> > If I enter my image and get a 35th position and
> > someone sends one image with ladybugs and
> > stairs and get the 16th position, my conclusion
> > is that something is going wrong for me.
>
> Well, one third of the votes is between 10 and 12... and this includes
your
> image and the ladybugs one. It's a very narrow range after all. I'd say
that
> the voters just expressed the feeling that all these images were not very
> distinguishable from a quality point of view.

Thank you very much for your explanation, now it's clear.

> Actually there was never any doubt for me that the winning image was the
> best one. It's a great image, possibly one of the best I've seen on the
> IRTC, and well above the competition. And yes, it's completely off-topic
and
> (possibly) done last year so that's 2 violations and on these grounds
alone
> it shouldn't have been allowed to run.

I do totally agree with you.

> Still, if I had voted in this round,
> I probably would have voted it best picture since there's no
"on-topicness"
> note (the concept for this image is very good too so there's no reason to
> vote it down there).



> The IRTC is an open competition. This is what makes it interesting: not
only
> anyone can run but the voting is quite fair IMHO (little bias, little
fraud,
> voters are by people who care). It's simpler to administrate too, I guess.
> But of course, this also allows situations like this one (off-topic image
> winning) or even a situation like the Architecture round, where the winner
> image was a highly professional-looking image, but also off-topic due to
its
> lack of content.

That's what I was talking about when I said dangerous movement.
The latest tendences seem to point to good images, but that have nothing to
do
with the topic or in the last case even with the rules.
Not so long ago, the IRTC was a different thing.
Now it seems like " The topic is '#####' or whatever you want"
What kind of contest is one in which their latest winning images are
completely off-topic?
Understand me, I also love the IRTC and that's why I'm writting
right now. The topic is the basement of a contest like the IRTC,
and I love to see the different interpretations of the topic in a
hundred (more or less) brains-hearts-with-computer around the world.
Even if we take it with a little of humor we can say that now your
image has to be off-topic to win.
But it's not funny at all. Not for me at least.

>This also leads to an awful lot of bad entries, which not
> only makes viewing and voting somehow tedious but also makes the IRTC a
hard
> to take seriously as far as 3D competition go (hence no sponsors, for
> instance).

Yes, but many of us, me 1st, have entered in the IRTC with images
that have ended in the bottom of the ranking. Usually we all have
worked hard to enter better images in the next round. There are a lot
of examples.
Talking about the lack of prizes, it's always a disadvantage for a contest
not offer any prize apart from "being the winner".
I have never win the IRTC, but I have my prize everyday when pressing
render.

> The alternative I can see is to have a prior selection of the entries,
with
> a panel entitled to accept and reject images on the ground of content.
This
> would certainly lead to better, always on-topic images and more
> consideration outside the IRTC community. But it would add a lot of
overhead
> on the admins (maintaining the panel, writing rejection emails...). There
> would be some some bitching from the authors of rejected pictures,
> accusations of partiality etc. And, of course, it would be less friendly
in
> general.

I don't know if that's the solution, perhaps we should look in the other
way;
"what has changed?"

Regards

Txemi Jendrix
http://www.txemijendrix.com

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gonzo wrote:
>Heh heh, I had the same idea. Would have been funny had there been 7-8 of
>those! (And according to my Webster's, the animal is a Llama. A Lama is a
>Tibetan monk. Warping & stretching a Lama could get a distinctly different
>reaction...)
>
>RG - This whole thing makes me wonder if the reason surrealism was declared
>offically dead in 1941 was because by then the definition had been
>stretched so thin in every direction that no one could even identify the
>body ;-0


I would have loved to see someone do the Dali Llama, if only to use
it as a desktop and hear the groans when people "got" it!

As for voting and the winner this round, I judge off-topic images
very low on concept because I consider the topic part of the concept.
And I would have taken some off the technical score because of the
brief text file and lack of source code (I don't consider visiting web
sites a part of the IRTC judging process). It's a fine image, but not
one I would have picked for this round. I guess one vote does make
a difference...

