In article <417aca28$1@news.povray.org> , "Jeremy M. Praay" 
<sla### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:

> You also have to realize that this competition is not as much about "us" as
> it is about "POV-Ray."  These prizes are not simply being given-out because
> of someone's generosity.  While some generosity has come into play, the
> prizes are also an advertisement for the sponsors.  People don't like to
> talk about this, but it's a reality.  The sponsors expect something in
> return, and if we don't provide that to them (in the form of exceptional
> images), they will be less likely to do this again.  I hope I don't get
> flamed for being overly frank.

This very well describes the situation.  Chris Cason certainly spend a lot
of time getting sponsor on board.  The money for the prices did indeed not
grow on trees, and we all committed a lot of time into making the
competition a reality.  Of course, we are all amateurs and some things could
certainly have run more smoothly :-)

> Chris Cason, Gilles, Thorsten, and others have been very generous with their
> time on this, however, so please be kind to the organizers.  I would also
> like to ask everyone to try to be more positive, but all I can do is ask.

Thank you!

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

417ac708$1@news.povray.org...

> I'm planning to look on the bright side.  There were quite a few things 
> that I wanted to do, but simply ran out of time.  I expected that.  I 
> realized the time-constraints.  I'm quite hopeful that I can make a number 
> of improvements to what I've already put together, including certain 
> technical problems that I didn't notice until too late.

All I can say at this point is: you've got 3 months. Take your time. I know 
it looks like I'm trying hard to spin the postponement in a positive way ;) 
but I've noticed many times that waiting a little before declaring an image 
"finished" is often very beneficial. After working hard on something, we 
tend to focus on the small details while the big picture (no puns intended) 
gets blurry. And some stuff, well, we just can't find the courage to change 
it on the spot.

That's why I never upload images immediately at Zazzle or on my website. I 
put them through a mandatory waiting period, until I can have a fresh look 
at them, which sometimes results in fixing a lot of problems, many of them 
blindingly obvious after a couple of weeks (and the fixing is also less 
painful then, if not pleasant).

G.


-- 
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http://www.oyonale.com
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417aca28$1@news.povray.org...
> The sponsors expect something in return, and if we don't provide that to 
> them (in the form of exceptional images), they will be less likely to do 
> this again.  I hope I don't get flamed for being overly frank.

Many thanks Jeremy!

You nailed it perfectly. I wouldn't say that it's only a sponsor problem 
(though we have seen how sponsors progressively lost interest in the IRTC), 
but in more general terms, it's about how POV-Ray is perceived by other 
people, in the 3D community or elsewhere. Events like POVCOMP can play a 
significant role in that perception, and are extremely hard to come by, so 
we'd rather not miss such an opportunity.

G.

-- 
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http://www.oyonale.com
**********************
- Graphic experiments
- POV-Ray and Poser computer images
- Posters

Maybe the prizes were too big, and frightened some of us who thought that it
would be a extremely high-level competition.

And the time wasn't the best to choose: i didn't have much time for my
submission since i was starting the year. If i remember well, the
competition announcement was given during the holidays.
2 months would be enough, but not in early september.

Now it's a good time to start the things again.
You may put a deadline to the 31th dec. or the 5th jan..

The rules were also HARD to understand. The 1/25th of the picture is really
a silly idea! Couldn't it be "show us how far you've gone into details"?
And i sincerely had to give false coordinates because i didn't have time to
render things again, and i had to recalculate the coordinates from the
"+sr0.000245" commands (it took me almost an hour to put those coordinates,
and to re-upload the detail image each time).
A detail view? Ok, you need to know if everything has been shown. But if
there was NOTHING? It's a subjective thing, the artist will show how far he
has gone into detail, and can't do more.
Just ask to provide a picture and two detailed pictures.

And why can't the entries be modified once submitted? I may want to submit
it once to be sure to participate, and to modify it as long as i still have
time.

