Gena wrote:
> 
>> If there were no prizes that wouldn't be much
>> a problem, but with a financial incentive, it would immediately lead to
>> suspicion and to all sorts of potential troubles, including legal ones.
> 
> 
> It's a pity that from competition were excluded people who
> proved their commitment to POV-Ray during many years and who
> really deserve the prize.

I don't think this is about deserving or not.  If Appro, Zazzle or any 
other company is interested in an image from Gilles or me they know we 
are both open to doing contract work when time permits. :-)

I'd rather see the prizes as an encouragement for those participating 
and the whole contest as a chance for people to exercise and present 
their abilities.

Christoph

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Gena wrote:


> It's a pity that from competition were excluded people who
> proved their commitment to POV-Ray during many years and who
> really deserve the prize.
> 
If that describes anyone, it describes you, Gena.

"jute" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> "Ross" <rli### [at] everestkcnet> wrote:
> > he means that he encourages the povcomp team to seek legal counseling before
> > finalizing the deadline extention. That seems like sound advice.
>
> I stand corrected.  Sorry m1j.
>
> --
> jussi.kantola

I should apologize as well. I did not state my points clear enough.

rben wrote:
> 6) Upon discussing this contest with a friend of mine, he pointed out
> what might be part of the problem.  Since you have explicitely stated
> that artists will be given more credit for self-made models than ones
> borrowed from someone else or created using 3rd party tools, you may
> have narrowed the pool of participants to POV-Ray artists who are
> very good at creating models and in creating impressive images using
> those models.  You have limited the ability for those artists who are
> primarily good at creating impressive images using models that others
> have created.  Personally, I like this, since I make most if not all
> of my own models for each image, but it does narrow the field
> considerably.

If you really want the competition to be about scenes made entirely in POV
with no 3rd party modellers or models, then you are not going to get
amazingly high quality images that are comparable to what people see around
them (films, magazines, photos etc) in such a short time.  POV is not the
best tool for creating complex 3D models, and if you tell people they will
get more credit for trying to use it to do something it wasn't really
designed for, they are going to spend a lot of time doing that rather than
showing off the *real* features that POV is *really* good at.

Had they made it clear that it was perfectly acceptable to use a 3rd party
modeller for creating meshes then I'm sure the quality of entries would have
been far higher.

FWIW I started out planning to enter, but due to a holiday and several trips
with work, I just didn't have the time.  What I did start with was creating
models in POV, I never even touched properly on the lighting or textures, I
was "leaving that for later".  IMHO this is totally wrong, the contest
should be all about the lighting, textures, materials etc, not about seeing
who can get POV to create the most realistic 3D model.  I won't be carrying
on with my entry, I don't want to be wasting my time on one single image for
a prize that might never actually be given away.

news:4188bafe$1@news.povray.org...

> Had they made it clear that it was perfectly acceptable to use a 3rd party
> modeller for creating meshes then I'm sure the quality of entries would
have
> been far higher.

Well, the guidelines say "You are allowed to use any tool you want for
modeling, texturing etc.". About modeling, they say that "self-made models"
will be seen in a positive light, but it's vs non-self-made models, not 3rd
party modelers! The "technical novelty" section also says that while using
the POV-Ray SDL is a good thing, the goal of technical novelty "should not
be attained at the expense of neglecting any of the other guidelines".

It could perhaps have been made clearer, but then the risk was to make
people think that *not using* 3rd party tools would have been a
disadvantage, which would have turned off the many users POV-Ray users who
are SDL-coders at heart. Indeed, the entries show great models created in
POV-Ray and great models with 3rd party modelers. Some models are best done
with a mesh modeler, and others can benefit a lot from the SDL. It really
comes down to the quality of the models in the end, no matter the tool.

> What I did start with was creating
> models in POV, I never even touched properly on the lighting or textures,
I
> was "leaving that for later".  IMHO this is totally wrong, the contest
> should be all about the lighting, textures, materials etc, not about
seeing
> who can get POV to create the most realistic 3D model.

A good image results from the combination of different skills. You're
absolutely right about the importance of lighting and texturing, but
modeling skills are also part of the exercise.

> I won't be carrying on with my entry, I don't want to be wasting my time
on one single image for a prize that might never actually be given away.

There's no reason to think that the prizes won't be given away. They will.
If you've worked hard to make detailed models, you now have the opportunity
to create a scene worthy of them that will include excellent texturing and
lighting. After working on the "Reach for the stars" space image for several
months, Jaime and I spent quite a bit of time creating scenes featuring some
of (mostly Jaime's) best models that had appeared in the main image, because
we thought that they deserved to be seen in their best light.
http://www.oyonale.com/iss/english/details.htm#Museum

G.

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Gilles Tran wrote:

> news:4188bafe$1@news.povray.org...
>
>> Had they made it clear that it was perfectly acceptable to use a 3rd
>> party modeller for creating meshes then I'm sure the quality of
>> entries would have been far higher.
>
> Well, the guidelines say "You are allowed to use any tool you want for
> modeling, texturing etc.". About modeling, they say that "self-made
> models" will be seen in a positive light, but it's vs non-self-made
> models, not 3rd party modelers! The "technical novelty" section also
> says that while using the POV-Ray SDL is a good thing, the goal of
> technical novelty "should not be attained at the expense of
> neglecting any of the other guidelines".

OK sorry I misunderstood.  I was thinking that because I am no expert at 3rd
party modellers, I would have more of a chance of winning by getting some
"credit" for doing models in raw POV.  If you are saying that an identical
model created in both raw POV and a 3rd party modeller gets the same credit,
then I will have to practise more with what looks like easier tools to use
for complicated models.

