well seeing how i been buying STL files for around 8 bucks each for figures that look the same detail quality and some have full transformations, that is about what would be looking to pay..
Do you feel that's a fair price for the amount of work that goes into making these things a reality? Less than an hour of minimum wage pay? Not an attack on you, but just putting things into perspective.
$10-$15 for files for a fully transforming figure is fair and is the typical going rate. After all, the buyer has to put in the dozens of hours it takes to print, supply the machine, buy filament, etc. Once the plans are done, all the seller has to do is sit back and reap the profits. Sell 10 at $10 or 5 at $20 - it all comes out the same. It all depends on how widespread you want your work to become.
You realize though that owning those files puts you in near complete control over someone else's intellectual property, right? What's to stop someone from cranking out tons of copies of someone else's design and making money off of it besides "good faith"? (also, this is just a healthy debate, not an attack on you or your viewpoint, just to be clear. I've no animosity towards you all... =).
Nothing will stop them - the price is irrelevant when it come to that. Sell it for $1 or sell it for $50, risk is equal. You are still releasing it to the masses either way. In fact, I would wager making people pay more would make them feel more inclined to try and profit off it themselves to feel like they got their money's worth.
That circles back to the issue though... you yourself and others obviously find paying more than $15 or so dollars unreasonable. For the potential of what you get when you have your hands on these files, that's not fair to the designer in my view. If the work is worth so little, implying that it's easy to do, then why doesn't everyone just make their own designs based on their specific wants?
If you don't want the chance of someone selling your designs, don't release them. Like I said, price has nothing to do with it. Once you put it out there, game over, gamble taken. The potential for theft will never go away when we are talking about internet files. Whoever made them in the first place is taken out of the equation once they are public. You seem worried about theft - you shouldn't sell at any price if that is the case. However, if you sell them for a reasonable price, the chances that someone will try and profit off the plans themselves goes down IMO. The risk will never go away completely.
I think ultimately what I can see happening is something like g-code streaming to someone else's printer so that no actual file changes hands. Something like we pay the price for a design, open access to our printer to the designer, and then they stream the print job to the buyer's printer. There'd be some holes in that obviously, but it would be better than all the risk involved with the current options for sharing work.
That's why I never released my plans in the past and only sold prints at the cost of my time and materials - if it's something I thought was going to get stolen I just didn't give out the files in any form. When selling prints I didn't take my design time into account, price was all based on the printed product. These days if I want a design out there, I make it free. I'm not interested in selling designs, the time I spent was my cost alone - the final product is up to whoever. If someone likes and prints something I designed, awesome. Knowing that something I designed physically exists all over the world is payment enough for me. I don't have time to design huge things anymore, and I sure don't have time to print them and sell to others. I've got slews of parts and design files that will never be released to the public. It's not even worth my time to make them free, or try and sell them.
You asked and thats what i told you i been paying for files for figures that have full transformations . Im in the process of printing a G1 Cartoon accurate Combining Devastator and i paid a little over 45$ for all 6 bots that have full transformations and all the combiner parts plus i get any future updates the designer makes for free.. The non transforming figures i have printed of Jazz, Prowl and CJ were actually free to download. Hook is in the process of a test print and then im going to upscale them to make the devastator around 2 foot tall.. Its all good if you dont want to sell, i just thought i would ask
For me i wouldnt want to print them a second time for myself or someone else lol i dont have the patience to sit and print a second figure for days. I just tell the people interested to buy a printer and contact the seller of the files lol
That's the approach I believe most people have, which is perfectly fine. But there are some shady f*cks out there. In fact, the designer of the bots you showed images of, Reza Aulia (who I'm a big fan of), himself found some company overseas who were actually selling toys built from the files he sold, all without any permission whatsoever. They even had full on ads and everything, it was ridiculous. Thankfully he still makes his work available to people, but we need to all keep in mind it comes at a cost to him in a lot of not obvious ways.
To be fair, even sharing them with a company risks the files being leaked to a KO company. There's a risk no matter what, when it comes to designing Transformers.
Man, that seriously sucks. I understand your hesitancy of giving out or even selling your files. Sucks that there are a few people out there who ruin it for the rest of us. Heck, there is no way for you to even know if the person typing on their keyboard is good or not. I really do hope that most of us here are good people and wouldn't do what you said. So yeah, I feel sorry for people who make files for sale get screwed and make others who make files hesitant of even handing them out. Thanks for clarifying why you do what you do, it really helps me at least understand your position. Hopefully one day you'll be willing to share your files with others here, either gifting or selling it, without the fear of you being screwed. I love the work of that Reza Aulia, really cool stuff. Can you share the link to his site or store?
