Certified Creator status will bestow additional privileges to content developers (varying a little based on grade), up to and including granting some developers with the rights to publish to the marketplace directly without the normal review process; and a host of other benefits.
Our Certified Creators Program has a few grades of certification, the highest grade being Platinum Grade and the lowest being Gold Grade.
With this grade you will be able to list and update content directly in the marketplace without our assistance.
Gold Grade creators will be able to push content live without review if the item is deemed as a 'personal use item' (such as personal regions, and other content with limited distribution options).
To achieve both these grades, you will need to have submitted a signed copy of our creator agreement back to us, and have already submitted a collection of items to review.
Access to these programs is by invitation. We are looking for creators with a consistent demonstration of the following;
Commitment to producing content that does not interfere with others rights.
A track record of complying with the resource limits we place on items such as clothing
Honorable behavior when interacting with reviewers, customers and other platform users.
To achieve the Gold Grade we need to see at least a few items passing review successfully, for the higher platinum grade, a much larger quantity of original work over a longer period of time is required. Invitations to the platinum grade will be personally reviewed and approved by our senior management.
Generally no, however if you are an established developer in a large digital marketplace who have a library of high quality content and a solid reputation known to us, earned over a long period of time, we will factor that into our decision making and may allow a expedited entry; but generally we prefer to recognise and reward creators who have worked within the platform already.
No - besides having strict criteria on who can participate (and having a established track record), we still will be reviewing items submitted to the marketplace this way. We'll just be doing so after they have been approved by the creator. Our goal is to ensure you know that when you buy something in our marketplace, it works as intended and meets all of our other quality guidelines for paid content.
Depending on the severity of the error (we will particularly frown on malicious actions or carelessness, such as not testing an item before approving; or approving an item knowingly breaking one of our rules) we may withdraw the right to self-approve content, permanently. If you as a customer buy an item that fails our own internal review, there will be a few options we will pursue to protect your rights as a customer; we may do any of the following; • Refund and withdraw the item from the platform, or • Temporarily suspend new sales and give the creator the opportunity to fix it, or • In the case of updates, revert it to a previous approved version.
Yes, besides self-review options - both grades of creators will get a few added perks. • First you'll get access to unique inworld titles • You'll also get the right to use a special partner logo on your websites and promotional imagery that indicates our recognition of your consistent high quality. You can even use it as a badge in other marketplaces if you want. • We will also allowing the marketplace search to filter by certification grade in a future update.
If you're an approved creator who can self-review, but are on the edge whether something is going to be okay or not, never fear - the existing review process is still available. Just drop it in the review queue as normal, and we'll evaluate it - if you get a rejection, we won't count that against you or your certification status.
If you would like further information on the program, please contact us on our or email us directly at .
When you upload a piece of content to our servers, we run a variety of processes on it before building the final export packages. We build one package per platform (e.g. one for WebGL, one for standalone, one for each mobile OS, one for each console.) This processing does take some time to perform depending on the content type. Regions typically take around 15 minutes to process depending on their size (a large multi-gigabyte region can take up to an hour), whereas virtual goods (such as , or ) less than 5mb will process usually within 20 seconds.
The content will go through a series of steps to be uploaded to the Sinespace client:
1. After you have clicked on the Automatic Submission button on the virtual good component, your item will be being uploading to our servers. You will receive a notification stating this on your registered email address. You can also check on curator.sine.space to see the status of the upload. At this stage, the status of your item will read 'Processing'.
2. Once the item has processed, you will receive another email stating that your item is now on staging. This will be reflected on as well, with your item having the 'Staging' status. You will need to log into Curator to see the progress of your item. Now you can preview the item and check it is working correctly on our preview servers. You can do this by starting the Sinespace client, and tick the 'Preview Server' box and log in as usual.
3. If you are happy with your content and it is working/showing correctly, you can then send the item to be reviewed by our review team. You can do this on curator by clicking on the 'Send to Review' button.
4. Our team will review your content and decide whether or not to accept it and push it to our live servers or reject the item. If the item is rejected, the team will add a note to it on curator to say why it has been rejected. If you don't receive a note, please send us a and we will look into the issue with the content. You will need to fix the issue and then re-upload the item with the same item ID. You can see how to use the same ID here.
