D3CRYPT3D 3D Encryption Software Beta

Hey, my name is Chloe, and a crew of us made a program that Encrypts your 3D assets. It's called D3CRYPT3D. We just launched the beta today and would love for you to register, test it out, and give us any feedback you may have. We just want to make an amazing product and finally get 3D artists the credit they deserve.


Here is the link to download the software- (Removed by admin, see last post)


Note: D3CRYPT3D is only available for PC right now, but will be available for Mac very soon!


Thanks!

 

What purpose would this tool serve?

How would this tool benefit me? Why would I want to encrypt my 3D files?

Since this tool only works on obj files, how would this help an artist who is specialized in animation, where most of the files saved are 3D application files that support animation and bone/skin data, or fbx files?

 

Except you have to decrypt it to do something like send it to the graphics card. Which is kind of a critical step in games. So what's the advantage to the tool?

 

Hi theANMATOR2b! This tool will benefit you in two ways.

1. It will prevent the theft of your 3D assets which you have worked hard to create
2. It will allow you to share your 3D assets with authorized parties and track them

Sorry for the delay in responding. Your questions are super appreciated, please keep them coming!

 

Hi BoredMormon,

That is a very valid point. Further down the line our intent is to have our software perform as a layer through which the files are interpreted. Without the layer the objects won't compile. This is far down the line hopefully late next year.

Please let me know if you have more questions and I will do my best to answer!

 

How good is your understanding of how people in the cracking-scene think, and what makes you believe that your DRM will be the first one that doesn't get cracked, and that it isn't a nuissance for the legitimate end-users?

I'm a freelance 2D/3D artist and I would never use any form of DRM on my own 3D models, I would never pay for DRMed 3D models, and I don't see how any assetstore customer shopping for 3D models could see your tech as anything but a royal pain in the *ss. DRM has been around for decades, it always gets cracked quickly, it doesn't prevent piracy, it's a pain for all legitimate users and some will outright refuse to buy things with DRM. Look at GOG, they are doing fine selling games without any kind of DRM. Customers appreciate not being treated like criminals. There is paid software that comes with portable installers, which is even better than DRM-free. Those companies have been around for a long time too.

The way I see it, artists are sufficiently protected against devs ripping their models and using them in their games by copyright laws and the DMCA. Not to mention the fallout of bad PR that stealing assets on a commercial product can cause. Example:
http://www.thejimquisition.com/trek...ion-went-from-victim-to-villain-in-one-night/


I can only wildly speculate on what your long-term goals are. My best guess is that you are hoping on being able to sell your company to e.g. Autodesk at some point, so that they can integrate DRM into the FBX standard. Both from a market- and artist-perspective, I think that would be the worst-case scenario. Dealing with FBX files in Blender for example is troublesome enough as it is, I can't imagine how much worse it could get with DRM on top of that. But then again, maybe that's the driving force that we need to finally get a good open 3D fileformat going?


Not to mention that I don't see how you'd ever be able to prevent people from using the Mesh class in Unity to extract the data of a protected mesh and rebuild it as an unprotected mesh, without limiting functionality and thus breaking ALL assets that rely on having access to the mesh data through the traditional means. Also what about static and dynamic batching? By design that works through extracting and combining mesh data. And these are essential features in Unity. There is absolutely no way any dev would accept not being able to use those features. And what about the need to modify 3D assets for special usecases? E.g. let's say you need a bone added to a skeleton with some new animation data to fit your usecase, how's that gonna work with DRMed assets?
You are adding hoops to jump through for assetstore customers/developers, without any benefit to them whatsoever. Why would anyone choose to buy something like that, when there are literally tens of thousands of 3D models without DRM? Every issue devs will encounter with your DRM (and I have zero doubt that there will be issues), would reflect back on the artist they bought from, and lead to bad reviews on the asset. Why would any artist risk that?

 

Well, I do agree with everything you said @Martin_H but not all DRM get's cracked. I have yet to see anyone hack into WoW and play online free for life.... Not saying it hasn't happened, but I've never once heard of that happening.

But aside from that I agree with everything you've said and what everyone else is saying.

OP: Don't take any of us wrong, there's nothing wrong with innovation, and in some cases this tool would be ideal, such as transfering a 3d model to a client to see if they approve of it, then if they do send them the non-encrypted one so they can make the changes they like whenever they like. Or have a server-side check that you can check mark if they approved then it unlocks it for them in every software.

Again, nothing wrong with innovation, but there's a time and place for DRM, and in some cases it makes sense, but to make it where nobody can access it if they buy it from the asset store, etc. Might get pretty bad reviews towards the modelers being people can't change anything.

But I wish you luck with your endeavors man, keep creating, don't take what we said in a bad way I know a lot of us come off that way, but in reality we genuinely care, and would like to know so and so things, and perhaps put a more of a reality perspective before you get too far into it that you can't escape... But who knows, you never know if you'll be the next midnight millionaire until you try.

 

One of my ex girlfriends played on a cracked wow server many years ago. Also not too long ago I think there was some discussion (on the cooptional podcast afair, or at the very least on some video on totalbiscuit's channel) about how running cracked wow servers is the only way to still play vanilla wow or something like that. I don't know details, I never ever played WoW in any way.
There may very well be yet-to-be-cracked DRM, but for all intends and purposes it's so rare, that it would be naive to believe that this thing here will reach that "holy grail of DRM".

