZModeler too.
This kind of protection could be removed by means of CodeWalker if one will manually edit the intermediate XML file. Consider most of CodeWalker users would not dig in XML file in attempt to get rid of problematic material out of the file. Yet it still possible to do, but not something beginner user could be able to do.
However, an attempt to import such a model will fail, as ZModeler will not be able to load geometry because of "Unknown shader adaptation for ...." (like you see when some new models from DLC are failing to import). This model will fail to import on old (cracked) version of ZModeler too.
This kind of protection could be removed by means of CodeWalker if one will manually edit the intermediate XML file. Consider most of CodeWalker users would not dig in XML file in attempt to get rid of problematic material out of the file. Yet it still possible to do, but not something beginner user could be able to do.
Re: Lock function exposed and reversed
what is your GTARage.zmf file version as shown in Settings->Plugins->Manager?
Also, I have been told that CodeWalker just ignores unknown shaders when loads/saves .yft files, so this method with random shader adaptation can not prevent models from being converted via CodeWalker. Even worse, it just chops out unknown shaders and geometry, so a newly-created .yft file can be loaded by older versions of ZModeler with no evidence of locking in a file.
Also, I have been told that CodeWalker just ignores unknown shaders when loads/saves .yft files, so this method with random shader adaptation can not prevent models from being converted via CodeWalker. Even worse, it just chops out unknown shaders and geometry, so a newly-created .yft file can be loaded by older versions of ZModeler with no evidence of locking in a file.
Re: Lock function exposed and reversed
the latest filter version is build 397.
If I'm not mistaken, the latest shader addition is shader "radar". I guess you can try using this shader on some small polygon of your model. CodeWalker will consider this shader as correct, and older ZModeler version will be unable to import such a model file even after CodeWalker import/export. Just an idea.
If I'm not mistaken, the latest shader addition is shader "radar". I guess you can try using this shader on some small polygon of your model. CodeWalker will consider this shader as correct, and older ZModeler version will be unable to import such a model file even after CodeWalker import/export. Just an idea.