5. If your item is accepted, we will push it to the live servers. The region or virtual goods will then be available to all users in the 'Explore' tab (for regions) or in the Shop for virtual goods. The content will not show up in the Shop if you have set it as 'Not for Sale'; it will only show in your inventory.
When you upload content for processing it, we will process it in the order it is received, with a handful of exceptions. Virtual Goods less than 10mb in size will always process on a separate priority queue regardless of account status (this is to ensure you can quickly preview content that does not take long to process).
Other content will process on the larger region queue. We have a separate priority region queue for customers subscribing to a large region plan. Generally speaking we do aim for content to process quickly; during periods of large user growth, we may need to add additional processing servers
The texture importer settings are respected by Space's content processor when exporting content
Depending on the platform your textures are likely to be re-compressed into a native format for that platform, e.g. DXT1/5 on Standalone, JPEG for WebGL, etc. you can configure these settings prior to upload in the 'Importer'. We recommend against picking a specific format, and instead using the 'Automatic True Colour / Automatic Compressed / Automatic Crunched / Automatic 16-bit' master options; as specific formats may be substituted on a platform by platform basis.
We will strip mesh data down into a compact binary format. The specific format varies platform to platform (such as using 16-bit precision on mobile, and 32bit on desktop). Included animations will be often converted into rotational space, and re-sequenced onto a series of timelines. We may also strip data which is not being used by your materials (e.g. Vertex Colours or UV3/4 if your shaders do not require them.)
From time to time, we make make changes to our packaging formats, either to introduce new compression schemes or allow for new features to be supported. Often this will break compatibility with previous releases; so we have support for content reprocessing. When your content is published, we keep a copy of the original files uploaded to the processing server and can use these to automatically reprocess content into the newer formats. Generally this should not require any intervention on your part.
The currently supported version of Unity3D is 5.3; any previous version from the 5.0 line should work, however is officially unsupported. Any version from 5.3 onwards will be supported, except where specifically noted.
We will be commencing the 5.4 update shortly; we often delay the latest release update for 2-3 months to allow Unity to release bugfixes to the editor. Often we find new release versions of Unity contain many crash and loss-of-work inducing bugs; along with bugs that users may experience. If you are using another version of Unity in another project, you should note that it is possible to install multiple versions of Unity side by side.
The following resources may be useful for those who want to learn Unity itself while learning how to create using the Space platform.
Most Unity features are supported. Generally speaking, what you see is what you get when utilising the editor pack. Some upload modes may impose restrictions on specific Unity features, but generally should all operate as desired and intended.
The exception to this is custom scripting behaviours; we do not allow these to be distributed with scenes or content (or more specifically, simply do not support this feature) as Unity's scripting environment is dangerous for end users (allowing things such as File System access). Content utilising these will upload, however the behaviours will be removed from Game Objects by the processor prior to export.
Instead, we support a interpreted JavaScript runtime on our platforms (this is a JIT interpreter on Standalone and some mobile platforms.). For more information, see Scripting.
These extensions to Unity have been officially supported by us, and can be used when creating your content; most of these extensions can be found in the Unity Asset Store. Please note - some parts of these extensions may be explicitly excluded. If you wish to use a extension that is not in this list, please contact us via the Support Portal, with 'Regarding' set to 'Creator Program'. Due to code size limitations (namely limiting download sizes for end users of player files, particularly WebGL), not every extension can be supported.
USequencer cutscene and dialogue editor
Visualiser Studio
Policy: If we depreciate an extension, content will no longer be allowed to be submitted using this extension. Existing content will continue to work as long as it is possible to support. This should be infrequent, but may happen due to engine incompatibility with upgrades. Sometimes, we may choose to replace one supported extension with another (we will likely depreciate USequencer once the Unity built-in Director Sequencer is released in 2017, we will however keep content developed with USequencer working until the vast majority of users have transitioned however.)
When reviewing content for approval in the Space Platform ecosystem; we follow these principles and guidelines. Please not these are not exhaustive lists, and we follow the spirit of these rules, not letter when reviewing your content. Deliberate attempts to obfuscate or avoid these rules may result in a ban in future content uploads.
Email is verified
Curator identity information is valid
Account is in good standing
Maturity Guidelines, areas in red should not be seen except on mature content, areas in yellow should be rarely seen (less than 25% exposed in total)
Content must work.
