Hi

Here are my thoughts:

In a way I am quite glad that the deadline has been relaxed. It means I will
have enough time to sort out my lighting and improve on my scene. On the
other hand I have very little time now the summer is over and I will
actually not be able to spend much more time on it. The deadline being so
close inspired me to do a lot of work and now I have until january I am not
sure I will be able to motivate myself to go through the code again. Once I
finish a project like this I tend to want to stay far away from it so
having two deadlines in that sense is bad. I had also been looking forward
to seeing some beautiful images pretty soon. Guess I'll have to wait.

I do not think the pictures should be posted or even looked at by the
judeges now. If this happens, people will build up negative comments about
the pictures which, even if the cause of the problem is fixed in the final
submission, will cause the final judging to be predudiced.

Peter

Gilles Tran wrote:

> message de news: 417ae63d$1@news.povray.org...
> 
> 
>>Can I carry on with this scene and submit it when it
>>is finished, or have I revealed too much about it ?
> 
> 
> Yes (my opinion at least). The judging is "blind" (at least according the 
> current rules, which may or may not change), but since most of the judges 
> won't be familiar with the POV-Ray community, I wouldn't call this a matter 
> of concern. When it comes to art, anonymity is always relative, otherwise 
> there wouldn't be something called "style".

I see. Thank you for your opinion.

Btw. I'm very happy about the new deadline !

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

Jeremy M. Praay wrote:
> "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.

Yes now I remember.


> "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).

You and Gilles are probably right Jeremy, so I'll just continue my work.


> 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.

I'll do that too if I have enough time, which is very unlikely...

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

Phlip wrote:
> Tor Olav Kristensen wrote:
> 
> 
>>As some of you know, I planned to participate in this
>>competition with an Escher-like 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 ?
> 
> 
> An Escher-like scene ... ?
> 
> Hey, that sounds like a good idea!!!
> 
> (Does that answer your question?;)

Hehe - yes. And I get your point.

(But it wouldn't bother me much if other people were
to submit Escher-like renderings too.)

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

>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.

Example: in my image, there's a car i've modelled. I've put much details in
it.
1- the car takes a big part of the image: there's nothing more to show,
there's no more details, you won't see more things if i give you a detailed
image, but if i must provide one, i'll just provide an near-empty image.
2-the car in very small in the whole image: if i want to provide the 1/25th
of the image, i'll have to show the things that aren't needed to be shown
around the car. But I want to show you the car, not the things around that
will waste cpu time. In that case i'll have to make a BIG picture to show
its details, and so some rendering time will be wasted.
Because it's a long and hard work, just by asking at least two detailed
images, we'll show where we have gone into details, we don't need rules to
show what we can do. And the judges don't need a specifically sized view to
see where the artist has gone into details.
I can't see what you get from the rules on these detailed views. What do you
loose if i give a 1/40th view instead of a 1/10th? Can't i just show my
work?
Maybe you don't have to put precise rules, but only the aim of it, why you
need theses.

>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!

Well, just try one thing: make an image where a sphere takes 80% of the
image and show me a detailed view according to these rules. Now do the same
thing with a tiny sphere that takes 2% of the picture. Pretty hard to do,
no?

> But it's true that some people found them confusing, and
> indeed, if people have a better way to express them, please do so.

No rules at all! yeah! :))

>> 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.

"to have one entry"
Example: I submit my image, and then i'm sure that that even if i don't
modify it, even if i fell sick, the judges will see it, but i still can
easily modify it if i want, anytime. Instead, here, you have to: 1-
complete it 2- submit it 3- no 3, you can't modify, you just delete it and
restart the process (i haven't spent much time on that, though).

>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/

In those competitions, there are pros who compete to get a name in order to
find a job...
And most of povray community is made of hobbyists.
And, as it's written on the homepage of povcomp, it's not professionnaly
used for its artistic side.

>we want to give more POV-Ray users the opportunity to create
> truly exceptional work.

This sentence has to be on the homepage of povcomp!

selsek

Gilles, I can imagine how the sponsors would feel with so many prices and so 
little participants.....

Maybe non-pov users might be interested in participating and trying pov-ray. 
If someone managed to use POV-Ray as a renderer with maya or a package like 
that........ that would be interesting!

Eli wrote:

> Gilles, I can imagine how the sponsors would feel with so many prices and
so
> little participants.....
>
> Maybe non-pov users might be interested in participating and trying
pov-ray.

Could you live with yourself if the prize winner was a cube?

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

"Gilles Tran" <gitran_nospam_@wanadoo.fr> wrote:

> web.417aa863b45fa19e497bbfc0@news.povray.org...
> > First of all, thank you for finally telling us what is going on.
>
> We certainly owed it to you.
>
> > Being told that the sum of the efforts that were
> > submitted was not good enough for you to award a prize is a slap in the
> > face to all of us.

Thanks for the response and the clarifications.  I apologize if I was a bit
crabby.

Well, now that I've had time to get used to the idea, I can certainly see a
lot of things I'd like to improve in my image, so I'll probably be
submitting it anew for the competition once I've got those changes done.

I would like to make a few more suggestions that I hope are helpful:

1) Add the explanation about copyright to the official rules.  You might
also explain that any other information in the image that can be used to
identify the entrant should be removed.  For instance, I noticed that in my
image, there is a directory path in part of the image that has my name in
it.  I also have a picture of myself included, but I'm pretty sure that
none of the judges know who I am based on my picture....

2) Set a lower limit on the number of images that need to be submitted
before judging can go forward.  I know that whatever you pick will be a bit
arbitrary, but it will make it a bit easier to manage expectations.

3) Continue to try to get publicity for the contest and encourage all
current entrants to encourage others to get involved.  There is still a lot
of time between now and January 31st, and I'm sure that lots of people
could create a good image in the time between now and then.

4) Perhaps someone could set up an IRC channel #povcomp2004, where artists
can waste time and talk about new ways to procrastinate.

5) Provide some kind of acknowledgement, perhaps a t-shirt or some bit of
inexpensive swag, to the people who met the first deadline.

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.

It might make sense to arrange the Guidelines in the order in which they
will affect the judging, that might help people to better understand the
tradeoffs they might be making in thier image.

7) Reading through the posts I've gotten the impression that some people
believe that using old models that were created for other images either
isn't allowed or will count against you.  I can't find anything in the
rules that says that.  The rules just say that trivial modifications of
older images aren't acceptable.  This is good, because many of the finest
IRTC images were created by artists who dipped into their extensive
libraries of previously constructed models.

If, as I expect, you don't have any problem with an artist using/adapting
models they created in the past in this image, then it might be best to say
so explicitly.

I hope this is of some help.
  Ray

news:417ce89e@news.povray.org...

> Gilles, I can imagine how the sponsors would feel with so many prices and
so
> little participants.....

I don't know how they'd feel, but organising a second event like this would
sure be a little bit more difficult (and it wasn't easy in the first
place)...

> Maybe non-pov users might be interested in participating and trying
pov-ray.
> If someone managed to use POV-Ray as a renderer with maya or a package
like
> that........ that would be interesting!

Truly, I've seen nice stuff concerted from Maya and rendered in POV-Ray.
Still, I have a hard time imagining an experienced Maya user who would start
learning POV-Ray only to participate in the competition... (Of course, it
may have already been the case in this competition, who knows?)

G.

-- 

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

Gilles Tran <tra### [at] inapginrafr> wrote:
> Still, I have a hard time imagining an experienced Maya user who would start
> learning POV-Ray only to participate in the competition...

  The first price should be incentive enough... :P

-- 
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