be considered minimum requirements for the competition. It has been taken over

remains. We will fail to retain and acquire the most proficient 3D artists if
we dictate to them how they are allowed to make their art. These people both
inspire us with their images and teach us with their comments and should be
highly valued.

I have argued that we have arrived in this situation because the initial rules

techniques have been developed that while powerful are in opposition with the
initial rules. I believe the intent of these rules were to focus work and
conversation about the creation of 3D images and animations. This is the sole
intent and we should update the rules to reflect this just as the web site has
been updated. I have suggested the following as the minimum requirements for a
submission to the IRTC for your consideration:




The issue of a particular image or animation showing a good use of 3D is a
matter I think is best left up to judging and comments and to be done on a case
by case basis. Whereas the minimum requirements should only be used to maintain
the focal point on 3D work. Nothing more.

I would greatly appreciate your thoughts on this. It has either been accepted by
people here or was ignored because I write to much.

Post a reply to this message

"Michael Hunter" <int### [at] onenet> wrote in message 
news:web.4a367214d0c848f2d7fbc1230@news.povray.org...
|
| "Submissions are expected to primarily demonstrate and document the 
use of 3D
| software."
|

What's your take on the ray tracer vs. renderer issue?

 Are you suggesting that it doesn't matter what kind of
software is used to create a submission to the Internet
Ray Tracing Competition?

People have tried submitting photographs, paint program
images, and scan line renderings.

Post a reply to this message

"Michael Hunter" <int### [at] onenet> wrote in message 
news:web.4a367214d0c848f2d7fbc1230@news.povray.org...
> We will fail to retain and acquire the most proficient 3D artists if
> we dictate to them how they are allowed to make their art. These people 
> both
> inspire us with their images and teach us with their comments and should 
> be
> highly valued.

The premise of your argument seems to be that you want to expand the range 
of people interested in entering this contest. I have to disagree with that 
principal. One of the main reasons I have found the IRTC so rewarding is the 
very technical focus of most entrants and judges. If it loses that focus, if 
people start commenting on my povray images talking about shaders and 
polygons, I'm going to lose interest.

There are other 3D competitions and I believe the rules are the main thing 
that distinguishes the IRTC from other contests. I have never taken an 
interest in other contests (aside from Paul Bourke's even more technically 
focussed short code contest), and if the IRTC starts to become more 
mainstream it will be less appealing to me. And I doubt if I'm the only 
person who feels like this.

The IRTC used to inspire me and drive my art, and I hope the new IRTC will 
as well, please don't change that.

-- 
Tek
http://evilsuperbrain.com

Post a reply to this message

"pan" <pan### [at] syixcom> wrote:

> What's your take on the ray tracer vs. renderer issue?
>
>  Are you suggesting that it doesn't matter what kind of
> software is used to create a submission to the Internet
> Ray Tracing Competition?
>
> People have tried submitting photographs, paint program
> images, and scan line renderings.

The word "render" is used to cover all sorts of algorithms and software.  You
can even render music on a computer.

For 3D imaging its mostly: Rasterizing (scan line), Raytracing, Ray Casting,
Z-buffer and Photon Mapping as probably the most common methods, either used
separate or combined. Raytracing seems to be winning on (Monte Carlo) since

algorithm. Maybe somebody else knows more about that.

Here is an excellent article about these different methods.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/779550/are-there-any-rendering-alternatives-to-rasterisation-or-ray-tracing

Hildur K.

Post a reply to this message

Pan Said:





My draft of the rule would not permit a photograph or paint program images
because these are 2D in nature not generated by 3D rendering. Though a
photography could be used for a background such as sky. Or painted maps could
be applied to 3D objects. Other allowances would be for 3D images to be placed
side-by-side to show a sequence of events or to add text to an image. And many
other possibilities - some of which you will gain a lot of useful information
from and some you may even be offended by. But you get to have your say about
it in the end.




I believe the focus of the competition is driven largely by who is engaged in
it. Whether that is technical or artistic or on some other aspect of making 3D

discussion. In fact this makes it possible to talk about more complex technical


Tek said:






competition becomes very inbred. You will very quickly find yourself as a
technological hermit. There are methodologies that are applicable to POV-Ray
that are not permitted. Do you care about that? Where do you want to be
personally in five-ten years? Doing exactly what you do now or doing the same

ideas.


have a reason to make a picture or an animation then what point is the

be a shame to restrict that.

Post a reply to this message

Michael Hunter <int### [at] onenet> wrote:
> My draft of the rule would not permit a photograph or paint program images
> because these are 2D in nature not generated by 3D rendering.

  The problem is: At which point does a 3D rendering simply become part of
a 2D image composition, to the point that it's not a "rendered 3D image"
anymore?

  Consider two absolute extremes:

1) The submitted image is an original, completely unaltered direct result
from running povray, taking the PNG it produced and submitting it.

2) A 3D renderer was used to render a logo image which is then used in a
Photoshop creation, as a very small logo in one corner of the image, not
even as a part of the composition but as a "signature". Other than the
small logo, everything else has been created directly with Photoshop, with
no 3D rendering whatsoever involved.

  Clearly case #1 is acceptable as a "3D rendered image" and case #2 isn't.
However, where is the line between the two?

  To complicate things even further, consider a third extreme:

3) An image is fully created with pure 2D techniques using Photoshop, and
then this image is used as an image map in a rendering software, which
simply "renders" the image to a file and that's it. *Technically* speaking
the resulting PNG is a pure, unaltered result of a 3D rendering software.
However, it has basically nothing to do with 3D rendering.

