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How to prevent meshes from stealing?

Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 8:13 am
by Jolly Joker
I think this is the problem that most of us will think about.
We have made some meshes and we don't want somebody to import or modify them. Is there any way to protect meshes (.3ds, .x, etc. )?

Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 8:24 am
by arras
Chreate your own file format and code loader for it.

I think Acki was working on zip file password support ...look at his website.

Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 8:27 am
by JP
This has been asked before and there's not really any way to protect them i don't think.

Why are you so worried about people stealing your models? If you put a licence on them then they'd be protected from being used commercially and does it matter if someone uses them for non-commercial stuff? If no one shared their creations for free then you wouldn't even be using this lovely open-source engine ;)

Just seen that Arras has posted whilst i'm writing and i guess his way is best, to create your own format in someway and create a loader. To be honest you could just use a normal file format but add an extra few lines of code at the start and then that would make the normal loaders fail to load it and you could easily write your own loader which would skip those lines and succeed in loading it.

Password protected zip files have been said to be utterly useless. If someone, pretty much anyone, wants to get at the contents then they can do in this day and age. So i would say that Arras' method is the only real way of doing this with Irrlicht.

Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 8:43 am
by hybrid
But there's still no realy way to avoid stealing: Put a d3d or OpenGL debugger in between your app and the gfx card and it will deliver the vertices for free. You could scramble the input and bring the correct values back with shaders, but these are also visible to debuggers. So no real protection, just making it more complicated for script kiddies.

Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 9:06 am
by Jolly Joker
Yes you're right :wink:
I know there is no way to protect meshes from advanced peoples, I only find solution to protect my work from kiddies, who have basic knowledge and never care about licenses, they may modify my mesh and put their name into it :?
Create a new file format and password protect maybe good ways to solve my problem, let me try :)

Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 10:50 am
by Virion
or you can embed the models into the .exe itself?

Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 12:40 pm
by vizzy
Sorry for my bad english...........

for a long time i have post my way ( with code and samples for VC8 ) to
protect the media files in Irrlicht, but i'm sorry, i have delete my post and no time to post it again. :cry:
( ..but over 200 downloads of this in two days.. 8) ) .

I' have simply overwritten the "addZipFileArchive(..)" funktion in Irrlich, so that it loads an rc4 encrypted zip archive in memory to handle the files like this:

Code: Select all

// die verschlüsselte Datei in Speicher
// entschlüsseln und device zuweisen, danach Passwort
// sofort aus Speicher löschen

cl_rc4.OpenCipherArchive( device, "eintest", (CStringA)meshfile, CHECK_MD5::TRUE );
cl_rc4.DeleteKeyFromMem(  );
This way is easy and is sure enough for my stuff:
(max. 50 MB, else you need an blockcipher e.g. Blowfish, TripleDES, AES etc )

1. Make a zip of your data
2. Encrypt your Zip-Archive with algorithm to a file
...and back:
1. decrypt your archive in mem
2. addZipFileArchive( the decrypt zip archive in memory)

If you want the samples/codes pm me and i will send you this...

Sorry for my bad english...........
Vizzy

( [ ..the comunity Dinosaur-Programer, i think I'm the oldest here....] )

Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 10:00 pm
by omar shaaban
Virion wrote:or you can embed the models into the .exe itself?
How!? :roll:

Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 10:04 pm
by ErUs
seriously no-one is gonna steal your ogre mesh :P

Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 1:54 am
by jam
Virion wrote:or you can embed the models into the .exe itself?
Wouldn't work all that well, as someone can just use one of the many freeware resource editors out there to grab the models anyways.

Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 8:17 pm
by omar shaaban
ErUs wrote:seriously no-one is gonna steal your ogre mesh :P
yeah :lol:

thank you....

Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 7:36 pm
by testirrdev
..thanks for sending the code vizzy !

== Clean, simple, easy and speedie ==
The best method that i have seen to protect my media in Irrlicht !

:wink: you're right : not every one use ogre with Irrlicht ! 8)

..or

Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 7:45 pm
by testirrdev
..not every one understand an genial idea :-)

thanks again ... :)

Re: thank you....

Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 8:44 pm
by MasterGod
testirrdev wrote:..thanks for sending the code vizzy !

== Clean, simple, easy and speedie ==
The best method that i have seen to protect my media in Irrlicht !

:wink: you're right : not every one use ogre with Irrlicht ! 8)
Can you post the code please?

Re: thank you....

Posted: Sun Jan 06, 2008 6:21 pm
by Acki
MasterGod wrote:
testirrdev wrote:..thanks for sending the code vizzy !

== Clean, simple, easy and speedie ==
The best method that i have seen to protect my media in Irrlicht !

:wink: you're right : not every one use ogre with Irrlicht ! 8)
Can you post the code please?
someone has this code from vizzy and post it !?!?!
I tried to contact vizzy but he doesn't respond on email or pm... :cry:
and as far as he only did 10 posts, I think he is no longer watching the forum(s)... :shock: