The primary results for POVCOMP 2004 are ready. By 'primary results' we mean
the top 25 entries (all of which are eligible for prizes). We have not at
this stage awarded the Special Mentions. Also, entries that are not in the
top 25 will not receive a formal ranking (or score) due to the number of
entries (104 in total). However when they are put on view they will be
displayed in order of the judges overall ranking preference, which will give
a fairly good idea of how each image fared. Additionally, comments from
judges (where given) will be displayed with each image once they are
integrated to the website (expected to be in the next 24 hours).

We would like to thank our sponsors Appro (www.appro.com), AMD (www.amd.com),
zazzle (www.zazzle.com), and Planet Mirror (www.planetmirror.com) for making
this competition possible, plus our judges Dennis Miller, Evan Hallein, David
Hook, Gilles Tran, Lance Birch, and Juha ('Warp') Nieminen for taking time
out of their busy schedules over the past two weeks to rank the entries

                                  The Results
                                  -----------

We would like to congratulate Johnny Yip for his excellent entry 'The Last
Guardian', which has taken first place as the judges clear favourite. Apart
from its wonderful ambience it is a superb use of POV-Ray for modelling,
with the entire source (available for download from the website) taking only
75kb zipped (300kb uncompressed).

Johnny wins a superb Appro dual Opteron workstation valued at $10,000. Appro
are manufacturers of high-performance workstations, storage, and cluster
solutions, whose hardware is ideal for running such CPU-intensive
applications as POV-Ray.

Second place is taken by Jaime Vives Piqueres with his photorealistic entry
titled 'The Kitchen'. Jaime now has the task of selecting $2,500 worth of
goods from Zazzle.com as he is the winner of a Zazzle shopping spree! Zazzle
is a unique user-to-user creative marketplace based on the WWW where folks
can buy and sell custom products such as posters, prints, cards, and apparel.
The top 25 images will be made available in poster form from Zazzle in due
course.

Third place goes to Ziga Petric (a.k.a. 'Newt') for his futuristic
nano-vision 'Dissolution'. Ziga will join Jaime browsing Zazzle's virtual
aisles as the winner of a $1,000 zazzle shopping spree.

Fourth place is occupied by two images, which were so close together that
rather than choose one over the other, it was decided to award a joint
fourth place. Zazzle graciously agreed to provide the same prize to both
entrants. Both Douglas Eichenberg and Rene Bui will receive a Zazzle
colossal poster for their entries. Douglas submitted a surreal rendering
titled 'Victoria's World', which impressed the judges though its level of
detail. Rene submitted a quite detailed and artistic take on Jan Vermeer's
'Girl With A Pearl Earring' entitled 'Twin Girls With A Pearl Earring'.

Fifth place was not awarded given the dual fourth place mentioned above.

The full list of primary places is given below.

We would like to thank all entrants for their effort and time and we hope
that you all enjoy browsing the excellent contributions to POVCOMP 2004.

The entries can be viewed at the competition website www.povcomp.com.

                               Places 1-25
                               -----------

        1st: "The Last Guardian" by Johnny Yip
        2nd: "The Kitchen" by Jaime Vives Piqueres
        3rd: "Dissolution" by Ziga Petric
  equal 4th: "Victoria"s World" by Douglas Eichenberg
  equal 4th: "Twin Girls With A Pearl Earring" by Rene Bui
        6th: "Pirates" by "seawolf"
        7th: "Bradbury Atrium" by Gary MacKinnon
        8th: "Model Expo Entry" by Chris Holtorf
        9th: "Waiting for the relief" by Marc Jacquier
      10th: "Sentinel Rock" by Glenn McCarter
      11th: "Song For The Earth" by Fabien Mosen
      12th: "Natural History Museum" by Sean Day
      13th: "Cybernetic Organism Caealis - Narcissism" by "selsek"
      14th: "The Three Blind Mice Return" by Jeremy M. Praay
      15th: "Autumn" by "Slime"
      16th: "The buzzard and the dove" by "emkaah"
      17th: "Evie Evolves" by Joanne Simpson
      18th: "Early morning tea" by "St Dunstan"
      19th: "Christmas Eve" by Gennady Obukhov
      20th: "The Peek-a-Blocks" by "danBhentschel"
      21st: "After the Storm" by Christoph Gerber
      22nd: "Montezumas last meal No.2" by "splendor"
      23rd: "Pathways" by Robert W. McGregor
      24th: "Japanese spire!" by "miyoken"
      25th: "13 Spiral Spheres" by Robert W. McGregor