  This raises a couple of questions:

- How much post-processing of the rendered image in a non-3D software is
allowed, and why?

- How much 3D modeling is required for an image to be considered a "3D
rendered image", rather than simply abusing a rendering software as a
post-processor for a 2D image?

  As a completely personal opinion, I think *any* kind of post-processing
of the rendered image is cheating, or at least can be used for cheating.

  For example, the old IRTC allowed resizing the rendered image as a post-
processing step. Some people abused this allowance to cheat and get a much
higher-quality antialiasing than what the renderer was able to produce all
by itself (by rendering a very large image and then using a 2D software to
scale it down by averaging pixels, resulting in high-quality antialiasing,
which was *not* the product of the renderer).

  Another allowance of the old IRTC was that it was allowed to change the
gamma, brightness and contrast of the image. I assume that the original
idea was simply that if you had your computer rendering for 2 weeks and
afterwards you noticed that oops, the image is too dark after all, you can
brighten it up a bit. And again, some people abused this to produce visual
effects not achievable with the rendering software itself, by enchancing
certain types of lighting, etc.

  Why do I consider this "cheating"? Because this is a *rendering* compo,
not a generic computer graphics compo. Since this is a rendering compo,
I want to see the direct products of rendering software, not the products
of an image manipulation software like Photoshop. If I want to see images
created with Photoshop, I can google for "photoshop contest" or similar
and get plenty of results. I don't think we need another one of those.

  This principle would of course allow extreme #3 to be submitted. However,
it's then up to the judges to vote it down because there was no real 3D
modelling involved.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Michael Hunter wrote:
> We will fail to retain and acquire the most proficient 3D artists if
> we dictate to them how they are allowed to make their art.

The IRTC has always dictated what kinds of tools are acceptable, and 
never concerned itself with "acquir[ing] the most proficient 3D artists."

Instead, it has been all about encouraging the best art possible within 
a very particular niche, that is, raytracing.  Why shouldn't that 
continue to be the focus of the "Internet Raytracing Competition"?

As has been pointed out repeatedly, if you just want to look at pretty 
CG there are already innumerable forums and contests out there.  If you 
are particularly interested in raytracing, your options are much more 
limited.

-- 
Chambers

Post a reply to this message

As an interested bystander reading the ongoing messages in this and other
threads, I would like some clarification -

If the IRTC goes to a "pure" POVRAY rendering only format, then could I still be
able to use any modeler that saves my geometry into a POVRAY compatible mesh
file, i.e.  I could use any modeler that saves a POVRAY mesh directly (such as
Rhino) or any modeler that saves an obj formatted file that I can export to
Poseray to convert to a POVRAY compatible mesh. Also, I could use Photoshop to
create image maps to use in POVRAY as well as UVMapper in combination with
Photoshop and Poseray to create image maps to use in POVRAY. I could even use a
modeler to layout my scene and lights, then create a POVRAY compatible macro to
move my layout into POVRAY. I would then use the unique modeling, lighting and
texturing capability of POVRAY to flesh out my scene. Is this a correct
assumption ?

However, if the IRTC moves past a "POVRAY only" stance to allow any ray tracer,
would it be possible to get a list of "approved" ray tracing software so that I
don't get burned by a judge not familiar with what is available to use ?

Chris Holtorf

Post a reply to this message

"ChrisH" <lho### [at] comcastnet> schreef in bericht 
news:web.4a36ff8f64396b4fe2df804f0@news.povray.org...
> As an interested bystander reading the ongoing messages in this and other
> threads, I would like some clarification -
>
> If the IRTC goes to a "pure" POVRAY rendering only format, then could I 
> still be
> able to use any modeler that saves my geometry into a POVRAY compatible 
> mesh
> file, i.e.  I could use any modeler that saves a POVRAY mesh directly 
> (such as
> Rhino) or any modeler that saves an obj formatted file that I can export 
> to
> Poseray to convert to a POVRAY compatible mesh. Also, I could use 
> Photoshop to
> create image maps to use in POVRAY as well as UVMapper in combination with
> Photoshop and Poseray to create image maps to use in POVRAY. I could even 
> use a
> modeler to layout my scene and lights, then create a POVRAY compatible 
> macro to
> move my layout into POVRAY. I would then use the unique modeling, lighting 
> and
> texturing capability of POVRAY to flesh out my scene. Is this a correct
> assumption ?

I my view, that is a perfectly valid option. In the old IRTC, Moray (a 
modeller) was used very often. Nowadays, with modellers producing highly 
detailed meshes and Poseray converting them to POV-Ray mesh2 files, I see no 
objection at all to use that in an IRTC entry. If, however, the consensus 
here that that is not allowed, then I see no future (for me) in the IRTC 
anymore... :-)

Thomas

Post a reply to this message

"Tek" <tek### [at] evilsuperbraincom> schreef in bericht 
news:4a3695e3@news.povray.org...
> The premise of your argument seems to be that you want to expand the range 
> of people interested in entering this contest. I have to disagree with 
> that principal. One of the main reasons I have found the IRTC so rewarding 
> is the very technical focus of most entrants and judges. If it loses that 
> focus, if people start commenting on my povray images talking about 
> shaders and polygons, I'm going to lose interest.
>
I certainly do agree with what you are saying here. However, as an aside, I 
must say (and this is really personal) that the technical side is only a 
'tool' for me to achieve my art. For me, it is not an end in itself, however 
interesting and important  it may be otherwise. I must admit that if the 
main(?) focus of the IRTC is the technical focus, then I sadly loose 
interest. I thought that the IRTC was a platform to create (and show) 
beautiful images through ray-tracing, whatever the technical background.

Thomas

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