Ken wrote:
> 
> David Wilkinson wrote:
> 
> > >Well this would certainly weed out a lot of the raytraced entries.
> > >
> > >Cheers PoD.
> >
> > Do you mean that ray tracers can't find more than one veiwpoint?
> > David
> 
>   Actually I think he was thinking about the amount of time it takes to
> raytrace a scene vs. scanline render a scene. Scanline rendering is
> generaly much faster than raytracing and those that wait until the last
> minute with their submissions because of bloated raytracing times will
> never have a chance to wait on a second render to finish.
> 
> --
> Ken Tyler
> 
> See my 1000+ Povray and 3D Rendering and Raytracing Links at:
> http://home.pacbell.net/tylereng/index.html

Indeed.  I've done some scenes (not for IRTC) which are fairly simple in
concept but very slow to render, so an extra image would increase the
total time required significantly.

Cheers, PoD.

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Ron Parker wrote:
> 
> Did the IRTC become the Internet Rendering Tools Competition while I
> slept last night?  If not, how did this win?
> 
> >RENDERER USED:
> >    3D Studio Max default renderer
> 
> And what about this?
> 
> >the sun was softened by a fadin Lens Effect Flare
> >rendered in Video post.
> 
> Can we have a clarification on the question of whether
> postprocessing being "built in" to your renderer makes it legal?
> Should I start working on that Photoshop plugin patch for POV-Ray now?
> 
> And please note that this is not sour grapes.  I didn't enter the
> competition this round.  I'm just disappointed to see a bunch of
> imagemaps rendered with a scanline renderer in seven minutes win this
> round when there were so many more deserving entries.

	If you don't mind my saying, I have been thinking of testing the
envelop or pushing the loophole to see what happens. I can make
PS sit up and beg and I have been thinking of exactly that. Do as
much as possible in PS and then run a two minute render and see
how it fares. 

	My original interest in POV was to do things that are hard in PS
and got addicted. No more struggling with textures just crank
them out. This time (six foot cockroach) I got a compliment on
the wallpaper and I stated that it was created in PS. 

	Anyone else feel like testing the limits? As long as it crawls
through a renderer at some point it appears to be acceptable. And
then renderer appears to mean that the package uses the word
render in its sales brochure. 

-- 
http://www.giwersworld.org/artiii/

Oh my God! They've rendered Kenny!

How to profit from the end of civilization as know it available
here 
soon.

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David Wilkinson wrote:

>  I suspect that many people, like me, find it difficult to judge technical merit
because
> 1) the entrants don't give enough technical detail (fair enough if you first
language
> isn't English)
> 2) my experience is limited to ray tracing with POV and I don't know how easy, or
hard it
> is to generate scenes using other methods such as line scan rendering.

	The following took about 10 minutes (start to finish) with
photoshop. 

http://giwersworld.org/artii/nraol.jpg

	This one about an hour total including modifying the psi
charcter

http://giwersworld.org/artii/psicorp.jpg

	It takes some hours in hell with PS and the plug-ins to learn it
and I have some thousands of those hours. But I get feedback on
my attempt in a couple seconds not hours regardless of
complexity. I can gat a new trial and error faster than I can
change the code in POV. 

	And anyone try this in POV

http://giwersworld.org/artii/perspec.jpg

	and that was just noodling around with one of the plugins. I
don't remember how long it took. 

	So that is the difference to me. 

	Now look at this one. 

http://giwersworld.org/artii/pattack.jpg

	The pyramid and the flyers are POV. The rest is PS and plugins.
The benefit I first expected from POV is that I can get different
perspectives and viewpoints on the POV parts trivially. But in PS
I cannot move the ground plane without planning way ahead to want
to move it and duplicating it without planning to do so is
essentially impossible. But this was also just playing around one
night, maybe a couple hours with a dozen variances and no
planning at all. 

	OK, I have bored you and bragged but those are examples of the
differences between POV and raster rendering. 

	So yes, once raster rendering is considered the same as
raytracing we might as well shitcan POV usage in the IRTC. And PS
5.x has added animation features such that if characters don't
turn or the camera does not change distance POV is out for that
also. 
 
> One positive suggestion I make is that entrants should have to provide two images of
the
> same scene from different viewpoints.  

	An outstanding suggestion! It would wipe out the raster
renderers completely. 

-- 
http://www.giwersworld.org/artiii/

Oh my God! They've rendered Kenny!

How to profit from the end of civilization as know it available 
here soon.

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Ken wrote:

> Not to mention that it would nearly double the storage space requirments
> at the contests server and it would require greater bandwidth to download
> double the number of images. I don't think this is practicle at all.

	Not impractical as the famous last words of someone who doesn't
have to do it. 33.6k is finally falling so 56.6k can become the
most common dialups so switching to doubling (by the time it is
done) should not harm the download time per voter. The second can
be smaller size and lower quality as it would just be a proof
against raster rendering so both storage and bandwidth are not
really harmed. 

