Question about whether it's legal to profit off certain models in Maya.

Valkyrian

Hello, so I am possibly going to be freelancing for an indie game dev team - however, I do not have a Maya license. I have the Student version only.

So, I know that it's not legal to profit off a model from the Student version. However; let's say that I model a bunch of things in the Student version. Now let's say that AFTER I complete those models, I purchase a real Maya subscription. Then, I export the models made in the Student version to the official subscribed Maya version.

Would it THEN be legal to profit off those models, even though they were originally made in Student Maya?

ghaztehschmexeh

Valkyrian wrote: »

Hello, so I am possibly going to be freelancing for an indie game dev team - however, I do not have a Maya license. I have the Student version only.

So, I know that it's not legal to profit off a model from the Student version. However; let's say that I model a bunch of things in the Student version. Now let's say that AFTER I complete those models, I purchase a real Maya subscription. Then, I export the models made in the Student version to the official subscribed Maya version.

Would it THEN be legal to profit off those models, even though they were originally made in Student Maya?

I should imagine that as long as you have a maya license at the time of profit then you will be fine. I don't think there would be any need to export from one to the other though. I doubt there's any details in the files of your license, although I may be wrong.

ZacD

It depends on the wording of the license, kind of a gray area, but if you keep an active license I don't see Autodesk going after a active customer. If you make assets on the student version, for months, then sub for a month, then cancel, and then make assets on the student version again, and then resub for a month, that would definitely be something they wouldn't approve of.

There is some header information in 3d files exported from applications, there's most likely some license info in there.

Quack!

I would not take anyones armchair thoughts here as fact(no offense intended). Contact Autodesk directly as many times as it takes until you get an explicit, written, answer. You can NOT take the chance of a company with millions of dollars coming after you.

ghaztehschmexeh

Quack! wrote: »

I would not take anyones armchair thoughts here as fact(no offense intended). Contact Autodesk directly as many times as it takes until you get an explicit, written, answer. You can NOT take the chance of a company with millions of dollars coming after you.

Yeah, this is probably the best thing to do

passerby

Also as a not if you are distributing .ma or .MB there is meta data there that tags it as be created with the student version.

Base

If I remember right, the 'student' tag is quite aggressive, if literally anything that has that flag on it enters literally any scene, everything in that scene becomes flagged as a educational license, regardless of if you sent the .ma or .mb to someone else with a legitimate commercial license. Just as an FYI before they start using your assets. That said, yes, you generally need to maintain a license if you are using it for commercial purposes.