unity has an open door policy about rights to use, you can even use their tutorials and examples however you want.
irrational's policy back in the day was you can use anything they release as a mod for ff, requiring the purchase of ff. and they don't mind what tools you use, so anything i release will be a mod for ff, even using the unity engine. i feel clear about this.
here's my question. it's more of a morality question than anything else. if i take a pre existing mesh, from modforce, or a mo-cap or any other source, and then redesign it, remap it, and totally recreate the animations, is it then my creation? or would it be better to create without any base, make my own base?
how do you guys feel about this?
I think it's a grey area. However my personal take is that if you are using content of any kind created by another, regardless of how much you alter/modify it under "fair use" you should respect how that media was released and adhere to whatever restrictions the original creator put on it regarding usage.
I think you are trying to use a semantic loophole with the "My Unity project is a Mod for FF" claim, that should someone ever decide to call you on it, they would have a good chance of winning... and with the sheer number of custom meshes/bases/skins created from the community I don't think you really will have too much problem getting a good base to start with that is totally cleared and useable (I think a lot of the creators would jump at the chance to have their stuff involved in something new and original from the ground up). That way everything you are doing is created for this project and you stay clear of the murkiness of permissions and legality.
I agree that this is a bit of a grey area. I'd lean toward making your own base.
i'm not worried about the legality. it was mainly me wanting to release some levels i've made that use the ff characters.