RUTHED

For those of you who are not familiar with the website IMVU, it stands for Instant Messaging Virtual Universe. It’s like a much less complex version of Second Life. It’s much more cartoonish than realistic, the avatars are much simpler and you don’t walk around a whole world, you chat stationary in a room with one or more other avatars. 99.9% of the content is user-created, only a few base items were created by the IMVU company in the beginning to start off users on their own content. Skins are a very popular product there, just as in Second Life. While the templates are much smaller and less detailed, it is still possible to pull off a fairly realistic look such as in Second Life. However, some people decide to do that the easy way, instead of using skills they’ve obtained in Second Life, they steal from Second Life directly.

Currently the user BluAbyss Denimore is a very popular skin designer on IMVU. She also has a store on Second Life called Vive9, which she promotes on IMVU. She not only has a catalog full of skins for sale but also sells a ton of her psd file templates for others to modify and submit as their own. The currency on IMVU is credits, which the value ratio is about 100,000 credits being worth about 10,000$L. I I have never purchased or sold files on IMVU, but when I was linked by a friend to her file sales thread in the forum section of the site, I noticed a particular template of hers being sold that looked extremely familiar. Immediately, I realized that while the entire skin wasn’t stolen, the stomach area and collar bone were taken from the Redgrave brand of skins on Second Life. There was no mistaking it, it was exact(save for the poor quality of IMVU textures). I notified Emilia Redgrave about the situation and she tried to file DMCA but IMVU had some issues that wouldn’t let her because the files weren’t hosted on the site itself.

Stealing textures to begin with is bad enough but also selling the template to other unknowing people so they too can rip off an honest designer? That’s just fucked up.  Unfortunately I cannot link to her file sales thread because she’s currently not selling that particular file anymore, but I did find others who had purchased it and made a comparison image for you to see the similarities for yourself.

”

The left of course is the IMVU skin template and the right is the body of the older Redgrave skins from Second Life. I noticed the similarities immediately because I am a skin designer myself and tend to notice pixel placement. But if you don’t notice it right away, pay attention to the position of the lighter and darker areas. It isn’t exact on some outer areas because parts would have to be erased a bit to fit on the IMVU template but you can see that it is a screen shot taken of Redgrave’s skin, pasted onto the IMVU body template. The stomach as well as the collar bone were stolen from RG, as those are two areas many people on IMVU tend to struggle with on skins. Here’s a better photo of the collar bone, although bear in mind that seams tend to be overlooked on IMVU for whatever reason so there is a huge one over the collar bone to where the head template and body template connect. You can still see though the shape of the collar bone and the neck muscles. Note where the highlighting is on the collar bones on both avatar skins. The shape is only slightly different, because of the shapes of the avatars.

I will never trust a texture thief whether it be on another community or right on Second Life. She’s stolen and claimed numerous times that she made them all herself with no help, did not steal and did not buy other textures. I already know for a FACT that it is a lie, and you have your proof above. She has been called out on it on IMVU before but she tends to go into diva-mode and threaten people to get their accounts disabled..etc. even though she has no real power. She’s just another developer, while well-known, it doesn’t make her a celebrity like she apparently thinks. Personally, I do not trust that the rest of her work is original. It may or may not be, but after seeing that she has no problem stealing from Second Life for IMVU, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if she has stolen from other sources as well, for both SL and IMVU. I would never buy from her nor promote her brand on any blog, whether it be IMVU or Second Life. Thieves do not deserve any kind of positive recognition.