Hi guys!

I'm a complete beginner here, so I wanted to know. Can I use the 3D models of the google sketchup warehouse for my game? I don't plan making it commercial or for profit. I just want to release a completely free indie game, no license, money or anything. And of course I'll state that the 3D models are not mine, and that I took them from the Google.Sketchup Warehouse and belong to their respective owners? Can I do this?

IANAL, but it seems "most models" are under the Creative Commons license, in which case it may or may not be acceptable depending on the actual license type, and as a result the license of your own game may be constrained by those terms. Basically Google Warehouse doesn't "own" the models that are on there, the copyright holder is still whoever designed the model. It just has limited rights to display and publish these models overriding the license selected by the copyright holder (since it's.. well.. a warehouse).

Ref. https://productforums.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/sketchup/NzrrLnciv0w

I would personally consult a lawyer or at the very least send an email to the relevant copyright holder to ask if it's OK to do so.

My suggestion would be to use the models during the development of the game and then worry about consulting the lawyer or possibly getting your own models created after you have the game working. If your doing a project alone the art aspect can be a huge mountain to overcome and you won't get in trouble using the art for personal private reasons - but definitely before you release anything in the public make sure you can do that. Lawsuits suck.

I would say you should develop the game until you are told otherwise. Check the notes attached to the models and see if there is anything that would make you think there might be any problems. It would be pretty stupid for someone to start complaining if they had made a model available for download and then introduced restrictions on how you can use it.

You can use ours if you just give us some credits.

It would be pretty stupid for someone to start complaining if they had made a model available for download and then introduced restrictions on how you can use it.

Being available for download doesn't mean free to redistribute.

If it has a licence, the licence will tell you what can be done with it (and the good thing about licences like the Creative Commons ones are that they're well documented, with plenty of info on them, so you don't need to consult lawyers). If it doesn't have a licence, you can't use it unless you get permission from the author.