I have to say I'm looking forward the the "Decay" round; should be a
lot of interesting entries there. Also, I hope Txemi decides to try the
IRTC again; his work has definitely been some of the most interesting;
unique and well thought out.

Post a reply to this message

"Txemi Jendrix" <tji### [at] euskalnetnet> wrote in message
news:3f7395a1@news.povray.org...

<big snip>

  Txemi, I know you aren't going away my friend, but this is what
*I'm* going to do for the IRTC in the next round:

   I'm going to do a "Decay" scene.

   I'm going to submit it.

   I'm going to *TRY* to comment on as many images that I see and like
in this next round. (That's if I think I could improve them in some
helpful way that is).    :o/


> Hoping I haven't started a flame war...

  Not with me you haven't.   ;)

    ~Steve~


> Bye.
>
> Txemi Jendrix
> http://www.txemijendrix.com
>
>
>
>

Post a reply to this message

3f75d888$1@news.povray.org...

>   Txemi, I know you aren't going away my friend, but this is what
> *I'm* going to do for the IRTC in the next round:
>
>    I'm going to do a "Decay" scene.
>
>    I'm going to submit it.
>
>    I'm going to *TRY* to comment on as many images that I see and like
> in this next round. (That's if I think I could improve them in some
> helpful way that is).    :o/

Maybe I haven't put it as clear as you, but that's exactly what I'm
doing and what I'm going to do.

> > Hoping I haven't started a flame war...
>
>   Not with me you haven't.   ;)

Glad to hear it. Big THANKS.
See you

Txemi Jendrix
http://www.txemijendrix.com

Post a reply to this message

I do exactly the same analysis.
I wouldn't take any definitive judging about the IRTC after this round.
I prefer to turn my attention toward the next topic.

JC

Jeremy M. Praay wrote:
>>P.S. Ok, 1 rant addendum...  I do not think any of the top 3 were bad,
> 
> they
> 
>>are all fine images, I just feel that there were better, and that I find
> 
> it
> 
>>odd that so many excellent images received such poor scores.
> 
> 
> After having thought about this whole issue, and after having slept on it.
> I think the biggest problem is that most of us IRTC folks aren't actually
> artists, and have had no formal art training.  "Surrealism" is a very artful
> topic, being voted on by largely non-artists who may know nothing of the
> surrealist movement other than seeing a few of Dali's soft-watches.
> 
> This round is "Decay".  Art is not a major component of the topic itself.  I
> personally expect judging to be more normal.  This round seemed to be the
> exception rather than the rule.
>

Post a reply to this message

3f73b46a$1@news.povray.org...
> > Hoping I haven't started a flame war...
> > Txemi Jendrix
>
> I'll be on your side
> Philippe Gibone

Thanks Philippe. I think we all have found the answer.
Voting and commenting is important, maybe now
more than in the past.
Lets try to recover the IRTC.
It will not work unless we'll do the effort. At last
we are the ones who enter in the competition, the
ones who vote, and the ones who are really responsable
of the IRTC future.
Bye

Txemi Jendrix
http://www.txemijendrix.com

Post a reply to this message

"Philippe_Gibone" <Ph.### [at] wanadoofr> wrote in message
news:3f7322ac@news.povray.org...
|
| I made a mistake when voting : for off-topic images I rated
| Artistic and technical Merit as honestly as I could, but I
| was wrong, I think, now that an off-topic image should be
| rated (1, 1, 1)

No, I think that you were right the way to vote the way you did.
Attempting to correct any other factors by "donking" what you feel to be
off-topic entries will only cause more problems.

In truth, I think that it's mostly the technical merit scores which
skewed this round. At any time in the IRTC, most of the entrants will
have a low enough experience level (and in some [most?] cases
intelligence level) that they see downloading and using a macro from
Gilles' site or rotating a few boxes around a sphere as a significant
technical achievement. Any who have moved past that level are very
likely not to receive the credit they deserve for their modeling and
technical work. If these experienced entrants want to keep competing,
then they will need to accept this and focus their efforts on making
more *attractive* images. At the same time, any voter who wants to
contribute to the legitimacy of the IRTC results should pay attention to
improving his technical merit judging.

