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Thanks to everyone for their patience. The Rebirth round is now open
for voting. If you have any problems at all, please e-mail
irt### [at] irtc org and we'll address it as quickly as we can.
Enjoy
David Buck
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Btw, when voting, could we please avoid the same problem as in the past,
in other words, cross-contamination of categories?
Just because an image is stunningly superb, a marvel of technical and
artistic prowess, doesn't necessarily mean that the image is very original
or represents the topic very well. Likewise an image can be of very crappy
quality, but still have a wonderful idea related to the topic, so even if
it's technically poor doesn't mean you should vote it down in all categories.
Any other combination of categories applies too, of course.
(Naturally I'm not talking here about any image in particular, or this
round in particular, just in general.)
--
- Warp
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"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message
news:4aa8c223@news.povray.org...
> Btw, when voting, could we please avoid the same problem as in the past,
> in other words, cross-contamination of categories?
I agree entirely, I always try to focus on each aspect seperately when
marking an image.
However, on that subject, I sometimes have some difficulty distinguishing
between technical and artistic areas. e.g. is bad lighting a technical or
artistic failure?
Obviously good lighting is a success in both fields, but a lack of either
ability can lead to poor lighting and it's often not obvious (to me anyway)
whether it's artistic skill or technical knowledge that's lacking.
--
Tek
http://evilsuperbrain.com
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In irtc.general Tek <tek### [at] evilsuperbraincom> wrote:
> However, on that subject, I sometimes have some difficulty distinguishing
> between technical and artistic areas. e.g. is bad lighting a technical or
> artistic failure?
When I vote for the technical quality, I look mainly at the modeling,
texturing and lighting, and possibly to scene generation techniques, if
the author has described them in the description text. If the scene
contains a model created in a third-party software, I try to estimate
from this description and the image itself how much work the author put
into modeling it, and how well it works in the scene.
For artistic merit I look at the composition and visual aesthetics of
the image (regardless of what its technical quality might be). While I'm
not an expert in artistic composition, I have some idea about what it's
all about, and I try to fairly make an estimation of how well it has been
done. (Composition is a rather complicated subject, but it entails things
like how the image is divided into parts, where the main subject or
subjects are located, and so on. On the aesthetic part I look at the
choice of colors and, more generally, the choice of the entire theme of
the image, and other similar things.)
--
- Warp
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Warp wrote:
> Btw, when voting, could we please avoid the same problem as in the past,
> in other words, cross-contamination of categories?
>
> Just because an image is stunningly superb, a marvel of technical and
> artistic prowess, doesn't necessarily mean that the image is very original
> or represents the topic very well. Likewise an image can be of very crappy
> quality, but still have a wonderful idea related to the topic, so even if
> it's technically poor doesn't mean you should vote it down in all categories.
> Any other combination of categories applies too, of course.
>
> (Naturally I'm not talking here about any image in particular, or this
> round in particular, just in general.)
>
This makes particular sense, because, if I presume correctly, the
'overall' score is independent of the categorized scores. The
categorized votes act only to decide category winners in lieu of the
former nominations system.
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Tek wrote:
> However, on that subject, I sometimes have some difficulty
distinguishing between technical and artistic areas. e.g. is bad
lighting a technical or artistic failure?
>
Here's how I see the categories right now:
====> Artistic Merit:
Does the artist effectively use tools beyond bare pictoral exposition to
communicate and/or editorialize his subject matter?
Composition is among these tools, but no knowledge of composition is
needed to judge the competition. Effective composition is always "good"
composition, though the (many) pedants among the IRTC voters will be
looking for that golden ratio or "tonal balance."
Some non-aesthetic tools which come to mind are humor, complexity, and
disorientation.
====> Technical Merit:
Several years ago, the Chex cereal people figured out that their cereal
tastes pretty good mixed with pretzels and nuts. It does, but the fact
that anyone can make it in ten minutes is why Chex Mix isn't often
served at weddings. Find a recipe that takes ten /hours/ and you can bet
your guests will remember it.
Cobbling together borrowed models is Chex Mix. Restricting your scene to
what can easily be done with CSG is Chex Mix.
Lighting is IMO an artistic issue. At least one of the most famous IRTC
images was rendered using rad settings pulled right out of the
newsgroups. And anyone can paste his model into an hdri scene. Using
these elements effectively is a challenge, but not a technical one.
