Release game models?

[Shadowblade]

So I was wondering if there was any chance of the Dev's releasing the 3D assets for guns of Icarus: IE ships, weapons, characters, maps?

 that way people could use them to make animations and other types of fan art. Maybe it could just be for people who have paid for Guns of Icarus or as an expansion type thing, like how they might sell a bullet USB drive?

Just an interesting idea I felt like sharing.

[Lord Dick Tim]

OOo....
What would the bad effects of doing something like that?

[Keon]

I don't know. How hard is it to replace a model file in a steam game? It might lead to skinning on the clientside, and depending on how collisions work, it might allow for some kind of movement hacking. I doubt it would.

If you do release them I want to do a thing with a guy running away from Gatling fire from a squid.

[Keon]

I kinda really really want this now.

[Keon]

Just a question; is ripping a model from a game considered illegal?

[HamsterIV]

I don't know about legality, but I do know Unity tends to bundle its assets into a proprietary file format. Some game engines keep their assets in the file formats they were created in, or some publicly accessible file format. These engines are the easiest to mod, Unity is not one of those engines and as far as I can tell the only publicly available program that can read a complied Unity asset file is the game engine itself. Muse would have to release its artwork in a file format accessible by publicly available editors or you would have to find a way to extract an individual model file's data from Unity's private file format.

[Pickle]

Personally I'd quite like it as a Sketch-up model for sectioning and dimensioning.  Whilst I love the Junker, a scale model Pyra would have something of an imperial star destroyer about it...

[Keon]

Personally I'd quite like it as a Sketch-up model for sectioning and dimensioning.  Whilst I love the Junker, a scale model Pyra would have something of an imperial star destroyer about it...

I don't think they are renderable in sketch up. More likely you would use Maya or Blender or 3dsMax something.

[Shadowblade]

I don't know about legality, but I do know Unity tends to bundle its assets into a proprietary file format. Some game engines keep their assets in the file formats they were created in, or some publicly accessible file format. These engines are the easiest to mod, Unity is not one of those engines and as far as I can tell the only publicly available program that can read a complied Unity asset file is the game engine itself. Muse would have to release its artwork in a file format accessible by publicly available editors or you would have to find a way to extract an individual model file's data from Unity's private file format.

Thats what i was thinking, they could release the .3ds or .blend I honestly have no idea what program they used...and then you could use it to make still frames or animations,aside from the games that would have no effect on actual gameplay, so it would prevent hacking.


UPDATE: So apparently in your C:\ProgramFiles\Steam\SteamApps\Common  you can find a guns of icarus oonline folder and in there there is a resources file with all of the game assets(stored as "files" or .assets's) I tried getting them to open in my copy of unity but it couldnt, or wouldn't read them. So I think they require some form of decryption.

[HamsterIV]

Those files are created when you publish a Unity project. They are meant to be decrypted by the game engine alone. Art assets are extreamly valuable as they represent days (sometimes months) worth of work from talented individuals. When game companies go bankrupt and liquidate their assets, selling off their 3d models to other game studios is one source of revenue. Even though we enjoy looking at the models every time we play the game, asking Muse to give us free access to the original files is like asking them to give us part of their rainy day savings.

[Gomidog]

We use .FBX format to load 3D assets into Unity.  It stores vert weights and animation data as well as vert position, so that works well for taking smooth-bound characters with animation into the engine.  Once in there, Unity converts them into proprietary asset formats.
I don't know if we have any plans to release the character files.  We can talk about it, but I doubt it will be anytime soon even if we do.  We were mulling over Steam Workshop stuff, but I think a lot of that would be more work than we have time for right now.

[RaptorSystems]

We use .FBX format to load 3D assets into Unity.  It stores vert weights and animation data as well as vert position, so that works well for taking smooth-bound characters with animation into the engine.  Once in there, Unity converts them into proprietary asset formats.
I don't know if we have any plans to release the character files.  We can talk about it, but I doubt it will be anytime soon even if we do.  We were mulling over Steam Workshop stuff, but I think a lot of that would be more work than we have time for right now.

I'm guessing that means your artist are using something like autodesk. I'm regards to sketch-up + .FBX apparently it is actually possible to import them using a third party (not free) application. If you are using autodesk I believe it can export as obj (wavefile) which can be imported by a variety of editors.

Just a question; is ripping a model from a game considered illegal?

Depends on licensing, but it would be wise to assume so unless it is explicitly stated otherwise. It wouldn't be the first time GLIntercept  has got people into a world of trouble.