Content is substantially original work, and not simply a resale of assets purchased from a 3D marketplace (unless specifically authorised by the creator).
Content must not break the experience for other users.
Content is not obscene, libellous or defamatory.
Additional things we do not allow, but should not need to point out:
No content that promotes illegal activities.
Content likely to unreasonably disturb or offend the general public
No content that promotes fraud or harmful activities, including but not limited to content that may be harmful to others, their reputations, disseminating fraudulent goods, schemes or services (e.g. Ponzi and Pyramid schemes).
No avatars depicting human characters under the age of 18, without a special exemption - please contact us, they will typically be granted on medical, therapeutic or training grounds.
Content does not impose unreasonable degradation of client frame-rate.
An avatar wearing multiple items should not go above 12,000 polygons on the medium LOD. High LOD may target up to 120K.
Ideally an avatar should be closer to 8,000 polygons (or 80,000 in High-LOD). This should be split based on the proportion of body covered. (e.g. a Jacket which covers 50% of the mesh should be between 4,000 and 6,000 polygons. Shoes which cover 15% should be 1,200.)
Content does not place a undue strain on viewers or servers
Content does not disrupt the core user interface in such a way that the average user cannot cancel or return
Private regions which are marked not-for-sale are subject to minimal screening (account and general content tests only)
Regions marked for-sale (available to purchase in the shop) are subject to complexity limits similar to non-region content. Typically we'd like to see 30fps on a mid-spec desktop viewer as a minimum with one avatar in the region. Use of Occlusion Culling, and LOD Groups can significantly improve performance of a region.
Exceptions will be made for particularly impressive content.
If your content is well-made, but comes in slightly heavier than our typical allowances, we will approve the content.
For example: if you have used normal maps or DX11 Tessellation, and still need a few more polygons - and we can recognise that the content simply requires this; we will approve the exception.
We will examine the uploaded content as-supplied to our processing server
Our tests may cover multiple platforms (typically Standalone, WebGL and one mobile target), we expect to see graceful fallbacks in content available for general use.
Content will be benchmarked using our special benchmark setup (this typically involves loading 100 copies of the content into a region, and measuring performance impact)
If your content was rejected and you feel this review was unfair, please open a support ticket with the 'Regarding' as 'Creator Program', and include your curator account name, and the item ID for the affected item.
The Space Platform is a creative platform - we wish to encourage all creators to upload original innovative content to our platform. When uploading content to our platform however, we request that you do not infringe on other peoples works. This includes incorporating materials such as trademarks from popular brands or other third parties without their explicit consent.
The Space Platform is a curated service, we aim to personally review most content uploaded onto the service. While this does not guarantee we can prohibit all infringing content (particularly that which we do not recognise), we do aim to limit the need for duplicate complaints over the same content.
We require a point of contact for all content uploaded to the service, and a contract for all content uploaded for sale. (This does allow us to trace who is responsible for all content uploaded onto the platform)
We operate with a delay between item purchases and cashouts to developers - this period allows us to retain funds for infringed content, and limit profiting from any infringing content.
If you believe someone has uploaded your IP (or IP for someone you formally represent), you may submit a take-down request to us. While we will honour DMCA takedown requests, please note we are a UK company, and the appropriate form to use is a EU "Article 14" Notice and Take Down as specified under the Electronic Commerce Directive.
For fastest processing, please raise a support ticket at [] with the Regarding field as 'IP & Copyright Infringement'.
For physical notices of infringement, please mail to
or email: [email protected]
Please include:
Where you saw the content (the name or direct URL of a region, our shop front, or an avatar name.)
A screenshot of the infringing content, or the content it is designed to look like.
The time, date and timezone of when you saw the infringing content.
Any details about the content (such as name or creator)
And one (or both) of:
The details of the copyright or trademark registration regarding this content. If it is not formally registered, please provide evidence that you are the true copyright holder (e.g. in the case of a 3D model, we will accept screenshots of the source files or a link to a promotional website registered prior the upload date with your name attached).
A signed legal affirmation that you are, or represent the true owner of the content.
The more information you can provide about a piece of infringing content, the faster we can handle removing it. We have a strong respect for the intellectual property of creators, and will always do our best to process such infringements promptly.
