Anti avatar ripp
RiderWulf05
There is a website known as the ripper store
These people find file numbers or avatar codes of avatars from players despite having avatar cloning OFF, some people pay MONEY to people to make them a custom avatar only they can have, and these guys ripp the avatar from these people via the avatar file number or code, and then sell it for profit, please find a way to hide this avatar file number or code so that these people don't get to make money from other people's hard work
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Flir
There's no way you can prevent ripping, the client has to have all of the data downloaded in order to load it into the GPU, etc.
However, what VRChat
CAN
do is add a signature to the character mesh. A secret formula where they add something like a patterned string of several vertices (which do not compose a renderable face, so not visible in game) to the mesh that is Extremely Unlikely to be included in a legit mesh, which if present when you upload the character asset, would be detected by the upload processing infrastructure, and immediately ban the character account. Considering that a character mesh can be composed of tens of thousands, if not more, vertices, it would be absolutely miserable to find especially if you don't have the original unmodified mesh to compare against. It would force rippers to go through a lot more work to try "sanitize" their ill gotten loot, and let's face it most probably don't have the patience or skill to do that.
That's how you defeat this sort of stuff, you can't stop it all, but you can make it consume so much effort that most people won't want to bother. And it would make people who download ripped avatars wonder if what they've downloaded is really "cleaned enough" to not get the "YOU'VE BEEN BANNED" result when they try upload.
RexTheRaptor
Flir: Honestly that sounds like the best and most possible thing to happen, really hope the Devs do something about it tho, never got an avatar stolen but there are so many people that have customs that either they worked on for a while or paid a lot of money for, especially bad for content creators since most of them have a fully custom character based around, well, them, that people can potentially steal and well, impersonate said content creator.
Either way i hope this gets fixed and this sounds like a good idea.
Flir
RexTheRaptor: Indeed. And I think this is something VRChat should do in secret, without making an announcement -- other than maybe it's coming. This fosters paranoia in the ripper group -- users won't know if this avatar they bought from the ripper store has the signature, and rippers would be put on a wild goosechase, lest they miss when this begins to happen and their "business model" gets impacted.
spex_wulf
Flir: I agree. The approach here should be to attack the process, not the perpetrators. Trying to DCMA Ripper Store or Pirates is nearly impossible, but make Pirates lose trust in the system and they will stop doing it.
If the SDK was to "Digitally Sign" the Body mesh of the avatar being uploaded. When that avatar is ripped, that signature should get ripped as well.
If the SDK finds a Signature already present in an avatar's mesh(regardless of if it matches the initial uploader or not) then that Avatar could be flagged as Ripped.
Flir
spex_wulf: Well, we don't want the SDK to do the signing, because then the rippers will just decompile the SDK and find out how the signature is generated, and then update their process to rip it out.
This has to be done on the server end, after the assets have been transmitted to VRChat. This way, the rippers have to try and figure out how the signature is inserted and recognized so they can find it without costly manual intervention for each upload.
RiderWulf05
I feel like a lot of people will agree with me, especially considering tge current CONTEST ON DISCORD going on here
sagenelson21
RiderWulf05: I am 100 percent agree with you bud alot of people spend over 100 dollars to have there avatar made for them then this bullshit came along and take avatars that is not there's