Well, I'm glad the results are up, but I do believe that this may have
been the most unrewarding experience in my life. Not only did I get scores
I consider outright insulting, but I also garnered an entire two comments.
My interpretation of this feedback and lack thereof is that the IRTC
audience considers my work utter crap.

Since I've already put in a couple weeks of every day work on my current
entry I will probably end up entering it despite this, but I do think it
will be my last entry into the contest. I'll keep viewing the entries of
course; it's a great deal of interesting work and sometimes I get useful
knowledge from it. But... frankly, I give up any hope of /entering/ the 
contest being useful to me.

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Tina <you### [at] foadorg> wrote:

> Well, I'm glad the results are up, but I do believe that this may have
> been the most unrewarding experience in my life. Not only did I get scores
> I consider outright insulting, but I also garnered an entire two comments.
> My interpretation of this feedback and lack thereof is that the IRTC
> audience considers my work utter crap.

> Since I've already put in a couple weeks of every day work on my current
> entry I will probably end up entering it despite this, but I do think it
> will be my last entry into the contest. I'll keep viewing the entries of
> course; it's a great deal of interesting work and sometimes I get useful
> knowledge from it. But... frankly, I give up any hope of /entering/ the 
> contest being useful to me. 

Don't be too hard on the IRTC or yourself.  The competition is quite fierce,
after all.  As a first entry, you didn't do too badly, really.  A couple of
things to look at:

You actually downplayed the work you did, saying that some things were
simple and easy.  Anyone reading that is going to think "Well, if *she*
didn't think it was difficult, why should I?"  That'll lower your scores a
bit.

Artistically, the piece was a little random.  The message you were trying to
evoke (which is a good one) isn't really clear from the image.  It also
suffered from what I call "easy texture syndrome".  Good textures can make
or break a rendering.  I probably spend as much, if not more time on the
textures as I do on the actual building of objects.  Simplicity of texture
leads to a cartoonish, or crayonlike appearance, which when well done, can
be fabulous, but often results in being slightly garish.  Muted or blended
colors are generally better, rather than 'pure' shades, and good use of
surface normals can really enhance.

I hope you don't take the above the wrong way, since it's meant to be
helpful.  Right now in p.b.i, lots of people have been posting their WIP
IRTC renders.  One thing you might wish to try is to post yours, since
you've been working on it.  You can then get feedback from the whole POV
community, and therefore make your picture better.  Getting early feedback
can really help improve a picture before it's time for that all-important
voting.

I hope this helps.

Geoff

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On 27 Mar 2001 07:36:54 -0500 Tina wrote:

>My interpretation of this feedback and lack thereof is that the IRTC
>audience considers my work utter crap.

  Sometimes ya just gotta make art for art's sake, not for judgement by
others.

  I'd rather have received your two lone comments rather than the
embarrassing ones that hhcopy.jpg received for his Photoshop collage. That
must be some sort of joke (I hope).

-- 
Alan
ako### [at] povrayorg
a k o n g <at> p o v r a y <dot> o r g

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Tina wrote:
> 
> Well, I'm glad the results are up, but I do believe that this may have
> been the most unrewarding experience in my life. Not only did I get scores
> I consider outright insulting, but I also garnered an entire two comments.
> My interpretation of this feedback and lack thereof is that the IRTC
> audience considers my work utter crap.

I would not interpret it in such a strict way.  When voting I try to
comment on most of the pictures and i know a lot of others who try the
same.  But NTL writing constructive comments can take quite a lot of time
when there are over 100 pictures to comment.  

What's most difficult for comments are often things like:

- What did the creator try to achieve (both in artistic and technical
matter)
- What are the problem he/she struggled with while creating the picture
- Why was a certain object/texture/... done this way, what is the artistic
message
- How were certain things done

You might also want to read:
http://www.irtc.org/stills/faq.html#q5.1 and following points

> 
> Since I've already put in a couple weeks of every day work on my current
> entry I will probably end up entering it despite this, but I do think it
> will be my last entry into the contest. I'll keep viewing the entries of
> course; it's a great deal of interesting work and sometimes I get useful
> knowledge from it. But... frankly, I give up any hope of /entering/ the
> contest being useful to me.

I remember that a lot of my beginning work with povray looked quite bad
and would probably have gained less points in the IRTC than yours.  At
that time i did not have the opportunity to take part in any kind of
contest and could rarely talk about raytracing with others.  Anyway things
developed and although i don't think i'm an overall expert, i think i have
gained quite some abilities in this matter over the times.  