If there is a gray area over a piece of content, and we are not able to sufficiently or reasonably identify the infringement from the materials supplied - but you have provided some evidence or an affirmation stating ownership, we will ask the uploader to respond within 3 business days before making a judgement and possibly removing the content. If they fail to respond in this time, or respond inadequately, we will remove the content.
For that reason, please include as much documentation of the infringement as possible, and evidence of your ownership to limit our need to do this; acceptable evidence could include:
Copyright registration information
Links to where the item was originally sold, and some proof you own these listings.
Screenshot of source files with destructed material (e.g. Photoshop document with layers window visible) that are not already public.
If you believe your content was unjustly removed, you will need to state your case, and provide as much documentation and evidence that we have erred in removing your content; as reinstating your content may impose legal liability on us, we will require proof well beyond reasonable doubt that you authored this content, and that the original complaint was fraudulent or incorrect. In cases where there are multiple copyright owners, we will require assurances from all owning parties prior to reinstatement.
If you are found to have uploaded unauthorised content, your right to sell in the space marketplace may be suspended or banned. Furthermore, you may be liable for any legal costs imposed on Sine Wave Entertainment dealing with your infringement. See the Space Content Agreement for further information, but in short; do not upload unauthorised content.
On what grounds you believe this to be infringing content ("I developed this and did not provide authorisation")
RE: IP ENFORCEMENT
SINE WAVE ENTERTAINMENT LTD.
22A St. James's Square London,
SW1Y 4JH, United Kingdom
Phone: +44 (0) 207 078 7449Mature content is dictated by skin coverage and general societal standards.
All mature content must be tagged using the Content Rating system.
Content should not feature trademarks, copyrights, celebrities, trade dress and other IP which it is not authorised to include.
Racist, sexist or derogatory content
Drug references
Harmful content (Viruses, content designed to trigger epilepsy, etc.)
Any content likely to cause issues with our upstream hosting providers and/or authorities.
Clothing content should use the minimum materials possible. While multiple materials is sometimes required for fancy effects, in most cases it is not; and you can bake or atlas your textures. (This often comes from content built in Marvelous Designer and uploaded directly without UV mapping and retexturing but using multiple materials.)
Content filesize is reasonable for the scale and complexity of the content.
Clothing content should typically be around 1-2mb after compression.
While the Sinespace platform is a closed platform, it is simply not possible to guarantee any form of copy protection. With that said, we do implement features which make "content ripping" harder. While technical measures cannot be guaranteed - we do attempt to also limit the applicability and usefulness of ripped content through social and legal means, including our content review process.
Uploading content to the Sinespace platform is a destructive process; our compression systems actively strip and reformat content into specialised formats. Further; many of these formats involve lossy compression (e.g. DXT texture compression) of some form of another.
For example: when you upload a FBX file containing an animation, our tools will in the process of packaging strip out the skeletal data, remove the associated meshes, and reformat the animation timeline into a custom format - the original FBX is not delivered to the end users client (although it will be stored on our processing servers in case of future reprocessing in the event of format changes). Usually we will also strip redundant (not used) information from the mesh, such as unused vertex colours or higher UV channels (UV3/4); if it can be determined at build time that this information is redundant.
It should be noted that while this provides a roadblock to extracting content, a dedicated reverse engineer will be able to restore a semblance of the original files; either by decoding the formats we utilise - or extracting from the GPU using existing tools designed for graphics debugging (specifically not mentioning any by name here). As with the music and movie industries - there is no technological 'silver bullet'.
While technological methods are doomed to long term failure - social and legal means are not.
The Sinespace platform is a closed environment, this means all content needs to be routed through our systems and processes - for the majority of users, this will also include content review, where our teams inspect all content prior to upload. One of the goals of content review is to prevent and prohibit ripped content from being sold or distributed in the Sinespace platform. Penalties for knowingly uploading infringing content include permanent removal from the service, through to legal enforcement (don't do it.). See for more information.
A good comparison example for how Sinespace operates is to compare the App Store and Google Play marketplaces - by placing a more stringent review, greater identification requirements and a delay on cashouts, the Apple store is considerably better at disincentivising infringements. Both platforms employ similar levels of DRM.
The Sinespace backend design means every user copy of a item is shared from a single master copy of the item. If that master item is removed from the service - all copies will vanish with it. If an item is placed onto the service despite review processes, it is an option for the original owner to have every copy of the item removed or replaced in a single instance.