The format rule has not been made to be understood. Couldn't you just type
"minimum resolution: 1280*960, maximum size 5Mb"? Why couldn't i do a
960*1280 picture? And an 960*2800 one?

You asked too much for a subject-free competition. So it failed.
Do not blame any of us for that.

I just hope that povcomp will succeed.

selsek

selsek wrote:

> The rules were also HARD to understand.

Start with the intent - to form poster-sized artworks that showcased
POVray's abilities. You can't do that with only clever textures, fog, loop
statements. You need a lot more.

> The 1/25th of the picture is really
> a silly idea! Couldn't it be "show us how far you've gone into details"?

Question: How small are we _allowed_ to make the details?

> And i sincerely had to give false coordinates because i didn't have time
to
> render things again, and i had to recalculate the coordinates from the
> "+sr0.000245" commands (it took me almost an hour to put those
coordinates,
> and to re-upload the detail image each time).

Right. Holding us to exact coordinates constrains how we re-render. In this
case, part of the intent is "prove you didn't just render something else and
claim that it's one pixel in the main picture". If I prove that fact by
providing sources, then the coordinates are irrelevant.

> A detail view? Ok, you need to know if everything has been shown. But if
> there was NOTHING? It's a subjective thing, the artist will show how far
he
> has gone into detail, and can't do more.

This goes back to the intent - to showcase POVray technology.

Folks, Michelango rendered the Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to satisfy his
customer (the Pope) first. Satisfying his own muse came second.

> And why can't the entries be modified once submitted? I may want to submit
> it once to be sure to participate, and to modify it as long as i still
have
> time.

They can. You just go thru the Web page and push it back in.

-- 
  Phlip
  http://industrialxp.org/community/bin/view/Main/TestFirstUserInterfaces

Gilles Tran wrote:
> One major reason for the lack of exceptional pieces may have been that the 
> time period of two and a half months was too short. POVCOMP is of an order 
> of magnitude harder than the IRTC, and the organisers underestimated the 
> time needed to create this sort of work without giving up on real life. 
> People couldn't find the time to complete their entries, and among those 
> submitted, we feel that many can be improved.

   That describes perfectly my thoughts (both that the time period was 
short and that many things on my entry can be improved).

> Accordingly, it has been decided to postpone the deadline until January 31, 
> 2005. That's almost 3 additional months for people to resume or complete 
> their work, or submit new ones.

   Can I admit that I *really* fantasized with this? :)

> Again, this was not an easy decision to take. I'm painfully aware of how 
> difficult this must be for the POVCOMP participants. We hope, however, that 
> these 3 extra months will result in many exceptional pictures.

   I feel it was a necessary reparation... for me, rectifying a mistake 
is always a good thing. And for the time/effort "wasted" chasing the 
last deadline... well, it was a very good experience that I don't mind 
repeating.

--
Jaime

OK.

As some of you know, I planned to participate in this
competition with an Escher-like scene.

But I did not have time to finish all the macros that
I needed, so I did not enter the contest.

After the previous deadline had passed, someone asked
me about what I was working on and I answered.

Today I also posted an image that shows how some of
the macros works in a similar scene.

Now I wonder:

Can I carry on with this scene and submit it when it
is finished, or have I revealed too much about it ?

-- 
Tor Olav
http://subcube.net
http://subcube.com

Gilles Tran wrote:
<clip>

> Accordingly, it has been decided to postpone the deadline until January 31, 
> 2005. That's almost 3 additional months for people to resume or complete 
> their work, or submit new ones.

Wow. I might actually submit something now. I thought for sure I missed 
this train. Thanks for reporting!

-Sam

"Tor Olav Kristensen" <tor### [at] TOBEREMOVEDgmailcom> wrote in message 
news:417ae63d$1@news.povray.org...
>
> As some of you know, I planned to participate...
<snip>
> Can I carry on with this scene and submit it when it
> is finished, or have I revealed too much about it ?
>

While I can't provide you with an official response, I can remind you of 
Chris Cason's response regarding anonymity:

"Please be aware that a significant proportion of the judges will not be
folks who tend to hang around this server. This is intentional. Some will
have no connection to POV-Ray at all.

