dan B hentschel wrote:
> "scott" <sco### [at] spamcom> wrote:
>> Of course, but I understood the competition was about creating a
>> world class *image* using POV.  If this really was the case, the
>> judges should have judged the images with no knowledge of how it was
>> created.  Of course afterwards they can check that is was actually
>> created in a way that complied with the rules, but *how* it was
>> created shouldn't have affected the judging or the comments if it
>> was truly an "image" competition, and not a "scene" competition.
>>
>> But as I said, maybe I misunderstood (most likely) and there was some
>> element of creating a good "scene" as well as a good final image.  I
>> was under the impression it was to show off to non-POV people how
>> good an image POV can create.
>
> You know, in these types of debates, I think it occasionally helps to
> take examples to ridiculous extremes, in order to make a point.
> Please don't misinterpret this post as an implication that anyone has
> previously made similarly silly statements during the course of this
> thread.
>
> I think we can all agree that it actually does matter how the scene
> was created. Some hypothetical person could actually generate a very
> beautiful, compelling image with photographs, photo editing programs,
> paint programs, other rendering programs, etc. This wonderful image
> could then be mapped onto a plane, lit, and rendered with POV. The
> result may look very nice, but the image is obviously not eligible
> for any recognition in a POV-Ray competition. Although POV-Ray was
> used to render the image, and it may end up being the "best" image
> that is submitted, it does not at all make good use of POV-Ray's
> capabilities.
>
> If you can agree with me on this, then you must be forced to admit
> that some consideration needs to be given to the method of image
> creation, beyond simply "rendered with POV-Ray". Again, remember that
> this is an intentional exaggeration. Now, you can extrapolate this
> inane example through a series of more sane situations that could
> include some textures created outside of POV, some models created
> outside of POV, all the way out to the other extreme in which the
> entire image is SDL generated. I think that we can all agree that any
> image in which everything that you see in the image was generated
> entirely in SDL would likely be eligible for consideration in a
> POV-Ray competition.
>
> Now, somewhere along that spectrum, you need to make a cutoff point
> that says that anything over here is eligible, whereas anything
> beyond this point is unacceptable. We may not all agree as to where
> that cutoff point is, but I think we can all agree that such a point
> absolutely must exist.

Sorry for the late reply but I've been away for a while.

I agree 100% with what you wrote about there being a "point" whereby the
image is acceptable.  That point should be defined in the rules (as best is
possible).

The question is though, should how far away you are from that point
influence how well you image ranks?  If it does, then they should say so.
If it doesn't, the judges should not look at the source at all until after
the judging (only to check it is past that point).

As I understood it, that point was quite far to the pure-SDL end of things
(ie you couldn't just use 10 meshes from modellers, they made it quite clear
it was to show off POV's features).  Also, I understood that the idea was to
generate a world class image, so the judges would be judging the images, not
the code.  Of course they would check the code afterwards to ensure it was't
just a bunch of meshes and texture maps, but this wouldn't influence the
ranking unless an image was disqualified for not being past the point.

I suppose it doesn't really matter anyway, but if the people running the
next competition take even a little bit of feedback from all the discussion
in here when writing the rules, it will have been worthwhile.