Additionally, all content sales occur within the platform itself where they can be monitored and all details recorded. We also offer a central marketplace managed and operated by us, where we aim to guarantee that all the content is legitimate, and can provide a curated high quality marketplace. By encouraging users to utilize the Sinespace marketplace we can maintain user trust that they are buying authentic goods from the authorized sellers - and ensure they understand the original creators are being paid for their work.
While technical means can be used to slow or delay a infringement, we prefer to rely on social and legal methods; our social & legal methods include:
All uploaded content is subject to a manual review by our art inspection team.
All content uploaded onto our live servers for sale requires a enforceable contract between Sine Wave Entertainment, and the uploading user.
Content sales are subject to a mandatory waiting period between sale and cash-out period; this allows us to hold revenues from infringed content.
The Sinespace Platform is a creative platform - we wish to encourage all creators to upload original innovative content to our platform. When uploading content to our platform however, we request that you do not infringe on other peoples works. This includes incorporating materials such as trademarks from popular brands or other third parties without their explicit consent.
The Sinespace Platform is a curated service, we aim to personally review most content uploaded onto the service. While this does not guarantee we can prohibit all infringing content (particularly that which we do not recognize), we do aim to limit the need for duplicate complaints over the same content.
We require a point of contact for all content uploaded to the service, and a contract for all content uploaded for sale. (This does allow us to trace who is responsible for all content uploaded onto the platform)
We operate with a delay between item purchases and cash-outs to developers - this period allows us to retain funds for infringed content, and limit profiting from any infringing content.
If you believe someone has uploaded your IP (or IP for someone you formally represent), you may submit a take-down request to us. While we will honour DMCA takedown requests, please note we are a UK company, and the appropriate form to use is a EU "Article 14" Notice and Take Down as specified under the Electronic Commerce Directive.
For fastest processing, please raise a with the Regarding field as 'IP & Copyright Infringement'.
For physical notices of infringement, please mail to
or email: [email protected]
Please include:
Where you saw the content (the name or direct URL of a region, our shop front, or an avatar name.)
A screenshot of the infringing content, or the content it is designed to look like.
The time, date and timezone of when you saw the infringing content.
Any details about the content (such as name or creator)
And one (or both) of:
The details of the copyright or trademark registration regarding this content. If it is not formally registered, please provide evidence that you are the true copyright holder (e.g. in the case of a 3D model, we will accept screenshots of the source files or a link to a promotional website registered prior the upload date with your name attached).
A signed legal affirmation that you are, or represent the true owner of the content.
The more information you can provide about a piece of infringing content, the faster we can handle removing it. We have a strong respect for the intellectual property of creators, and will always do our best to process such infringements promptly.
If there is a gray area over a piece of content, and we are not able to sufficiently or reasonably identify the infringement from the materials supplied - but you have provided some evidence or an affirmation stating ownership, we will ask the uploader to respond within 3 business days before making a judgement and possibly removing the content. If they fail to respond in this time, or respond inadequately, we will remove the content.
For that reason, please include as much documentation of the infringement as possible, and evidence of your ownership to limit our need to do this; acceptable evidence could include:
Copyright registration information
Links to where the item was originally sold, and some proof you own these listings.
Screenshot of source files with destructed material (e.g. Photoshop document with layers window visible) that are not already public.
If you believe your content was unjustly removed, you will need to state your case, and provide as much documentation and evidence that we have erred in removing your content; as reinstating your content may impose legal liability on us, we will require proof well beyond reasonable doubt that you authored this content, and that the original complaint was fraudulent or incorrect. In cases where there are multiple copyright owners, we will require assurances from all owning parties prior to reinstatement.
If you are found to have uploaded unauthorized content, your right to sell in the Sinespace marketplace may be suspended or banned. Furthermore, you may be liable for any legal costs imposed on Sine Wave Entertainment dealing with your infringement. See the Sinespace Content Agreement for further information, but in short; do not upload unauthorized content.
On what grounds you believe this to be infringing content ("I developed this and did not provide authorization")
RE: IP ENFORCEMENT
SINE WAVE ENTERTAINMENT LTD.
22A St. James's Square London,
SW1Y 4JH, United Kingdom
Phone: +44 (0) 207 078 7449