Since you have the opportunity to enter your pictures in the competition,
to ask questions and see others' works in the povray newsgroups for
inspiration, i would really take this rather as a chance.

Christoph

-- 
Christoph Hormann <chr### [at] gmxde>
IsoWood include, radiosity tutorial, TransSkin and other 
things on: http://www.schunter.etc.tu-bs.de/~chris/

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On Tue, 27 Mar 2001 05:17:13 -0800, Alan Kong wrote:
>On 27 Mar 2001 07:36:54 -0500 Tina wrote:
>
>>My interpretation of this feedback and lack thereof is that the IRTC
>>audience considers my work utter crap.
>
>  Sometimes ya just gotta make art for art's sake, not for judgement by
>others.
>
>  I'd rather have received your two lone comments rather than the
>embarrassing ones that hhcopy.jpg received for his Photoshop collage. That
>must be some sort of joke (I hope).

What amazed me is that someone out there actually gave it something besides
the lowest possible scores.

-- 
Ron Parker   http://www2.fwi.com/~parkerr/traces.html
My opinions.  Mine.  Not anyone else's.

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"Tina" <you### [at] foadorg> wrote in message news:3ac08966@news.povray.org...

<SNIP>

I'm sorry you felt insulted by your scores - and looking at them, it may be
that some cross contamination took place on your concept score (i.e. the
voter's feelings about the technical and artistic merits of your pic
affected their voting on the concept score). It would have got at least a 10
from me, which is the minimum I give to any pic that's on-topic.

However, the scores on artistic and technical seem fair enough I'm afraid.

With regard to the comments, for myself, I score first and then comment on
pics in scoring order. I comment as many as I can before the deadline.

If you want to ensure that you receive comments on your work, post it here
prior to the comp., or solicit here for comments after the comp. is over.

Here are mine:

Apart from the sun, the textures are very grainy (what is the grail
reflecting? whatever it is, it doesn't look very nice).

IMHO, the pic seems cluttered and unfocused - it might be better if you
dropped the other objects apart from the grail, and dropped the egg as well.

The planet at the right is clipped too much by the edge of the picture.

Is there any AA on this? It seems very jaggy, particularily the edge of the
sun.

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Tina <you### [at] foadorg> wrote in message news:3ac08966@news.povray.org...

> Since I've already put in a couple weeks of every day work on my current
> entry I will probably end up entering it despite this, but I do think it
> will be my last entry into the contest. I'll keep viewing the entries of
> course; it's a great deal of interesting work and sometimes I get useful
> knowledge from it. But... frankly, I give up any hope of /entering/ the
> contest being useful to me.
>

Don't get discouraged.

I suggest you post it to the images group here. The comments I
get on the images I post are almost always very helpful.

Gail
*************************************************************************
* gsh### [at] monotixcoza                *   Step into the abyss,           *
* http://www.rucus.ru.ac.za/~gail/   *   and let go.        Babylon 5   *
*************************************************************************
* The difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes a little longer *
*************************************************************************

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On Tue, 27 Mar 2001 14:57:42 +0100, Tom Melly wrote:
>Here are mine:
>
>Apart from the sun, the textures are very grainy (what is the grail
>reflecting? whatever it is, it doesn't look very nice).
>
>IMHO, the pic seems cluttered and unfocused - it might be better if you
>dropped the other objects apart from the grail, and dropped the egg as well.
>
>The planet at the right is clipped too much by the edge of the picture.
>
>Is there any AA on this? It seems very jaggy, particularily the edge of the
>sun.

It's hard to use AA with a granite starfield and get anything resembling
stars.  

Please note that I wasn't eligible to vote in this round, so I didn't 
rate this image against the others.  If I had, I think I'd rate the 
concept a little higher than average, the technical merit a little below
average, and the artistic merit right about average (since I fail to see
what "artistic merit" is if it isn't a combination of concept and technical 
merit...  but that's another discussion.)

Tina, please don't take these comments too hard.  We were all beginners
once.  The only time I've ever entered the IRTC I got dinged pretty 
heavily on technical issues, too, so I don't pretend to be an expert.
Nevertheless, if you'd like more information on any of the comments below,
or if you'd like some help understanding or fixing something from the list
below, don't hesitate to ask.  There are a lot of very generous and talented 
people who frequent this server, and I'm sure most of them would love to
help make your next IRTC entry the best it can be.

Technical comments:

- The camera angle is too wide.  Sun and Earth are both stretched in an 
  unattractive way due to the wide perspective. 

- Some of the larger stars look more like water spots.  I realize this is a
  side-effect of the granite texture.  Perhaps the effect could have been
  lessened by reducing the brightness of the larger stars to make them stand
  out less.