>> I won't be carrying on with my entry, I don't want to be wasting my
>> time
> on one single image for a prize that might never actually be given
> away.
>
> There's no reason to think that the prizes won't be given away. They
> will.

But what happens if the quality of work isn't much different by the end of
January?  Will the prizes be given away then, or will you wait another 3
months?  Just genuinely curious.

> If you've worked hard to make detailed models, you now have the
> opportunity to create a scene worthy of them that will include
> excellent texturing and lighting.

I'll see, the more I think about it the more I'm tempted to carry on :-)

"scott" <sco### [at] spamcom> wrote:

> OK sorry I misunderstood.  I was thinking that because I am no expert at 3rd
> party modellers, I would have more of a chance of winning by getting some
> "credit" for doing models in raw POV.  If you are saying that an identical
> model created in both raw POV and a 3rd party modeller gets the same credit,
> then I will have to practise more with what looks like easier tools to use
> for complicated models.

It will be a pity if models made solely in povray does not deserve more
credits. The only reasons that I would use a modeller are for things like
nurbs, organic, some ridiculously oddly looking shape that can only be done
with meshes. I do agree that it takes some time to create high quality
models in povray, and because of this I believe that models made purely in
Povray should deserve extra credit.

j wrote:
> "scott" <sco### [at] spamcom> wrote:
>
>> OK sorry I misunderstood.  I was thinking that because I am no
>> expert at 3rd party modellers, I would have more of a chance of
>> winning by getting some "credit" for doing models in raw POV.  If
>> you are saying that an identical model created in both raw POV and a
>> 3rd party modeller gets the same credit, then I will have to
>> practise more with what looks like easier tools to use for
>> complicated models.
>
> It will be a pity if models made solely in povray does not deserve
> more credits.

I agree, but by the sounds of it the organisers want world-class images as a
result, *not* world-class POV code.

> The only reasons that I would use a modeller are for
> things like nurbs, organic, some ridiculously oddly looking shape
> that can only be done with meshes. I do agree that it takes some time
> to create high quality models in povray, and because of this I
> believe that models made purely in Povray should deserve extra credit.

Just because something is harder and takes longer I don't think it should
deserve more credit.  Most of us are only hobbyists, we have a limited time.
If we are being rewarded for spending 10 hours generating a clever model in
POV compared to spending 2 hours knocking it up in a modeller, then that's 8
hours we've lost that could have been spent on texturing/lighting within POV
to make the final image look world-class.

"scott" <sco### [at] spamcom> wrote:
> Just because something is harder and takes longer I don't think it should
> deserve more credit.

That's true. Things that take longer to make may not necessarily deserve
more credit.

> If we are being rewarded for spending 10 hours generating a clever model in
> POV compared to spending 2 hours knocking it up in a modeller, then that's 8
> hours we've lost that could have been spent on texturing/lighting within POV
> to make the final image look world-class.

But then, how do you know that I spent the majority of my time modeling in
pov? It's the same as saying you spend more time to make fabulous looking
lighting/texture thus deserving more credit, isn't that sort of the same as
spending more time to make fabulous looking model in povray? It is a Povray
competition after all.

4188f5dc$1@news.povray.org...

> OK sorry I misunderstood.  I was thinking that because I am no expert at 
> 3rd
> party modellers, I would have more of a chance of winning by getting some
> "credit" for doing models in raw POV.  If you are saying that an identical
> model created in both raw POV and a 3rd party modeller gets the same 
> credit,
> then I will have to practise more with what looks like easier tools to use
> for complicated models.

I will expand on this later (with examples) when I write the "POVCOMP hints" 
about modelling but here's a couple of answers:

Most judges won't be familiar with POV-Ray but the judges who know it will 
able to add some balance to the discussions so that POV-Ray specific 
features can be properly judged. However, the goal is still to make great 
pictures, which means that quality remains central. As a judge, I would not 
give extra points to a bad model because it's done in SDL. I would only 
reward good models, whatever the tool used.

See for instance this model of typewriter by Jaime Vives Piqueres:
http://www.oyonale.com/iss/english/museum_05.htm
It's certainly one of the most impressive examples of SDL model I've seen. 
It's small, clean code that doesn't use much memory, and, because it's SDL, 
it still looks great on close-up. The same typewriter created with a 
traditional modeller would be a huge, RAM-eating mesh with visible polygons 
that would make testing difficult due to long parsing times. In this case, 
SDL wins. As a judge, I wouldn't reward using SDL per se, but the smart use 
of SDL (and POV-Ray) to create a superior model.

So it comes down to this: use the right tool for the right job. If you can't 
do something as good as you want it to be in SDL, don't. If you can't model 
a good-looking human face in Wings, don't. But if you can do one of these 
things, please do it! If something is going to be rewarded, it's the ability 
to make the best of the tools and time budget available to the artist. Lots 
of impressive stuff can be done in SDL, and often more easily than with a 
mesh modeller, so this can be shown. Also, SDL-based objects can have their 
own specific artistic values and some styles of imagery can also benefit 
from this.

> But what happens if the quality of work isn't much different by the end of
> January?

It will. I'm confident that the good stuff already there will become 
*really* good stuff by the end January. In any case, 3 extra months wouldn't 
make a difference at this point.

> I'll see, the more I think about it the more I'm tempted to carry on :-)

You're welcome!

Gilles

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