Chev wrote:It is going to happen that someone will make 3D models of the ships and release it on the web. With the growing number of 3D printers people will print their models, toys & other things and companies/people will lose their merchandizing income.
In some ways, yes. Legally, a person can build a mesh and print it out for themselves, but if they start trying to sell them without permission from DW (or even Evergreen, if they use *their* designs), then they can get into a bit of trouble. OTOH, as you say, someone *could* create their own mesh and release it for free. Not sure what the legalities behind that might be.
The deterrent to that is that that 3D printers require a bit of an initial investment, both financially, and in time needed to learn what materials work best for what project. On top of that, one would also need to be able to create the mesh in the first place, which means using some sort of modeling software. That can run the gamut from free (Blender or a couple other, less capable programs) to several thousand dollars (3D Studio Max, Maya, etc). Then, there's the learning curve for any modeling software, if the person wanting to make the model has never used it before.
Some of the initial financial outlay can be removed by designing your model using whatever software, then sending the finished mesh to Shapeways. For a small fee, Shapeways will print your model for you, and some people even sell their models through Shapeway. There's a lot of Trek, BSG, and other models based on other well-known IPs for sale there, but I think most of it is original designs based on the particular universe. That's kind of a gray area, I think, but I could see certain IP owners raising a bit of a stink about it. Then again, maybe not.
Frankly, I can't see many people making that kind of investment in time and money just to have a few models for themselves. Not saying it'll never happen, but I don't think it'll happen enough to hurt any marketing chances for DW or Evergreen later on. Of course, they can also use the software and equipment to create their own stuff, which would have no restrictions - people are doing that right now at Shapeways.
The other problem is that for awhile now, some people have released their 3D meshes for use in renders that other people make. For instance, someone may decide to download a mesh of the Discovery from 2001 made by one person, a pod created by someone else, and maybe an Dave Bowman or Frank Poole mesh made by a third person, and combine them into a single shot. Manners requires credit given to the modelmaker(s), and that a percentage of any money made from doing something like selling prints (if permission was given to do that in the first place) goes to the creator(s) of the mesh(es) used. Unfortunately, there's several meshes available for printing at Shapeways that were "stolen" from the people who created them. These meshes were released freely, but with the caveats I mentioned above, and yet there are people who are making money off someone else's work.
Shapeways has taken down *some* of the models, but others are still up and for sale. The 3D community is pretty good at policing this sort of thing, but we don't catch everything.
tl;dr - While it may impact marketing, I don't think it will impact it much, and if it starts to, there could be problems for the person selling/creating without permission.
kzt wrote:MaxxQ wrote:I don't try. Whether it's a male or female I'm talking to, I just say it outright, show 'em a picture, say, "It's unfortunate about the resemblance, but the shape follows David's rules for Honorverse grav physics.", and leave it at that. If someone wants to press the issue, then I just wing it, but most of the time, they accept it.
I'm told that David had never really visualized what the ships looked like before someone gave him a drawing at a con. It kind of caught him by surprise.
Yeah, he talked about that at HonorCon, I think. He said that he's not very visual when it comes to what his designs look like, so it was a bit of a surprise when someone finally got the look "right". I can see how that happened - until I saw Isler's drawings, I couldn't make heads or tails out of what David was describing, and I'm supposed to be some sort of artist. Of course, that was all before I got involved with BuNine.