- The CSG on the three religious symbols is a little spotty.  There's a 
  coincident surface problem with the cross, the points of the Muslim star 
  don't line up right, and the Star of David has different-sized points and
  the tips of the points aren't joined cleanly.

- The texture on Earth is a little simplistic.  No clouds, the landmasses
  are uniformly bright green... an image map, even a small one, would have 
  helped here.

- I like the grail itself.  It appears to be well-modeled, and the texture
  is evocative of turned metal.  The idea that the real grail would have 
  been turned (or even metal!) might be a little anachronistic, but I like 
  the effect anyway.

- The lighting is good.  It definitely adds something to the metallic
  texture.

Conceptual comments:

- I'm not sure what that magenta stuff is.

-- 
Ron Parker   http://www2.fwi.com/~parkerr/traces.html
My opinions.  Mine.  Not anyone else's.

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Geoff Wedig <wed### [at] darwinepbicwruedu> wrote:
>after all.  As a first entry, you didn't do too badly, really.  A couple of

Heh. This wasn't my first entry, although you have to go back to the
Horror round to find the prior one.

>You actually downplayed the work you did, saying that some things were
>simple and easy.  Anyone reading that is going to think "Well, if *she*
>didn't think it was difficult, why should I?"  That'll lower your scores a
>bit.

The only score this /should/ lower is technical, and I should be clearer
that I wasn't outright insulted by my technical score, although it was a
bit lower than I thought it might be. It was the conceptual and artistic
scores I had a problem with. I don't ever expect to get particularly high
technical scores simply because I know my images are not technically
intricate, and they'll likely never be. And I don't mind if I end up
simply average on the other scores, since they're both very subjective,
and I enter more for the feedback then anything else.

The rest of your comments are appreciated, although I do have to say that
I don't understand what about my textures you felt were poor. The symbols'
textures are simple because such things generally are, and of course,
they're marred slightly by being behind another texture. I suppose I could
have made the objects ornate but I didn't -want- ornate objects.  As
beautiful as the very intricate Grail cup entry was, I suspect that if 
the Grail exists it will turn out to be quite plain. How would you have
done it differently, if you don't mind my asking?

As to posting my stuff, if I can ever find a Windows-based newsreader I
like, that will probably be my alternative to IRTC entries, since all I
care about is the feedback. Unfortunately it's a little tricky to handle
the binaries groups with a text-based newsreader. :) I'm currently
evaluating Forte Agent, I may just buy that and use it.

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"Tom Melly" <tom### [at] tomandlucouk> wrote:
>I'm sorry you felt insulted by your scores - and looking at them, it may be
>that some cross contamination took place on your concept score (i.e. the
>voter's feelings about the technical and artistic merits of your pic
>affected their voting on the concept score). It would have got at least a 10
>from me, which is the minimum I give to any pic that's on-topic.

A 10 would have made me a lot happier.  And you're likely right about the
cross-contamination, but I think that's why I' m so irritated.

>However, the scores on artistic and technical seem fair enough I'm afraid.

Well, as I said elsewhere, I'm not really bitching about the technical,
since it's only about a point lower than I'd expected. But artistic 7? 
That bothers me. It bothers me more in the face of what scores above mine
(a couple naked stone tits is prettier than my image? greaaat...)

>Apart from the sun, the textures are very grainy (what is the grail
>reflecting? whatever it is, it doesn't look very nice).

Mostly the light sources (there are two, of which one is the visible
sun). Some of what may look like reflection is probably the piece of the
egg that is in front of the Grail.

I have been thinking about the texture of the egg and possibly something
smoother would have been better. I wanted it to be possible to see through
the egg but still have the egg have 'substance'. And it can't be outright
cracked open; the birth hasn't happened yet. 

>IMHO, the pic seems cluttered and unfocused - it might be better if you
>dropped the other objects apart from the grail, and dropped the egg as well.

Well, I originally was thinking of doing it another way, but there would
have been just as many objects in that version. The other objects are
meant to frame the central image. I did do a render without them and the
scene looked empty and barren. Possibly there's a middle ground here that
I could try for, but I'm not sure what. Just the stars in the back was
definitely not enough, IMO.

>The planet at the right is clipped too much by the edge of the picture.

Hmm, really? I thought having it entirely visible made the scene layout
seem artificial (which, er, it is, but...)

>Is there any AA on this? It seems very jaggy, particularily the edge of the
>sun.

You know, I honestly don't remember, although... I /think/ 0.3.

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