rben wrote:
> 6) Upon discussing this contest with a friend of mine, he pointed out
> what might be part of the problem.  Since you have explicitely stated
> that artists will be given more credit for self-made models than ones
> borrowed from someone else or created using 3rd party tools, you may
> have narrowed the pool of participants to POV-Ray artists who are
> very good at creating models and in creating impressive images using
> those models.  You have limited the ability for those artists who are
> primarily good at creating impressive images using models that others
> have created.  Personally, I like this, since I make most if not all
> of my own models for each image, but it does narrow the field
> considerably.

If you really want the competition to be about scenes made entirely in POV
with no 3rd party modellers or models, then you are not going to get
amazingly high quality images that are comparable to what people see around
them (films, magazines, photos etc) in such a short time.  POV is not the
best tool for creating complex 3D models, and if you tell people they will
get more credit for trying to use it to do something it wasn't really
designed for, they are going to spend a lot of time doing that rather than
showing off the *real* features that POV is *really* good at.

Had they made it clear that it was perfectly acceptable to use a 3rd party
modeller for creating meshes then I'm sure the quality of entries would have
been far higher.

FWIW I started out planning to enter, but due to a holiday and several trips
with work, I just didn't have the time.  What I did start with was creating
models in POV, I never even touched properly on the lighting or textures, I
was "leaving that for later".  IMHO this is totally wrong, the contest
should be all about the lighting, textures, materials etc, not about seeing
who can get POV to create the most realistic 3D model.  I won't be carrying
on with my entry, I don't want to be wasting my time on one single image for
a prize that might never actually be given away.