====> Topic:
Was Frank Lloyd Wright creative? Damn straight. And what was his subject
matter? ...House.
Some of the most creative painters I can name painted landscapes and
bridges. Not all creative artists are humorists or surrealists. I like
to see surprising (big C) Concepts as much as anyone else, but this is a
competition for CG artists, not authors. To determine whether an image
is creative, I believe the voter must simply ask himself whether the
image is boring.
-Shay
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That's an excellent summary, Shay.
Jim
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Shay schrieb:
> ====> Technical Merit:
> Several years ago, the Chex cereal people figured out that their cereal
> tastes pretty good mixed with pretzels and nuts. It does, but the fact
> that anyone can make it in ten minutes is why Chex Mix isn't often
> served at weddings. Find a recipe that takes ten /hours/ and you can bet
> your guests will remember it.
This is a pretty poor example: Wedding guests don't remember a dinner
based on how much /effort/ it took - they remember it based on how
/extraordinary/ it was (which I'd file as "concept").
Furthermore, it sounds to me like in your eyes technical merit should be
ranked in /man-hours/. I disagree on this one. For a certain task at
hand, someone may need two laborious weeks to complete - while someone
else might spend no more than two days to find a clever way of
automating it. Now which of the two deserves more technical merit?
So in a sense, technical merit shouldn't be awarded to IRTC images at
all, but rather to the postings in these newsgroups that came up with
the technical ideas. But since this is not an option, I prefer to award
technical merit to images that make good /use/ of clever techniques. I
see this category as something along the lines, "is the author keeping
up-to-date with the technical state of the art?"
If HDRI-based lighting is as easy as you say, and produces so
extraordinarily good result, then a shot /should/ use it - or at least
achieve the same quality in some other way. Refusing to do so is just
nostalgia, and has nothing to do with technical merit. Rather to the
contrary: It gives rise to the assumption that the author is not
familiar with this technical innovation.
So to me, one (though not the only) guiding question for technical merit
is, "does the scene look as /convincing/ as it is possible these days?"
It doesn't matter to the wedding guests how long it took the catering
team to produce the dinner: It matters to them how it /looks/ and how it
/tastes/.
> Cobbling together borrowed models is Chex Mix. Restricting your scene to
> what can easily be done with CSG is Chex Mix.
Note that a number of people will cobble together borrowed models, but
then customize them (improving on textures for instance). Would that be
Chex Mix as well?
Would you consider use of Poser characters as cobbling together borrowed
models (after all they models as such are there already), or would you
respect the work often required to actually pose them?
> ====> Topic:
We don't have a category "topic" - the third category is "concept".
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clipka wrote:
> Shay schrieb:
>
>> ====> Technical Merit:
>> Several years ago, the Chex cereal people figured out that their
>> cereal tastes pretty good mixed with pretzels and nuts. It does, but
>> the fact that anyone can make it in ten minutes is why Chex Mix isn't
>> often served at weddings. Find a recipe that takes ten /hours/ and you
>> can bet your guests will remember it.
>
> This is a pretty poor example: Wedding guests don't remember a dinner
> based on how much /effort/ it took - they remember it based on how
> /extraordinary/ it was (which I'd file as "concept").
Yes, a thing can be extraordinary because it is creative, and there is a
voting category for that. If an artist can find some extraordinarily
creative way to make a scene out of nothing more than a grass macro and
the Stanford bunny, then more power to him. In fact, this is IMO the
most difficult and laudable way to achieve "extraordinaryness."
Concept alone, however, is so easily reproduced that it quickly becomes
banal. Even Chex mix was extraordinary for a minute.
> So to me, one (though not the only) guiding question for technical merit
> is, "does the scene look as /convincing/ as it is possible these days?"
Escher made only a few "convincing" works.
> It doesn't matter to the wedding guests how long it took the catering
> team to produce the dinner: It matters to them how it /looks/ and how it
> /tastes/.
Not entirely true. Most would agree that a bowl of grapes looks good and
tastes great, but a bowl of grapes is not extraordinary because there is
no significant difficulty or expense in its execution.
-Shay
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On Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:43:56 +0200, clipka wrote:
> This is a pretty poor example: Wedding guests don't remember a dinner
> based on how much /effort/ it took - they remember it based on how
> /extraordinary/ it was (which I'd file as "concept").
Arguably, if everyone can make something, then it's ordinary, not
extraordinary.
Jim
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