Hi Henry,
I sent an email to check on the status of your inquiry and hope to have a response back from our legal department soon.
Caveat: I’m not a lawyer, so the following is my personal, unofficial response to your question.
If we’re talking about downloading a model from 3D Warehouse, and then redistributing it in its original, unmodified form, that form of redistribution is not allowed by the terms.
The Terms allow users to download 3D models from 3D Warehouse, use them in Creations (in your case, turning the models into 2D graphics would likely constitute a derivative work that fits this definition), and/or include those models in the context of a larger product (defined in the terms as a “Combined Work”).
Only if you were interested in requesting permission for use cases that the Terms do not already allow.
That is correct. 3D Warehouse does not currently provide a feature that would enable users to contact other users directly. In some cases, you may be able to track down a means to contact an author, by looking for information that may be included in their model/collection descriptions, or URL fields. We realize this situation is less than ideal and are working to improve things.
This is not a process that we’re prepared to facilitate at this time.