David Cuny wrote:
>>Why is it that the IRTC animation comp always seems so under-entered but the
>>stills typically has loads of entries?
> 
> 
> I can think of a lot of reasons that have very little to do with the
> competition itself:
> 
> * Animation is hard. Good animation is harder.

And designing a model that is easily animated is harder.  AFAIK, there 
is one mesh modeling program that exports an .INC containing a model 
that is posable by POV-Ray SDL.

> * POV doesn't have a GUI for animation.

But the author of the aforementioned app hopes to get that working 
sometime this year...

> * More models have to be made, for multiple scenes.
> * Models have to be articulated for animation, or they break in nasty ways.

Which ties in with the first item.

> * Animation needs a story with a beginning, middle and end.
> * Render times are much higher, because you need 24 frames for one second.

This is, indeed, the killer.  The stills side frequently has pictures 
that takes days to render.  One hour per frame limits animation entries 
to 90 seconds of animation, tops, minus one second for every day spent 
in modeling or test animating, or not rendering because nothing's ready 
for final render.

A lot of Rusty was rendered while I've been at work or asleep.

> Additionally:
> 
> * There aren't many free animation programs.
> * Animation programs have a large learning curve.
> * It's hard to compete against professional animation packages.
> 
> Now, John VanSickle scored all the animation rounds last year using "pure"
> POV-Ray, even against Markus Altendorff's excellent animations, which used
> Maxxon 3D. So take three with a grain of salt.

It's true that everything was rendered by POV-Ray, but two models were 
done with my modeler instead of hand-written SDL code.  One model 
probably could have been done with SDL code, but the other one 
definitely required my modeler.

> On the other hand, there were a number of submissions I was surprised to
> find didn't even make Honorable Mention:
> 
>    - Leroy Whetstone/October-January 2006
>    - M.A.c.v./October-January 2006
>    - Nimish Ajmani/July-October 2006
> 
> So why didn't these get Honorable Mentions? It's because the scoring doesn't
> actually follow the above guidelines.

And because due to low turnout, there haven't been Honorable Mentions 
since the April-July 2005 round.

Many of the times this has happened, there have been only six entries 
(or fewer).  The first time this happened, there was grumbling because 
it guaranteed that everyone would get at least an H.M., which did not 
sit well with some people.

> What if (like John VanSickle and his
> LionSnake modeler) you've actually written your own modeler or animator?
> Should you get extra points for that?

No, I should get a lifetime supply of Diet Coke!

> Making Honorable Mention a bit easier to get into might help (i.e. adding a
> "cheap tool" or "newbie" bonus), but that's awfully subjective.
> 
> Anyway, these can be factors in discouraging someone who submitted from
> submitting again. But I'm guessing the biggest barrier to people submitting
> animations in the first place is still my first point: Animation is Hard.

Yup.

Regards,
John

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