	But then it gets complicated and technical requirements to
english speakers often fail. Language barriers are still real
barriers. But I did just find a dutch site yesterday announcing
the dutch version of the site would no longer be updated. The
common internet language wouldn't bother me if it were Italian or
Swahili -- only if it were French. Just wish there were only one. 

-- 
http://www.giwersworld.org/artiii/

Oh my God! They've rendered Kenny!

How to profit from the end of civilization as know it available 
here soon.

Post a reply to this message

Ken wrote:

> Perhaps instead there should be two competitions. One for the novice and
> one for the advanced.

	And who is a novice? asked the doubting Pilate before the
creator of Mortal Combat could give him an answer.

-- 
http://www.giwersworld.org/artiii/

Oh my God! They've rendered Kenny!

How to profit from the end of civilization as know it available 
here soon.

Post a reply to this message

Matt Giwer <mgi### [at] giwersworldorg> wrote:
: 	And who is a novice?

  The one who gets less than 10 points in the hardcore povrayer test :)

-- 
main(i,_){for(_?--i,main(i+2,"FhhQHFIJD|FQTITFN]zRFHhhTBFHhhTBFysdB"[i]
):5;i&&_>1;printf("%s",_-70?_&1?"[]":" ":(_=0,"\n")),_/=2);} /*- Warp -*/

Post a reply to this message

On Sat, 20 Nov 1999 05:05:41 -0500, Matt Giwer <mgi### [at] giwersworldorg> wrote:

>	The following took about 10 minutes (start to finish) with
>photoshop. 
>
>http://giwersworld.org/artii/nraol.jpg
>
>	This one about an hour total including modifying the psi
>charcter
>
>http://giwersworld.org/artii/psicorp.jpg
>
>	It takes some hours in hell with PS and the plug-ins to learn it
>and I have some thousands of those hours. But I get feedback on
>my attempt in a couple seconds not hours regardless of
>complexity. I can gat a new trial and error faster than I can
>change the code in POV. 
>
>	And anyone try this in POV
>
>http://giwersworld.org/artii/perspec.jpg
>
>	and that was just noodling around with one of the plugins. I
>don't remember how long it took. 
>
>	So that is the difference to me. 
>
>	Now look at this one. 
>
>http://giwersworld.org/artii/pattack.jpg
>
>	The pyramid and the flyers are POV. The rest is PS and plugins.
>The benefit I first expected from POV is that I can get different
>perspectives and viewpoints on the POV parts trivially. But in PS
>I cannot move the ground plane without planning way ahead to want
>to move it and duplicating it without planning to do so is
>essentially impossible. But this was also just playing around one
>night, maybe a couple hours with a dozen variances and no
>planning at all. 
>
>	OK, I have bored you and bragged but those are examples of the
>differences between POV and raster rendering. 
>
 
The thread you just responded to, Matt, is two months old and I've nearly forgotten
why I
got so heated about things then.

I've had a good look at all the images you mentioned (and had a good browse around
your
web site :-)  I like to make positive comments about peoples' images (or suggest how I
think that they might be improved)  I had penned some comments on your images, but
have
decided not to post them as I am unable to be positive and cannot suggest any
improvements.

Thanks for getting me to look at them anyway.

It still doesn't help me much with my quandary of not being able to judge technical
merit
in an image when I haven't had experience in using methods other than POV-Ray.  Well I
suppose that's not entirely true as I have created images using Corel and similar
packages, but unlike you I have not spent hundreds of hours getting to know how to use
them best.  If and when I next enter the IRTC I suppose I shall just have to do as
before
and rely on fallible human judgement when voting on the other entries.

CU in another two months.

David
------------
dav### [at] cwcomnet
http://www.hamiltonite.mcmail.com
------------

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Nieminen Juha <war### [at] punarastascstutfi> wrote:
> Matt Giwer <mgi### [at] giwersworldorg> wrote:
> : 	And who is a novice?

>   The one who gets less than 10 points in the hardcore povrayer test :)

Actually, I'd do it like they do for costuming competitions at SF cons I've
been to.  You're a novice until you've won an award in the novice category,
then you're a journeyman.  When you've won 3 awards as a journeyman, you
become a master/advanced user.  Mind, this would be three categories, but
it'd work for 2 as well.  You could also do something of the form of "n
points where first gives you 4, 2nd 3, 3rd 2, and each category mention 1"
jumps you a rank.  It would require a bit of bookkeeping on someone's part,
though (could write a script to do it)

Geoff

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So you will write a script that tracks all of our POV knowledge in the style
of a Sci Fi Convention costuming competition?  I'll come as the Y axis --
and later, when I've had a bit to drink, the Z axis.

Post a reply to this message

Ian Witham <ian### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> So you will write a script that tracks all of our POV knowledge in the style
> of a Sci Fi Convention costuming competition?  I'll come as the Y axis --
> and later, when I've had a bit to drink, the Z axis.


Er, not exactly.  You track based on how well people have done previously in
the competition.  So everyone is considered a novice until they've proven
otherwise.  I'm not sure there's enough people entering the competition each
time, though.

Geoff

(and yes, I know you were just having fun, but...)

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