Recaster Alert!

[Fierfek]

Recaster Alert! Digital recaster, RPF member BSD aka Ruthlessfx/ Charles Sheeley has stolen my work and has claimed it as his own hard work. This is not acceptable!

The blue mesh is my model against Ruthlessfx album picture.

The blue mesh is my model against Ruthlessfx album picture.

This status update disappeared after I posted this thread.

This one was deleted as well. Now why would he do that?

As anticipated, he is now claiming that this is his "WIP" model, which was only posted today after having a day to whip this up. The pictures speak for themselves.

 

[ConvergencePro]

Interested to see how this plays out.
I'm always for people having the chance to defend themselves from their accusers (innocent till proven guilty), but seeing as he's deleting the FB comments I'm beginning to think that it pretty much speaks for itself. Outwardly I also cant see any differences between your model and his even though the image angles are different. If it really is such blatant recasting than I'm curious as to why he'd openly post it up knowing you're both RPF members.

 

[Fierfek]

This isn't the first time that he has done this. He recast my Mark 42 helmet and Darth Malgus Mask models as well. He deleted all of the evidence in his posts on here of course.

 

[DaddyfromNaboo]

Did he copy your files or how was this done?

 

[Fierfek]

I offered a pepakura file for sale on my site, but he exported the 3D model without permission and is passing it off as his own work to 3D print and sell casts. He understood perfectly that my pepakura files are only to be used as pepakura files.

 

[animefan]

That's really LOW, wonder what he has to say for himself.

 

[thd9791]

:thumbsdown sad to see people stoop that low. I hope something good comes out of all this..

 

[blue2k]

Recaster Alert! Digital recaster, RPF member BSD aka Ruthlessfx/ Charles Sheeley has stolen my work and has claimed it as his own hard work. This is not acceptable!

As a modeler myself, I would have to provisionally concur. They look almost identical, including the scaling of certain parts. I hope you find a resolution for this. It seems rather distasteful.

 

[Moviefreak]

He obviously doesn't have remorse or won't admit anything.
According to him, all comments pointing out his actions are mere "trolling".
Say goodbye to your RPF membership!

 

[Fierfek]

Charles has had nearly 24 hours to delete incriminating evidence, ban enlightening comments, and alter my model to substantiate his hollow claims. I updated the first post with more pictures showing my mesh over the same stolen model.

 

[joshvanrad]

The overlays just tell the story.

 

[laellee]

For what it's worth, Charles did respond on Facebook about an hour ago:

"Hello to all. I am posting the wire frames now. I am also going to show I model all helmets that have a almost perfect sphere for the top. Yup you guesses it. I use a half a sphere. For the people who know and do not I will let you know the the default sphere in 3d max has 32 segments on them. I am showing this in the pics as well and you can see how they line up with other helmets I make since this is what I use when making most helmet files. Or I turn it to the side. Just depends. And I also did not comment till I got off work because it is almost impossible to fight this without pics not to mention pointless. I did use the person who is calling me a recaster (Tho you have to actually sell or distribute or something for a recast of any kind to happen) renders because I really liked them. Yes I pretty much traced it. And showing that I know how poly flow must work you really only have a few ways you can make them work when using box modeling. Plus all of you jumped the gun. I was not even done with the damn thing. I was trying to get the front view from the trailer lined up. It was not working out so well so I deleted parts of the model. I dont even have the HD one because I had to start over. I am sad I did not save it but this was all done before all of this happend so for that I am sorry. I work nights I was about to sleep when all of this happend and I only got 4 hrs of sleep and I drive about an hr and 15 min to get to work. Almost fell asleep on the road. But anyway. I could have posted responses and fought you guys all night on my breaks at work but like I said would have been pointless. I do not need freaking pep files to make helmets! I do very well without them. So unless using photos is now recasting you can **** off. I made that model off his renders so ya They should line up close since the sphere was the base of it all. I challenge any modeler to leave the segments at 32 and based off the pics I am sure it will not take much to get them to line up with mine. Unless I used that same file and just chopped the top off to make it. Ugh so angery. But anyway I do not have time to fight with you all. This is up to the admins now. I did get a message from Art at work and i responed. I will only be responding to him on this matter. Have fun with it guys. I wont be paying much attention and will not stress out fighting people over this when I know I made this model. Ya I used his but I was not even done with what I was doing. Posting pics in the next comment as well as the front and side view. I have no problem doing this."

