"Loki" <nomail@nomail> wrote:

> Why does the comeptition only rarely see entries of truly high (i.e.
> highend3d.com) quality?  It's because the competition doesn't *want*
> entries like that, because they'd just win hands down month after month and
> it would be no fun for the people who don't have access to a full
> Maya/Renderman rig.  But in its present form there is nothing stopping
> industry professionals entering the IRTC with their work.  Perhaps the IRTC
> should be rebranded to clarify that it is not in fact a raytracing
> competition on the whole, but a POV specific contest.  The way some people
> seem to think of it is that it isn't really even a competition.  It doesn't
> have any prize associated with it, and it doesn't, I'm afraid to say, carry
> any prestige these days.  Perhaps the Internet POV Ray Gallery (IPRG) would
> be a more appropriate name?

The IRTC is a learning tool, in competition form.  And its a good one
because it permits beginners to enter, and doesn't penalize them just
because they're beginners.  Its good that its not only POV, because despite
what some seem to think, getting good results out of ANY 3D software has a
learning curve, and everyone is a beginner sometime.

My entries are usually competing as much with my previous entries as with
the other entries in the round. I'm not a professional CG artist, and I
can't afford $6000+ in software to have all the bells and whistles in one
package, but I would like to be able now and then to produce something like
they do that creates a mood or recreates a scene to a degree that someone
will look at it more than once.

When I look at all of my past entries I see progress. When I started
entering (using Bryce at first, found PovRay after I found IRTC) I had lots
of free time, and I'd spend most of the two months working on it to get
something that was just ok. Now I don't have that much time, and if I can
get a couple weeks in I'm doing good, yet I think I've gotten some pretty
good entries, so I'm happy with that.

The guys who have the money to spend on Maya / 3DMax probably have (a)
already gone through much of that learning stage before they spent the
money, and (b) are setting their sights on generating some return on that
investment. So the IRTC is not going to offer them much.

All that said, I think that in several of the recent rounds there has been a
definite flow of slapped together Bryce/Rhino entries that tends to dilute
the overall level of the round. This has been attributed to a CG class at a
school all submitting. Some of the students seem to get more involved and
actually try to come up with something serious, but for others its clearly
"just another assignment".  I do think that somewhat abuses the "beginners
welcome".  Perhaps the instructor could have his own competition, and only
the top finishers submit to IRTC.

RG

P.S. I thought Derrick's entry was definitely a good one, but I didn't enter
that round, so didn't get to vote :-(  Only critique I had was that the
moon looked too sharp, like it was only 10 ft away, but given the topic, I
wasn't sure that wasn't intentional...

P.P.S. Another one I thought was quite good, and was disappointed at its
finish was Incongruous (Helene Dumur).

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"Derrick J Houy" <djh### [at] pawzaorg> wrote
> Loki wrote:

> > I'm afraid I totally agree with this, no doubt to Derrick's chagrin.

> >>Generalisations like, "...I have seen little truly deserving of the top
places.", is just plain upsetting.

> > The truth hurts sometimes.

> So, the bottom line is that you think I did not deserve my 2nd place,
> yet you offer no solid, pointed criticism as to why. I worked long and
> hard on that image, learning more about Pov in that short while than in
> all the time I have used it, still having self-doubt whether it was good
> enough or not, and whether I should enter it or not. I was elated with
> my placing, which was far beyond what I ever expected, and here you go
> saying it was not deserving of its place. What the hell is your problem?

Calm down. He never targeted you specifically. And yours is certainly
deserving 2nd place *in amongst* the submissions. I think his point was that
the overall quality of IRTC submissions hasn't kept up with the advances in
technology, and I would agree with that. Part of the reason is that IRTC
isn't attracting professionals - and I don't just mean those who use really
expensive software. Having said that, there seems to be some bias against
other (non POV) software which may have helped to turn those people off from
IRTC. As a long time (but "light") POV user, I must also sadly admit that
POV is showing its age and its not helping matters. But the main reason,
IMHO, for the lackluster state of IRTC is the proliferation of competitions,
forums and venues for showcasing renderings.

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To me the IRTC is a comptetion open for anyone who wants to share their 3d
work with the rest of the world. I think this encourages lots of people who
are not too sure of their own abilities to submit. I have often admired
images made by kids who may not have the ability to make professional

complicated software creatively. They may or may not become the great 3d
artists of the future. Who knows?

I wish I had had that opportunity when I was twelve. Sigh....


challenges and to me the IRTC is an opportunity to receive a constructive
and encouraging critisism. Which is extremely valuable.



to try. I myself waited two years before submitting for the first time,
even though there are no limits on partipication.

By the way: the IRTC ftp server is updated almost immediately showing the

webpage updates late.
Try
ftp://ftp.irtc.org/pub/stills/

choose Help > FTP Server Welcome Message... to see the new topic.

Hildur

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ok, i know this thread is already old, but i think it's still relevant...
so, here goes my 2 cents...

The IRTC was always pov-centered, since it's an old competition for
hobbyists who can't afford high-end hardware and software and povray was
the only real good free raytracer back then.  Not to say high-end software
is that huge a step forward than povray, just stating that that's what
professionals use.

So, since it's hobbyist-ridden, there are far too many non-professional
looking images, no surprise.  Look here:

http://highend3d.com/gallery/scenes/3d_scenes/gallerylarge.php?id=663

the guy took 3 weeks to render this in high-end stations and using
professional modelers and renderer.  You can't expect hobbyists to do
something like that.

But, imho, povray makes things bad in a sense, in this way:  many people
using it are technically inclined people, who love to script fractals using
just a text editor and the bare hands.  There's few true artists out there
using povray, because it comes with no GUI modeller of its own, like yafray
comes with Blender.  No non-technically inclined artists will take a serious
look at povray for rendering, except for a few like JVP or Gilles Tran and
even these can be seen more as programmers with an artistic sense than
anything else.  Heck, no non-technical artist would ever come up with such
amazing macros as these guys...

That's why -- not many true artists using pov --, i guess, you see either
many pov-excited-newbie bad images, some good images lacking some true
artistic value and very few that truly get the artistic and technical
aparatus right.  The guy worrying for his 2nd prize should not, it's a nice
image, but i believe he's one of those artistic inclined people:  the theme
is nice, but it lacks lots of technical details that could really make the
image standout, like some media fading near the lamp etc -- media,
caustics, DOF, very complex textures and materials and all are what truly
set professional images apart from hobbyists.  The kind of little povray
technical details that people with artistic sense simply find, i guess, too
cumbersome or simply doesn't even know how to get at it or simply don't have
the time and hardware to implement...

Just my 2 cents.  I, for myself, just love povray amazingly rich and
flexible SDL:  the best anywhere for describing 3D images in words... so,
to me, povray is a mix of things that really attract me, mainly
mathematics, 3D graphics, programming *and* poetry, since that's what a
good povray scene file truly is... :)

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