On The Subject of Confusion Between Fan Art and Video Game Rips

Recently and unfortunately I was attacked by a troll accusing my work of being models ripped from video games. I accept that your average person does not understand how video games work, I certainly didn't when I was just a gamer, and that is why my first response to such allegations or questions about video game rips is always with information so that they can understand. The problem is that these trolls will continue to mindlessly attack rather than admit they are hilariously clueless and wrong, with an entire planet and multi-billion dollar industry of evidence which proves it. Provide to them the resources to learn about these things and they will refuse, there is nothing to do about it, they are not worth my or anyone else's time. So when it becomes clear they are this person I will ignore them. It is not my job to teach a college degree worth of information to some random person, let alone one that is trolling me and would refuse all of it anyway. I trust in the intelligence of people who are not trolls to understand and learn what they do not already know via the incredible amount of resources at our fingertips. The models look like what is in the game because that is the entire point of fan art! These people are basically accusing them of looking too good and complimenting me by doing so. When it comes to video games whenever you see a model for sale, very often props or armour (typically pepakura but also .stl) which has a preview showing the model fully coloured as it looks in the game, while the model itself is very simple, that is a model taken from the game and resold, also miniatures which are very smooth but low detail, they're just the model smoothed out, do not support such people. 

If you are interested in understanding then read on. First thing out of the way, look at this image (https://i.imgur.com/GlIkOgg). The subject is the Burnt Ivory King from Dark Souls II, on the left is the fan model a client commissioned me to make, on the right is the model ripped from the game, you can download it yourself here (https://www.models-resource.com/pc_computer/darksoulsii/model/46956/) where I got it for this example, a site which specifically shares ripped video game models. Notice a difference? Well that is explained in the game rip section of this popular resin printing guide (https://adonaelresinprinting.weebly.com/)*, which goes into some detail about how video games work and why what you're seeing is not at all what's in the files. There is no such thing as a high detail model sitting there in the game waiting to be plucked out and thrown on a printer, if that were the case then there would be no fan art like my models and such ripped models would be everywhere. Anyone who has worked in video game development, or knows about video game development or real-time assets knows this, anyone who has researched it knows this, anyone who has seen someone ask about it in 3D printing communities and read the answers knows this, anyone who has ripped any models from video games knows this. My point is that it is common knowledge among those with these interests. 

So no, my models are not and cannot be rips from a game, to suggest it is not only insulting to myself but also to the artists at these studios who created all the forms of art which went into the originals including the original sculpts which are far far better than mine will ever hope to be. My work is but a humble tribute, aka fan art. The years of effort, learning, improving, the thousands of hours spent working on my models, the pride, the pain in my hand when I spend too many hours doing it, the appreciation expressed to me from hundreds of customers and clients, all the times I've been too busy with it to do something with my spouse, at times the stress, and reaching the point where I do almost only commission work for people who genuinely desire what I can do, none of these things give a flying F*** about what some ignorant troll who refuses to educate themselves and does nothing but wastes oxygen thinks!

*full excerpt from the guide pasted below

[I Want To Print A Model Ripped From A Video Game? 


Not gonna lie to you, it's technically possible yes, but it's tough with a lot of work involved and results nowhere near as good as what you're probably expecting. Why is that? Because video games are essentially optical illusions and what you're seeing is not the reality, there isn't some amazing model of that character in there which looks like it came straight out of a collector's edition box like some imagine. Not even close. Let's skip over the actual ripping part because every game is different, it's not easy and I don't know all that much about it. Assume you already have the models or got them from someone. Those models will look like crap, like they came straight off a Playstation 1. The game engine renders them in such a way which makes them look smooth and like they have depth etc, but in reality they're extremely simple and blocky. All the detail you see in the game are textures, which are images mapped onto the model and rendered in different ways making it look like it's not an image mapped onto a blocky model like a projector screen. So you have this blocky model with no detail, fine you can work with that you'll paint on the detail after it's printed, just smooth it out a bit so it's not so blocky and export it right? Well, not unless you want to print a T-pose or it's an object, so now you have to pose it, which means either rigging it with a skeleton so that you can then move parts of it, or using another method to manually move and rotate parts of it until it's posed, but then you can export it right? Not right actually, because they are nowhere near a printable state, those clothes you see, the hair/fur, anything which hangs or dangles, probably not 3D objects. 2D planes with a partially transparent image mapped to them. All that matters is how you, the player, will see the model in the game, and not see, those arms? They're cut off just inside the sleeve of the shirt, the sleeve which may be a single sided 2D plane. So you've got to do everything that's in the 'How To Make a 3D Model Printable?' section, everything needs to be a solid 3D model, it all needs to intersect, and then be made boolean. Great, you've done that, now you export right? Sure, now you can export one single very low detail basic posed model. Not saying it couldn't be worth it to the right person, and there are some small but dedicated communities which do this for the sake of miniature tabletop games, but it sure is a lot to do for little in the way of results, might be better to just learn how to model/sculpt yourself and be able to re-create anything you like exactly how you want it.

Here is a link to an example image of how game models are made (https://imgur.com/a/GM0YYua), as you can see in the top half, that wireframe is the polygons, that's how blocky a game model is and what it looks like (without the colour) when it is extracted because 3D printing uses only raw geometry, as you can see all the detail you see in the game is actually half a dozen layers of textures with different functions projected on top of that. That is how real-time assets work, the image on the bottom left is how the model up top looks rendered in-engine with all those layers shown on the right enabled. 

Finally here is a direct comparison (https://imgur.com/nUO37sm) on the left is a Locust Drone in Gears of War 3 as it appears in the game, and the right is the raw model of it I found ripped from the game. Yeah.]