"I did use the person who is calling me a recaster (Tho you have to actually sell or distribute or something for a recast of any kind to happen) renders because I really liked them. Yes I pretty much traced it."

"I am sad I did not save it but this was all done before all of this happend so for that I am sorry."

(I think) he's saying he used Fierfek's model images as background reference, and then built his new mesh to overlay Fierfek's work. At the least, it looks to me that he was using Fierfek's actual 3d model, either building a duplicate mesh over the original or just using the original with few modifications. The dome isn't the issue to me, it's the angular details and other breaks matching up almost perfectly. It's the same mesh (ignoring the addition or subtraction of some looping and such), matching from all perspectives to FIerfek's work. Charle's mesh isn't matching the few screen references as much as it's matching Fierfek's work. The lack of WIP makes sense, if there's no significant progress to save.

I think Charles just tried to piggyback off of someone else's work, and it backfired. This helmet is so new, I can only think of Fierfek's file and Oz's sculpt as decent representations available (apologies if I forgot someone else's ). And there's a reason why there are so few examples; MODELING THIS STUFF IS HARD, especially when there are so few references. He got called out, and can't substantiate his work, the end.

 

[Art Andrews]

BSD, I have to tell you, nothing you have posted on facebook is making you look better on this and all the evidence that has been shown makes it look, very-much-so like Fierfek has a valid argument.


As things become more and more digital, the lines of what is recasting and what is not become more blurred and more difficult to discern. If someone puts an item out for public consumption, they can't argue too much if others use it as reference, to which you have admitted in regard to Fierfek's work. However, it appears that you are being a bit disingenuous by saying you used his helmet as reference. Based on the meshes presented, it looks like you used his as a starting point and simply modified it from there.


Do you have the skill and talent to do this work yourself? I have absolutely no doubt that you do. Did you use your skill and talent on this project or did you get a jumpstart from Fierfek, using his model as a base for your helmet? While we may never know with 100% certainty, it sure looks like it to me.


For everyone else keeping up with this thread; this is the issue you run into, especially in the digital realm when you use someone else's work as a reference. Is it wrong to do so? Not necessarily, but if you do, the risk of you being called out as a recaster is very high, whether you actually copied their work or not. Best advice I can give? Don't base your work, even loosely, off someone else's work. You are just setting yourself up for trouble.


So, the question now is, what are you going to do, Charles?

 

[Daniel Nelms]

All this seems to happen quite a bit. I wish someone would start a guild of prop makers we could join who would go to bat for us or arbitrate when these things happen.

 

[laellee]

All this seems to happen quite a bit. I wish someone would start a guild of prop makers we could join who would go to bat for us or arbitrate when these things happen.

Haha, the way I see it, we've already got one of those. It's called the RPF.

 

[Art Andrews]

All this seems to happen quite a bit. I wish someone would start a guild of prop makers we could join who would go to bat for us or arbitrate when these things happen.

I'd be highly suspicious of anyone who would volunteer for that task. It is by far the most maddening, frustrating, thankless and difficult of all the things we do and anyone who has ever had the bad fortune to have to arbitrate one of these issues will tell you that they hate it.

 

[laellee]

I'd be highly suspicious of anyone who would volunteer for that task. It is by far the most maddening, frustrating, thankless and difficult of all the things we do and anyone who has ever had the bad fortune to have to arbitrate one of these issues will tell you that they hate it.

I nominate that guy on Facebook, Andrews Art! He seems to have a level head....

 

[CSMacLaren]

There is a term for all this: plagiarism.

 

[Chaank]

I can't believe the dude hasn't even replied to this thread. Whats with that? Telling...

 

[laellee]

I can't believe the dude hasn't even replied to this thread. Whats with that? Telling...

Yeah he did, it played out on Facebook (and I think it may have since been removed?)

The gist of it: Art commented in the Fierfek recaster thread on the Facebook page, post #13 in this thread is identical I believe to his post there. Charles then responded, (paraphrasing from memory) said he made a mistake, and said he would remove all of his stuff involving that helmet. I think, by the time Art stepped in, Charles had already pulled that stuff anyways after he started getting lambasted.