"Also they will not see the registration list or anything of the sort prior
to their votes being cast."

To me, that sounds like you're free to continue, and if any judges recognize 
the work as yours, well, that's bound to happen in some cases, regardless. 
Additionally, I would guess that 3 months from now, most people will have 
forgotten what you just said, and would probably not connect anything to 
your picture(s).

Another option for you might be to work on something very similar, in order 
to utilize some of what you've created.  Just a thought.

-- 
Jeremy
www.beantoad.com

web.417adbffb45fa19e939d10d20@news.povray.org...

> And the time wasn't the best to choose: i didn't have much time for my
> submission since i was starting the year. If i remember well, the
> competition announcement was given during the holidays.
> 2 months would be enough, but not in early september.

I don't think there's an ideal, universal period for such a long 
competition. People have all different time constraints.

> The rules were also HARD to understand. The 1/25th of the picture is 
> really
> a silly idea! Couldn't it be "show us how far you've gone into details"?

About the 1/25th being a silly idea, I disagree. If we had run the 
competition like 3D competions are run today, we would have asked for the 
full, large size, printable render.  This is what is expected in a 
competition where the winning images will be shown (or so we hope) in 
magazines and such. And of course, this is what is expected if you're 
working professionally for a client. Again, working for print isn't the same 
as working for a 800x600 screen. It's a different kind of work, with lots of 
additional constraints. And in my view, it's much more exciting and really 
worth it...

We ask for detail images so that people won't spend most of the competition 
time watching pixels crawl across the screen. Knowing our beloved POV-Ray, 
we expect that some entries will take days or weeks to render at screen 
size(and some probably already did), so asking people to provide full size, 
printable renders would be too much to ask.

But for this, we have to provide strict rules concerning the size of the 
detail images: experience shows that not giving precise rules always means 
big trouble, so we would have ended up making them anyway.

Personally I still don't think that the detail rules are so complicated: 
it's just a simple ratio, and nothing that could possibly scare an 
experienced POV-Ray user who's playing with complex CSG, isosurfaces and the 
like! But it's true that some people found them confusing, and indeed, if 
people have a better way to express them, please do so.

> And why can't the entries be modified once submitted? I may want to submit
> it once to be sure to participate, and to modify it as long as i still 
> have
> time.

I'm not sure of what you mean by "to be sure to participate". Participation 
is defined by the registration.

> The format rule has not been made to be understood. Couldn't you just type
> "minimum resolution: 1280*960, maximum size 5Mb"? Why couldn't i do a
> 960*1280 picture? And an 960*2800 one?

It's a good point.

> You asked too much for a subject-free competition. So it failed.

No, it's just that all of us are a little spoiled by the very relaxed rules 
of the IRTC, and by the fact that we don't have experienced 3D pros walking 
among us. Just have a look at other 3D competitions or sites like Raph.com 
to see what I mean. As I said, the bar has been raised very high these days, 
and I mean *** high ***. See for instance: 
http://cgnetworks.com/challenge/machineflesh/

> Do not blame any of us for that.

We don't blame anyone apart ourselves, for underestimating the time 
required.

Entrants did their best, considering the time constraints. Most, if not all 
of us, are hobbyists, working on our POV-Ray work at night or during the 
week-ends, between studies (for the youngest) or work/family duties, and the 
type of work required for the POVCOMP is clearly of professional quality, 
the sort of stuff that people who do graphics on a full-time basis can do. 
If I had entered the competition, I would have given up early or I would 
have submitted a subpar image, all due to real life interference. By 
postponing the deadline, we want to give more POV-Ray users the opportunity 
to create truly exceptional work.

G.


-- 
**********************
http://www.oyonale.com
**********************
- Graphic experiments
- POV-Ray and Poser computer images
- Posters