This is the problem you're having. You are creating a mod that uses other people's work, running it through an AI program, and then claiming they are "custom". These are your words.
Further, if you did receiver permission from creators, you left out the "Thank You To" portion of your mod pitch and that's pretty rude in of itself.
Now, after shifting through this thread, your argument is, "This is no different than someone re-rendering a version of effin's render and saying it's "yours", well, you're still kind of wrong.
Put it like this:
Aaron Andrews (original) gets a re-render from effin, shipshirt, kingbison, & willrock (you guys were the first ones that popped in there, please excuse the name drop!)
Those Aaron Andrews re-renders now belong to each one of those guys, because it was them who created the render for the character.
I could take one of those Aaron Andrews, throw a filter over it, but I can't create the AceVerse on the back of that render just because I colored it and call it mine because it was altered in a different way by me. Does this make sense?
I would need to reach out to whomever's render I used, ask to use their renders as a part of my *mod*, and give credit where credit is due.
Renders get altered all the time. There's literally a thread to get Alts made and still, if I wanted to put a funny hat on Aaron Andrews, I could. It's in my own save/game what have you, but once I start including that Aaron Andrews in a funny hat made by effin (let's say), I need to reach out to the creator to say,
"Hey, I really like this Andrews you made. I got a hat put on him lol, but would it be Ok to include this render and possibly others to include in this project I'm doing?"
Not at any point in this whole ordeal, did I sit there and *make* the render. Thus, that render is not *mine* despite throwing a filter on it and asking someone to put on a hat.
This is where you fumbled the ball.
Now, you said you made your own original renders? Well, then, yeah, those are yours. Go wild. And in the same token, you would want someone to contact you for use of *your* renders in their project that they may be building.
I was going to sit out on this and probably, should have not put my two cents in. However, I also stand by the guys who are always dropping renders/graphics/and the like to this forum to keep our little niche world alive and moving. Plus, the resourced that go into them is pretty steep if you are creating. I mean, you would know with your original renders from Daz, right?
Mistakes were made, but they can be corrected, even if the commenters are "incredibly stubborn".
The pot calling the kettle black.