POV Team;
Just some observations.

 I thought when the rules said POV and POV only( except for convert to
jpeg), that all others were excluded. I took by implication that this
contest was about what POV could be used to produce. Yet several entrants
seemed to use products all over the digital picture map.

The Judges seemed to be overly critical. A contest like this should show
from the positive responses more of the good things that the judges liked
and fewer negative things. This is to say the judging should be an
accumulation of good things and bad things weighted between the entries to
show where good and right is more than what was bad.

There should be two divisions. Art from an art major's point of view and a
division on technical art for those with more computer finesse.

Thanks muchly,

swampee

swampee <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> POV Team;
> Just some observations.

  Please note that it was not the pov-team who judged the images.

>  I thought when the rules said POV and POV only( except for convert to
> jpeg), that all others were excluded. I took by implication that this
> contest was about what POV could be used to produce. Yet several entrants
> seemed to use products all over the digital picture map.

  I'm not really sure what you mean by this.

  If you mean that some of the images were post-processed, that is,
an image manipulation program was used on the result image created
by POV-Ray, then that would indeed be against the rules. However,
we did not notice this kind of post-processing in any of the images.
If you have reason to believe otherwise, please be more explicit.

  If you mean that models and objects created by third-party programs
were used in creating the POV-Ray scene, then that was not against
the rules in any way. It's completely OK to design something object
in another program and then use it in POV-Ray to render the scene
(as long as the author has permission to use the object in question,
ie. it's not restricted by copyright or other laws).

> The Judges seemed to be overly critical. A contest like this should show
> from the positive responses more of the good things that the judges liked
> and fewer negative things. This is to say the judging should be an
> accumulation of good things and bad things weighted between the entries to
> show where good and right is more than what was bad.

  I'm not sure what you mean by this either. The winners have to be
selected somehow.

> There should be two divisions. Art from an art major's point of view and a
> division on technical art for those with more computer finesse.

  The problem is how to divide the prizes among the two divisions.

-- 
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<1,1,3>hollow}text{ttf"timrom""Warp".1,0translate<-1,-.1,2>}//  - Warp -

"swampee" <nomail@nomail> wrote in message
news:web.421615fea5e4da17598183eb0@news.povray.org...
> POV Team;
> Just some observations.

First off I'd like to say that I do NOT represent the POV-Team, these are just
my PERSONAL opinions.

>  I thought when the rules said POV and POV only( except for convert to
> jpeg), that all others were excluded. I took by implication that this
> contest was about what POV could be used to produce. Yet several entrants
> seemed to use products all over the digital picture map.

I think you're misunderstanding the rules slightly.  They say:  "To be accepted
in the competition an entry has to be rendered with POV-Ray"

The key words being "has to be rendered with POV-Ray" - this means you can still
use Photoshop to paint some textures, Wings3D to make some models... but the
image has to be rendered with POV-Ray.

You are correct in saying it is "about what POV could be used to produce" -
images that extensively made use of painted textures when procedural would have
produced a better result, or free mesh models when there were other alternatives
using SDL, etc, tended to be favoured less (at least by me) than other images
that made clever use of POV-Ray's features.

I think this is very clear when you look at the results:  The Last Guardian, for
example, uses *no* mesh models (and as far as I know, no bitmap textures), and
the objects are created with clever and thoughtful use of POV-Ray's SDL and
primatives... and it won.

Images that made extensive use of other programs like Poser or external mesh
models and just dumped the results into a POV-Ray file without utiltising
POV-Ray's features, didn't do as well.  Some images could have been rendered in
*any* renderer and produced the same result, and these images didn't rate as
highly as images that made clever use of POV-Ray.

At no point do the rules say you can't make use of other modelling applications,
etc... just that the image must be *rendered* with POV-Ray.

> The Judges seemed to be overly critical. A contest like this should show

In a competition with a $10000-value first prize, you must be critical in order
to ensure the deserving image wins.

> from the positive responses more of the good things that the judges liked
> and fewer negative things. This is to say the judging should be an
> accumulation of good things and bad things weighted between the entries to
> show where good and right is more than what was bad.


I think the comments are intended to be taken as constructive notes.  The good
parts of images are generally obvious, and it's the parts that could use work
that should be pointed out as those allow people to know the weak points of
images so that they can be improved.

It's often difficult to not take such comments personally, or be told things
along the lines of "nice technically, but not enough content to make an engaging
image", but it is this kind of constructive criticism that helps people take a
serious and objective look at their image to determine what can be improved.
When someone says about your image "not enough detail" or "not enough contrast",
these things shouldn't be taken as meaning "your image is bad"... they should be
taken unemotionally as meaning "you need to add more detail" and "you need to
increase contrast".

It can be difficult, but if you can set your emotions aside while reading the
comments, you will get a lot of insight into what you have done right and what
can be improved.

> There should be two divisions. Art from an art major's point of view and a
> division on technical art for those with more computer finesse.


I think that in a competition such as this, the artistic side of an image and
the technical side of an image are equally important.  A "good image", or "an
image deserving of a prize" should include both aristic and technical merit - to
separate the two means that you will end up placing more preference on one than
the other when the prizes are allocated, and that isn't fair on those who excel
in one area but not in another.

For those that are better at the artistic side than the technical side, or the
technical side than the artistic side, the comments from judges can help point
people in the right direction to help them improve in what they are lacking.
For example, some images had a great artistic idea, but there were technical
problems (so these were pointed out).  On the other hand, some images had great
technical skill but lacked artistic content (and so these elements were pointed
out).

It's a bit like being an excellent painter but not having any artistic flair, or
having artistic flair but not being able to paint - either way you'll produce a
painting that isn't as good as someone who has a little of both elements.

I think this is why comments can sometimes be perceived as being harsh - they
usually target what you aren't as good at, but this has the positive effect of
focusing you on improving that area.

> Thanks muchly,
>
> swampee

Lance.

thezone - thezone.firewave.com.au
thehandle - www.thehandle.com

"Lance Birch" wrote:
-snip-
> I think the comments are intended to be taken as constructive notes.  The good
> parts of images are generally obvious, and it's the parts that could use work
> that should be pointed out as those allow people to know the weak points of
> images so that they can be improved.
-snip-

I find these kinds of comments are by far the most useful, but they're
hard to find because the commenter must be somewhat altruistic.
They usually don't have anything to gain by making what might be
perceived as negative comments.

Here, I think, the comments were driven by a genuine desire to see
POV-Ray users learn and improve.