I can 100% guarantee that what I am doing does not generate a new 3D character model at any point. Nor does it modify any RL content. Not sure why you’re insisting on trying to call an inventory system a character generator, or even a customizer. It’s not and no reasonable person would think it is. If I were to take my inventory system, package it up, and try to sell it in Fab as a character generator, I’d be opening myself up to false advertising claims.
In fact, go browse Fab for a while and it’s very clear what products that call themselves character generators or customizers do and what products that call themselves Inventory Systems do. While in some cases there is some overlap in functionality, they typically are still very different projects with very different features and use cases.
I’m starting to think that if we want to use RL characters, we have to write the corporate office a very nice letter with our uses outlined and get their “yey” or “ney” on an official letterhead. The forums are probably not the best place to look for clarification, especially when the loudest voice here is just another RL customer.
@slamcheeks5196 You can equip RL assets without any issue, as long as you don’t use these common character generation systems, where you can see the character preview and have different slots of assets to select.
For example, picking up an RL asset based item during gameplay and equipping the character automatically with it is fine if you have the standard license.
Of course, character generation makes games more attractive to certain players because they can create somebody they want to play the game as. That’s why this is locked behind the Enterprise license. The standard license only allows pre-made characters you can select in-game but cannot arbitrary modify their appearance.
Yeah I simply wanted to be able to equip Non Reallusion items and armor to my CC Character during runtime.
Is there any safe legal way to do this?
I saw your Zelda example and was wondering if the forum admin could also clarify. So basically having an inventory screen that has equip-able items, which can be selected and worn on the CC character during runtime.
It really depends on if you’re going on what the EULA says or what is being said in this thread. If you’re going on what is being said in here, you can do whatever you want as long as no RL Content is displayed in a UI in any form. So for the vast majority of game genres that changing equipment is part of the gameplay, yes, the software is useless when it comes to a player character. They will talk about how you can switch equipment using RL Content automatically or by using quickslots but automatically is a good way to really frustrate your users. And since you can’t use RL Content in a UI based on the arbitrary rules listed in this thread, there’s no point in buying assets from their store to use for the player since the second you show it in a UI (for example setting up the quickslots), that would require an enterprise license. At the same time, these exceptions aren’t in the EULA so you’re at risk since they feel they can change their interpretation of what a character generation system is at any time.
In other words, if your game requires an inventory system, according to this thread your options are to use only your own content, including character, or you can use a RL character and custom content for the equipment but can’t display the character in the UI. There is no scenario according to this thread that using RL assets from the store would be allowed in a UI without the enterprise license.
This would be so much easier if the EULA had details about the restrictions but as it’s written, probably better to not use RL content if you want to change the appearance of a character on the fly unless you have a legal team to back you up.
That is the only saving grace I guess, but like you said not in the EULA and going off a forum thread.
I simply wanted to have RL character, use armor/equipment from MetaTailor, and allow the character to equip it in game. If I have to not display the character in the inventory UI for this method to be alright, then that’s what I wanted the admin to answer. I probably should just send them an email at the end of the day.
They explicitly mentioned The Sims 4 character editor as an example what isn’t allowed with the standard license. It looks somewhat similar to what you can do in Zelda.
Just thought of another use case in my game that will probably be an issue from a licensing perspective. It’s an RPG so of course there will be random attacks while exploring. As part of that system, NPCs will be spawned as needed and the equipment they use will be semi-random based on the player’s level, enemy faction, etc. So according to the discussions on here and the old forums, I’d have to have a complete mesh with all the equipment in place for each possible combination of body, armor, and weapon since adding the equipment at runtime would be considered a character generator. So my choice is either bloat the game size due to duplicate assets and not be able to batch meshes optimally, or not use RL bases for even NPCs. Absolutely ridiculous.
Right so what about if no character is displayed in the inventory UI?
I know you mentioned it was fine without, but I was hoping for that clarification from Pete/Admin. Because not being able to equip Non-RL items on an RL Character under any circumstances is a huge deal among other things mentioned throughout the discussions.
So essentially the example from earlier except without the character being displayed just showing items during runtime and that’s it. No morphs, sliders. Just inventory screen UI with Non Reallusion Items that can be equipped via the inventory screen UI. Even the icons don’t have the mesh just the Non RL item icons.
