How does one use MakeClothes at the basic level?

[Fred Astair]

About sharing.
Yes, the goal is to have a lot of libraries ready to use in MH, but the thing need to be carefully handled.
Not any mesh that is donated by someone reach the high quality standard we require.
Another important point is that there is no easy way to be sure that the model submitted is from an original author, and not copied from a copyrighted character. This is a very subtle risk that we don't want to have.
I know, these are legal and boring issue, but they are very important. So sharing don't work so much for models.[/quote]

I've seen the comments before regarding meeting the high standards, but that seriously removes many possible contributions from happening. I read once about how to share skins with MakeHuman, but I didn't see any contributions and I'm guessing that it was too complicated for some people. If you don't relax the restrictions a bit, then you'll end up creating all of the hair, clothes, skins and eyes because it's too hard for people to share. I understand that you wouldn't want to add low standard designs to the main program, but could you not have some sort of repository where people could share designs amongst themselves that they would install into their own folders? People can do that now anyway - I could share my skirt with another user on the web, and they could put it into their MakeHuman folder, and it would work for them - and since you guys have no control over that, you couldn't be held responsible if it wasn't my own design, so you wouldn't be liable. Do you know who Thingy Verse is? If not, I'll tell you. They make 3d printers in the USA - New York, I believe. Anyway, they originally had this same issue of sharing 3d designs, and the legal concerns. On their website now, anybody can share their 3d designs with others. I don't know how they solved the legal worries about people possibly submitting designs that are not their own, but I do know that it's done in the agreement when you click to share a design, and seems to not be a problem for them. Perhaps you could check out their site and see how they do it : http://www.thingiverse.com/

By creating something like what Thingy Verse has done, you'll be able to browse the designs yourself and pick out the best designs, and incorporate any designs that you feel are suitable and relevant to the MakeHuman releases. All you'd need to do is verify that they are original designs, and that might be as simple, from a legal stand point, of doing your due diligence. Perhaps the artist submits their meshes or something. Anyway, it would give you guys a pool of designs to pick from, rather than having to create only your own.

[Fred Astair]

Oh, one more thing I forgot to mention about Thingiverse's website.

A design gets uploaded to the common sharing area, typically along with the code for the design. Everything uploaded has an open source licence and anybody else can use, or modify the design as they please. This proves to be a very good system from an improvements point of view. What happens is that the original artist creates a design and uploads it. Then, someone else comes along and notices where it can be improved upon and makes some changes and uploads a new version. Then, someone else comes along and improves that version, and so on and eventually a really good design emerges. The way Thingiverse has it set up, each improvement can be linked to the one before it, and in fact all the way back to the original design so that everybody who contributes gets recognition. It is also possible for anybody who views the site to report a design as copyrighted or stolen and then have it removed. It is open source designing at it's best!

[Manuel]

Oh, one more thing I forgot to mention about Thingiverse's website.

It's interesting but MH the signed agreement has real legal value only if the user provide real information (that's not so sure on internet) so it's always a bit risky and also MH official distribution can include only assets released under CC0 (and very few good artists like to renounce to the copyright).

[duststorm]

Having a public repository on the website for user donated content has always been the plan, there even is a test version available of that, with a few contributions for the old A7 version.
But we still need to work through some technical, legal, organizational and documentation issues to get it really working.

[Fred Astair]

Having a public repository on the website for user donated content has always been the plan, there even is a test version available of that, with a few contributions for the old A7 version.
But we still need to work through some technical, legal, organizational and documentation issues to get it really working.

That's why I suggested that you check out Thingyverse to see how they handled a very similar problem - sharing 3d designs across the board...they figured out the how's and why's a couple of years ago. Like I said earlier though, there is no way for you guys to stop people from sharing designs right now. If I stole a design and shared it with another person and they put it in their MakeHuman program and used it on a character, then I would be liable, not MakeHuman. It would be like a car manufacturer worrying about the legal ramifications of a customer using one of their cars in a bank robbery.