Maybe sketchfab or marmoset viewer could solve that for you, in combination with an escrow service.

Speaking of which, @D3CRYPT3D, online 3D-model-viewers like sketchfab or the marmoset viewer, or some new webgl based solution that you could provide yourself, are the only application where I could see DRM not getting in the way of what end users want to do with the model, which is just look at it interactively. Maybe talking to those 2 companies about a possible collaboration might be a sensible move for you.
Or explore the escrow market and see if there is an unfilled demand for an escrow service, that is tailored to the needs of artists and art-buyers. Escrow fees could probably earn you a lot more than per-artist software licenses anyway.

 

Dang I never knew WoW had any cracked servers and such before... Well there is a DRM that hasn't ever been figured out sense it was created in WW2, ever seen the movie Code Talkers? Not really a DRM LOL, but sending messages in code, Navajo Indians they hired. Not yet to this day has anyone deciphered it, well accept the people who were taught the code lol. Still isn't really DRM, but same principles apply. Keeping unwanted intruders from gaining access to the information.

 

In principle, how will this work at the GPU level?

Ignoring "files"*, at some point the data that represents the mesh has to be sent to the GPU as an array of vertices, an array of indices, an array of UVs, and so on. Once that data is in the GPU's memory how does your system stop it from being read back out?

Even assuming you can do that, the GPU now has to do some work just to read the data, so you're incurring a performance penalty before you're drawing anything.

Finally, you still need a shader or whatnot present which knows how to decrypt the data, and must be present on the end user's machine for the data to be usable. This necessarily contains all of the data required to crack your encryption.

To roughly quote someone else here recently:

(Apologies to whomever I am quoting, who's name I can not recall!)

My best guess is that I'm misunderstanding what this is actually for. As @Martin_H says there are indeed use cases where the ability to share work without providing full access to it would be useful. (Though I'd think that something like streaming / server-side rendering would maybe be a better approach there - clients can interact with something without being handed the data at all.)

Also, this:

* Or, alternatively, considering that file-level encryption is already available.

 

That's a brilliant idea! Not only is it actually secure by not sharing 3D data, it's also something that lends itself to be provided as a commercial service, because it needs to be hosted on a rendering and streaming server for as long as it is supposed to be available. And it should be much easier to develop than any encryption tech (that needs to interact with dozens of other systems) too, I'd imagine.

 

Keep in mind that Xbox One, Playstation 4 and Steam all have this built in already. I'd be surprised if there there wasn't already something similar for general usage. In fact a quick online search suggests that TeamViewer might do the job for general use (normal Remote Desktop isn't).

 

I'm curious, is this a problem that needs a solution? Especially one that could impact performance and development costs? I mean, it's not the same as game piracy, where the loss is at the end user point of sale. If someone rips a model, they aren't directly impacting sales. And as a developer, is it worth the cost and time to attempt to prevent something that ultimately won't have an impact?

 

This.

For models the time might be better spent sending cease and desist letters to anyone who does try and make money off of the models. Even then its dubious if someone stealing a model is actually cutting into the game developer profits.

 

I think the issue here is that they're cutting into artist profits. Eg: if you make a model and are selling it, someone can re-upload it for sale as their own, essentially stealing sales from the original creator.

 

That makes more sense. But then the question becomes, will it impact sales if you make clients jump through hoops? To me it feels like the whole asset store dll concerns that people have. (Including myself). If this actually worked wouldn't this also prevent editing?

 

I just took a look at the site and information, and what I am not seeing is how it is used. The content, that is. There is a viewer, but then what? How would an asset be used in Unity, or anything else that supports it?

 

While that's a really sh*tty thing that actually might happen, I'm very sure it will cut less into the original artist's sales than DRM would. Also these would be traditional copyright violations for which artists can use DMCA takedowns and sue for damages (afaik).

 

@zombiegorilla
I never previously replied to or had any interest in this thread, for the record.
Apparently they've decided private-message spamming is a good business model:

 

@Buhlaine

 

Me too. It's not even targeted spam. I'm an programmer, so even if this tool worked, its of no interest to me.

 

It's an older thread, but this tool is fundamentally flawed. The problem being solved here is a court/law problem, not a security problem. If someone uses your art assets without paying the artist, there are several possible outcomes.

1. The game/work goes nowhere, and the artist is not harmed. The perpetrator has no intention of ever buying the toy they are playing with.
2. The game/work goes somewhere, you notice they have not licensed your product, and you sue them, issue take-downs, ect.

Eventually, all object data will be fed into the GPU where it can be easily scraped. If you somehow prevented this, a tall order, then you are introducing latency where it doesn't need to be.

If you're competing with asset preview panes, good luck, that's a different beast and has little use for programmers. Also, spamming your product across a community like this one is terrible practice, and makes it look shoddy.

 

Thanks @BoredMormon and @MV10 for reporting unsolicited messages. This thread should have been closed when it was first posted as our Developer Network Rules state we do not allow for advertisement.

Due to the nature of this thread, as well as the unsolicited messages to our community members I'll be closing this thread, removing the link to their service and contacting the member. Please let me know if there are any more issues.

Also, thanks @zombiegorilla <3