So I just spend a few days going back and forth with Support on all this trying to get definitive, official, information. The first response was basically them sending parts of the EULA, which interestingly enough, had different wording on the restrictions section than the public EULA. Here’s the public version:
And here’s the version I was sent:
The embedded content difference is significant. So I replied asking again for them to confirm if my use case would require an enterprise license or not, and if so what section of the EULA applies and basically got a response of figure it out on your own or contact Enterprise Sales. I shouldn’t have to go that far just to get clarification on the EULA. All I’m asking for is a specific definition of a character generator/creator and what player actions would trigger the extra license. For example, skin color and morph sliders make sense to most of us. Modifying other RL Content like hair style or color makes some sense. Basically anything cosmetic and RL Content. But after that, any changes that actually has a story/game purpose or isn’t modifying RL content really shouldn’t be restricted. They may have a different definition but they need to be clear about it either way. A potential user shouldn’t have to dig through years of forum posts to get more information, especially when that information has changed over time.
@bsgrooms Maybe you should simply fill out the Enterprise license form and ask them there about your use case and include some mock-ups. It could be that some legal representative of them will look over it and can give you the “OK” while the normal support staff cannot.
I shouldn’t have to for a very common use case. No one should. I could understand it if I was asking about some rare edge case but an inventory system is such a common feature that if there’s restrictions on it, those should be specified in the EULA. And even if I were to ask the sales team about it, giving a very specific use case, and was told it’s fine without the enterprise license, that locks me into not changing anything at all without having to talk to them again. So just give us the rules in a set form in the actual EULA and we will know exactly what we can and can’t do from the beginning.
I’m making my game on the side and have a very small budget for it currently so I spent the time to look into the licensing and made a decision that I could live with the no generator rule, even if it doesn’t make any sense to me. If the license had specifically restricted inventory systems as well, I would have gone a different direction. But they didn’t and won’t be specific when asked about it. Instead we get things like it’s fine to change equipment but only if it’s done automatically without user input. But then it changes to it’s fine to swap weapons but only using a hotkey. Then it changes once again to you can have a weapon selection UI to do it. But wait, you can’t actually show any RL Content when doing so. Scratch that, it’s only the character you can’t show. But that’s only for weapons. Actually… an inventory screen for all equipment is fine as long as it doesn’t show RL Content. That’s just a small part of the conflicting info I’ve read on these official forums. And that doesn’t even cover situations like a paused full screen inventory UI vs a modeless UI window that pops up while the game action continues. In the later case, technically the inventory UI will be visible while the RL character is as well so who knows if that’s ok in this case but not the first case.
The situation being what it is I believe Sophus’ suggestion is your best cause of action. We on the forum are just users and do not represent RL, so we will not be able to answer your questions (although Sophus tried) or provide support of the kind you are looking for.
In case you need an Enterprise license and you tell them that you’re a solo developer with no budget they might give you a license where you can pay a percentage of your game revenue. This would cost you nothing until you are selling the game.
That’s why it’s important to contact RL to negotiate the Enterprise license terms. Like @animagic said, nobody in this forum can give you a permission.
I’ve also sent a support ticket in as well and got the same response. I’ve submitted my question via the enterprise form and received no response. I’m in the same boat where there is a hobby, which becomes more expensive by the day. Shouldn’t have to pull teeth for an official response though. I know there are discord posts saying inventory system is allowed, and the person received a support ticket response saying as such. I definitely would like to get my own response, or have it posted in EULA or even FAQs section.
Will probably have to seek out alternative options that’s not RL if they don’t answer this simple inventory system question.
So, at the end of the day, the company’s policy makes sense, and we can all work in peace on our projects. (I’ll still try to get an official approval stamp on my specific use case, just in case, but what a relief!)
To reiterate, when the EULA restriction mentions a character generation or creation system, it refers to any in-game feature that lets you create a new character or customize an existing one.
As stated on the Content License Policy page HERE, no Reallusion content can be embedded into any application or service without an Enterprise License.
In short, you can use and swap complete characters in your game, but you can’t use individual Reallusion content items to create or customize characters in-game without an Enterprise License.