 -Shay

Post a reply to this message

Shay wrote:
>"Philippe_Gibone" <Ph.### [at] wanadoofr> wrote in message
>news:3f7322ac[at]news.povray.org...
>|
>| I made a mistake when voting : for off-topic images I rated
>| Artistic and technical Merit as honestly as I could, but I
>| was wrong, I think, now that an off-topic image should be
>| rated (1, 1, 1)
>
>No, I think that you were right the way to vote the way you did.
>Attempting to correct any other factors by "donking" what you feel to be
>off-topic entries will only cause more problems.

Off-topic is sometimes a very gray area too, there are degrees of
off-topic... did the artist just submit an image with no regard to the
theme, or is it 'sort-of' related and I just don't get it.  If it's clearly
not related, I'll give a low concept score and probably take a point off
the artistic and technical too simply because I don't think a blatantly
off-topic entry should be permitted to take place away from on-topic
entries. If it's a sort-of then I score concept by how sort-of I feel it is
and let artistic and technical stand. I reserve 1,1,1 for rules violations,
and I don't think off-topic is a rules violation.


>In truth, I think that it's mostly the technical merit scores which
>skewed this round. At any time in the IRTC, most of the entrants will
>have a low enough experience level (and in some [most?] cases
>intelligence level) that they see downloading and using a macro from
>Gilles' site or rotating a few boxes around a sphere as a significant
>technical achievement. Any who have moved past that level are very
>likely not to receive the credit they deserve for their modeling and
>technical work. If these experienced entrants want to keep competing,
>then they will need to accept this and focus their efforts on making
>more *attractive* images. At the same time, any voter who wants to
>contribute to the legitimacy of the IRTC results should pay attention to
>improving his technical merit judging.


Well, I can't complain about my own overall score (any time I finish top 10
in a round with that many good entries I'm happy!) But my artistic and
technical scores puzzled me, and don't seem to fit your theory. If I was
judging my own entry I'd have probably reversed those two.  I thought
artistically it was pretty good while technically it was so-so. My score
says the opposite. Go figure.

I have noticed that different topics seem to get more extreme levels of
interest on one category. Some topics are more technical by nature
(architecture) while others get more artistic focus (lanscapes) and some
(surrealism) get more concept scrutiny. And that's probably not a bad
thing, otherwise I think they'd all start to look the same.

RG - well, I think I finally have an idea for 'decay' but it will require
some serious work on lighting... that's technical, isn't it?

Post a reply to this message

"gonzo" <rgo### [at] lansetcom> wrote in message
news:web.3f78a3466f3cbf13a0c272b50@news.povray.org...
|
| But my artistic and technical scores puzzled me, and
| don't seem to fit your theory. If I was judging my own
| entry I'd have probably reversed those two.  I thought
| artistically it was pretty good while technically it
| was so-so. My score says the opposite. Go figure.

My theory isn't that all of the technical scores will be necessarily
reversed, just that there is a lot of confusion about what technically
is required to produce an image. The same is true in p.b.i.. I could go
home tonight and in a few hours create something trivial like a Borg
cube, and if I posted that in p.b.i., people would be lining up to tell
me what a genius I am. If I posted something truly difficult, however,
it would fly over many heads.

For this reason, I believe "technical merit" should be removed as a
voting category from the IRTC. When the last competition's highest
technical merit score went to what appeared to be an entry in the
shortest code contest, then it is obvious that the IRTC judging pool is
not nearly sophisticated enough to assign a score to that criteria.
"Technical merit" has apparently become a tilt for images with lots of
tiny (even identical) bits.

 -Shay

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I finally figured it out.

The results from this round were surreal.

Andrew Wilcox

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